Recently by James Altucher: How To Break Free From Prison
I was asked this during my last Twitter Q&A:
Bryan M. Smith ?@bryanmsmith: Who are you voting for in the election & why?
Answer: I don’t vote. I won’t vote. I have no political anti-establishment reason for not voting. I’m not an anarchist. I just don’t see why I should vote. A vote is a choice between two elaborate theatrical productions. It’s a choice between the aesthetics of Star Wars versus Indiana Jones. It’s a vote to see which artist more cleverly evokes our mythological and unconscious responses to the perilous world around us. We all die but “hope and change” properly demonstrated gives us a signal that our choices can help society live forever, that the small stain we leave behind has a chance of survival even after we are long dead.
Is it better for you or me if Mitt Romney or Barack Obama is President? I wish Bush hadn’t been President. Too many 18 year olds were sent to die. I wish Bill Clinton hadn’t been President and spent years wrapped up in impeachment litigation after lying to his wife and the country. It’s great to have the entire past to look back on. Essentially every President was bad. I can’t think of a good one. They all wove dreams out of the fabric of their intelligence but when they left us we were lonelier than ever.
Heck, I would be bad if I were President. Unless I did absolutely nothing. Which is hard for the leader of the free world to do. He feels like he has to do something. Like kill people (“intervention”) or disrupt the way we trade with each other (“tarrifs”, “immigration!”). Or disrupt the way we try to save for our futures (“money printing!”).
People get very upset about this voting thing. I’m accused of being unpatriotic, for instance. Or my little 10 year old told me, “more people will run stop signs if we don’t have a President.” She associates a President with a magical parent. Perhaps projecting her own sense that I don’t give her enough boundaries for her to figure out where the edge of childhood ends and adulthood begins. I let her run a Stop sign when I don’t set a bedtime, or turn her TV off. She wants a President who will tell her when to “STOP!”
So here are some reasons for not voting. I’m not asking anyone to agree with me. Many people like to vote. Do things that you like to do.
A) One woman wrote: “Sara Manela ?@MidianiteManna: Tell that to sick kids with no insurance. Yes, it will effect our lives, b/c we’re not all rich like you.”
Sara is very angry at me for not voting. Somehow I’m not only allowing children to be “sick” but she takes it personally: “we’re not all rich like you”. Most of my life, maybe even now, I’ve been pretty poor and without any health insurance. It reminds me of the head of Blackstone saying to a friend of mine, “Fuck Larry Page. Why does that kid have $18 billion when I only have $2 billion.”
All the time I grapple with my own emotional issues around money. With the people who have more. With the people who seem to be an overnight success. With the 20 years of 100 hour weeks and the dozens of failures and the thoughts of suicide that will always remind me they were one staring me in the face. With the people who every day send me hate mail for reasons I’ll never figure out. Three last night by the time I woke up this morning. What’s the point?
In 2003 my dad had a stroke. If I hadn’t lost all my money a year or so earlier I would’ve been able to provide him with experimental medical help he needed. Instead, his insurance ran out and he kept getting downgraded to worse and worse hospitals. At one point I felt for sure that he was trying to communicate and with just a little more therapy he could make it. But the doctors didn’t believe me. “There’s nothing there,” they said and pointed at their own heads, supposedly as an example of “there”.
I was convinced my dad was nodding his head in response to questions. He was trying to speak. He mouthed the words, “I want to go home”, to me. He would stare at the giant image of a chessboard I taped to his ceiling.
There were experimental programs I could’ve sent him to. But I didn’t have any money. So he couldn’t go. So he lay in bed staring at the ceiling for three years and then he died without ever moving again.
In terms of sick kids. It’s very bad if sick kids can’t get treatment. Fortunately the State Children’s Health Insurance Program provides insurance for about six million kids right now whose parents don’t already qualify for medicaid. And this insurance extends to long-term chronic illnesses such as cancer. Here’s a link.
I understand why the woman is angry at me for not voting. But it’s a good thing she doesn’t have to be angry at me. I hope her anger doesn’t motivate who she votes for. When you are angry it becomes an “us” versus “them” situation. The reality is, if we want society to work we all have to work together to find common ground. As corny as it sounds, Love will affect more change, create more innovation, than Anger ever will.
B) Another guy, @JohnTMadden wrote, “ @jaltucher Way to respect our flag, our veterans, and our Constitution James. For a bright man, that statement was ignorant.”
I get that one a lot. I don’t like any wars at all. I can’t think of a single war that can be justified when you look back on it with the microscope of history. But most importantly, I never approve of 18 year olds being sent off to be potentially killed. I have a 13 year old daughter. In five years would I want her to risk her life in order to protect “my way of life”? Of course not! I’d rather spend the rest of my life in solitary confinement than have her risk hers. I’d rather be sent to be burned in a concentration camp than lay awake for one night worried that she is risking death for a needless reason.
As far as being anti-veteran. A) I think they never should’ve been veterans in the first place. B) I’m actively involved in a company that is desperately attempting to treat post-traumatic stress syndrome and/or depression for returning veterans and the government is constantly attempting to squash these sorts of treatments by denying that the veterans are experiencing any sorts of mental illness at all for “serving their country”.
The reality is, we all know now that the war in Iraq was a mistake. There were no weapons of mass destruction. No Al Quaeda links. And now the balance of power in the Middle East has been so upset (the tension between Iraq and Iran held that balance together) that Iraq will be little more than a colony of Iran. The US historical strategy is to create tension but not to engage. We ruined that strategy in the Middle East with our failed attempt at “nation building” (code for destruction and the slaughter of innocents) and now the media/government is even contemplating war with Iran, which is even more of a geographic impossibility than war with Afghanistan has turned out to be. Look at a map and tell me how troops can get in there?
