Nobody for President

Esoteric Spiral
3 min readMay 23, 2022

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Photograph by Megan Taylor

The “us vs them” mentality is harmful to everyone, especially our collective future. It is useless to debate political ideaologies because they are merely charicatures without any true depth or meaning. I am not advocating for avoidance of discussing perspectives, philosophies or experience based beliefs; these can be a great way to get to know each other when we allow each other space to go in depth and actually listen. What I am speaking on is the “left” vs “right” (or insert opposing rhetoric titles in their place) which is a distraction. It is all a show, a modern drama set to the tune of passions and trigger points known to pique people’s interests.

Whomever holds the role of president doesn’t matter, Joe Biden and Donald Trump are both rich self preserving servants of the actual ruling class; the finanacial giants who control most of the wealth both tangible and imaginary(money isn’t real) This could be called evil, though they both likely see themselves as the hero’s various rhetorics portray them as. The problem here is the impulse to divide things into evil vs good, black vs white, red vs blue, conservative vs progressive: wait, when did progressive get dropped for liberal? Drop a link in the comments if you did the research and can tell us the difference.

Once upon a time, we passed tales orally through our families and communities(tribes, clans, cultures). Eventually theatre and then books took on this literary passage of story. The hero’s journey is a theme that runs through myths, legends and plays a major role in modern storytelling. At some point though it stopped being about the individual going out into the world to overcome adversity, then bringing back what they learned/achieved to share with their community. Instead it morphed into the concept of villian vs hero, and that villianous character grew to great importance. The us vs them mentality permeates sports, rather than play a game for enjoyment and fun it has become an intense debate, where fanatics rage about their team and can’t stand the other. Our brains have been trained with modern television and movies to find the villian and oppose it.

The narrative is being handed out now that we must fight each other where each side sees their team as good and the opposing team as an evil to be crushed. This is false, but the drama creates a great distraction which allows the oligarcy to pilage the working class. Rather than philosophize about our purpose and place and how we choose to live, instead people are fighting over who should hold the title of “leader” and believe somehow this one change will make all things change for the better. It really makes no difference. The only way it could is if a person who is outside of the establishment were to hold the role and the lobbying factions stopped controlling the legislature. As long as power and wealth rule, any figure head will just put on a show and continue with the agenda of stripping the population of its assets and self-determination.

I have held the belief for a long time that true freedom is responsibility. Taking care of ourselves and our communities, making the changes we want to see, that is what will change things for the better. No one is going to do it for you, no one you might support or rally for putting in power is going to prioritize your community. Arguing to have legislation to force someone else to adhere to your desired way of life is a waste of time as well. It all starts with your actions and spirals out from there.

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