I took off for Floyd on October 31 and returned on November 7. Got a lot done and got a break from the intellectual journey that I’ve been on. That partly explains why I didn’t post the previous piece sooner – I got side-tracked by the election and its repercussions. I strongly supported Jill Stein and I was more than a little dismayed that she got so little support – 3 tenths of one percent of the total vote! Wow, people – you really are afraid of the big bad wolf, aren’t you? The elite played you people like a violin and it worked wonderfully. Obama is the lesser of two evils. Right. Mark my words – you will live to regret your choice. Fear has worked for centuries – Niccolo Machiavelli wrote about it in the The Prince in the 16th century – so why should it not continue to work today?

“This gives rise to an argument: whether it is better to be loved than feared, or the opposite. The answer is that one would like to be both, but since it is difficult to combine the two it is much safer to be feared than loved, if one of the two has to make way. For generally speaking, one can say the following about men: they are ungrateful, inconsistent, feigners and dissimulators, avoiders of danger, eager for gain, and whilst it profits them they are all yours. They will offer you their blood, their property, their life and their offspring when your need for them is remote. But when your needs are pressing, they turn away. The prince who depends entirely on their words perishes when he finds he has not taken any other precautions. This is because friendships purchased with money and not by greatness and nobility of spirit are paid for, but not collected, and when you need them they cannot be used. Men are less worried about harming somebody who makes himself loved than someone who makes himself feared, for love is held by a chain of obligation which, since men are bad, is broken at every opportunity for personal gain. Fear, on the other hand, is maintained by a dread of punishment which will never desert you. ”

So the hell with it. I’m turning my back on the political process. I’ll never vote again, for any candidate. As Emma Goldman once famously said, “If voting changed anything, they’d make it illegal.” So right. Screw it – I’m done with voting.