Political Nihilism Never Helps Anyone But The Bad Guys

That’s the whole point.

Keep fighting like this lady

A handyman was doing some work at our house the other day. He’s a pleasant, professional guy in his mid-to-late 30s. He asked what I do for a living, which is a reasonable question considering I was home in the middle of the day overseeing the installation of a wine rack in our den.

If I’m working on something theatrical at the moment, people are usually impressed and praise my creativity. If I’m working on something political, as I was yesterday, people usually respond as if I’m a quality control inspector at a crap factory.

“I can’t imagine how you do it,” the handyman said. “Politicians just lie and make promises they never keep. Nothing ever changes.”

In John Berendt’s Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil, Black Savannah, Georgia, residents are described as apolitical, which effectively makes them conservative. Right-wing politics are fundamentally unpopular and thus rely on Americans like our handyman surrendering to political nihilism.

The Irony Of Watergate

Cynicism and distrust of government metastasized in America after the Watergate scandal. Richard Nixon resigned in disgrace and his successor Gerald Ford pardoned him disgracefully. They were both Republicans, yet you’d think Democrat Jimmy Carter was the actual crook. Ronald Reagan’s 1980 campaign argued that Carter, an inherently good man, had presided over the true low point in American democracy.

Nixon’s corruption didn’t usher in a new age of liberalism. Instead, it paved the way for a far-right revolution from which we’ve never fully recovered.

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The 2020 election boasted the highest voter turnout in a century, but a third of eligible voters still didn’t participate. The 2022 midterm turnout dipped down to 46 percent, which was still better than any midterm voter turnout since 1970.

White Americans are consistently more reliable voters. Although the national average of eligible citizens who voted in the past three elections (2022, 2020, 2018) was 37 percent, that number rose to 43 percent among eligible white voters. Yet, just 27 percent of Black, 21 percent of Asian, and 19 percent of Hispanic voters participated in all three elections. That’s hardly a “great replacement.” This is how white supremacy thrives, and every hip white comedian who trashes the system helps suppress the vote.

Historically, marginalized groups have not voted in great numbers because they are more likely to feel as if their vote doesn’t matter. (Also, Republicans keep shutting down polling places in their communities.)

The irony of course is that their collective voting power can have a significant influence on their lives. The Affordable Care Act exists because people came out to vote in 2008 and 2012, but not voting in 2010, 2014, and 2016 almost cost millions their health care. Politicians do keep their promises, often for the worse, so it pays to listen to them.

Authoritarian societies depend on the most vulnerable simply giving up. In 1984, George Orwell wrote that the ruling class could fall out of power if it “governs so inefficiently that the masses are stirred to revolt,” but the working class is kept deliberately uneducated and anesthetized with cheap booze and tawdry entertainment. Our society has gone one better on Orwell and applied these tactics to the middle class, as well. They’re not just uninformed but actively misinformed. The right-wing ruling class has employed the rhetoric of revolt, figuratively with the Tea Party, and more literally with MAGA’s Stop the Steal, but they radicalized the white middle class, not just the poor.

How Long Are We Supposed To Feel Sorry For Trump Voters?

A great deal of center-left political nihilism comes from a place of privilege, but unlike the truly marginalized, they can’t claim that their lives remain bleak and miserable regardless of who’s running the country. It’s quite the opposite. They can usually rely on a certain level of comfort.

Political nihilists often quote George Carlin to me, specifically this bit:

“This is the best we can do folks. This is what we have to offer. It's what our system produces: Garbage in, garbage out. If you have selfish, ignorant citizens, you're going to get selfish, ignorant leaders. Term limits ain't going to do any good; you're just going to end up with a brand new bunch of selfish, ignorant Americans. So, maybe, maybe, maybe, it's not the politicians who suck. Maybe something else sucks around here... like, the public. Yeah, the public sucks. There's a nice campaign slogan for somebody: 'The Public Sucks. Fuck Hope.”

Writer Maya Contreras pointed out that Carlin “grew [despondent] after years of shouting into the void about our country’s predilection for fascism and violence — and seeing nothing change.” He worked out “his own grief and disappointment in humanity on stage.”

However, Carlin himself admitted that he didn’t vote or otherwise involve himself in politics. Here’s what he said prior to the 1996 presidential election:

“Two reasons I don’t vote. First of all, it’s meaningless. This country was bought and sold and paid for a long time ago. This shit they shuffle around every four years? It doesn’t mean a fucking thing.

And secondly, I don’t vote because I believe if you vote you have no right to complain. People like to twist that around, I know. They say, ‘Well, if you don’t vote you have no right to complain.’ But where’s the logic in that?

If you vote and you elect dishonest, incompetent people and they get into office and screw everything up, well, you are responsible for what they have done. You caused the problem. You voted them in. You have no right to complain.

I, on the other hand … who did not vote…who did not vote…who, in fact, did not even leave the house on Election Day, am in no way responsible for what these people have done and have every right to complain as loud as I want about the mess you created that I had nothing to do with.

So, I know that a little later on this year you’re gunna have another one of those really swell presidential elections that you like so  much. You enjoy yourselves; it’ll be a lot of fun. I’m sure as soon as the election is over your country will improve immediately.

As for me, I’ll be home on that day, doing essentially the same thing as you. The only difference is, when I get finished masturbating, I’m gonna have a little something to show for it, folks.”

It did in fact matter if you voted in 1996. It definitely mattered if you voted in 2000. Political nihilists insisted that there was no difference between Al Gore and George W. Bush. I think 9/11, Iraq, John Roberts, and Samuel Alito should’ve adequately disproven this argument. Yet, we heard the same in 2016 when Hillary Clinton ran against Donald Trump. There are political nihilists who refuse to see any difference between Kamala Harris and Trump on Gaza. That’s like refusing to vote for LBJ over Barry Goldwater in 1964 because you didn’t like either candidate’s Vietnam policy. Putting aside that Goldwater was open to nuking Vietnam, there is also the matter of his garbage position on civil rights. Honestly, even on Gaza, Harris vs. Trump isn’t exactly a morally complex trolley problem.

In a 2005 special, Carlin talked about the “owners of this country” who want to impose “increasingly shittier jobs with the lower pay, the longer hours, the reduced benefits, the end of overtime and vanishing pension.” He doesn’t acknowledge that this is the stated goal of only one political party. Democrats could always do a better job fighting Republicans but that doesn’t mean the parties are the same. Lumping all politicians together benefits the country’s “owners.”

The Tao Of Angel

Political nihilists demand perfection or they’ll watch the world burn. On the TV show Angel, the heroic vampire becomes obsessed with taking out the evil law firm Wolfram & Hart but he learns to his horror that the organization is eternal. They represent the evil present in every single one of us and defeating them is impossible. This knowledge devastates him and he withdraws from the world, which is just what the bad guys wanted.

After hitting rock bottom, Angel later has an epiphany: He’ll never eliminate evil but that’s not the point. He can still protect the individual victims of evil.

“Nothing we do matters,” Angel tells his friend, whose life he’d just saved. “There's no grand plan, no big win. If there’s no great glorious end to all this, if ... nothing we do matters ... then all that matters is what we do. 'Cause that's all there is. What we do. Now. Today.”

More than 20 years later, this speech still resonates with me. We are hardwired perhaps to strive for big goals. If our nation, our world, and our collective humanity are inherently flawed, it’s easy to give in to nihilism, especially if we are in the privileged position to feel that we are “above it all.” It’s harder to get our hands dirty, especially when no big victory is assured.

“All I want to do is help,” Angel says with renewed purpose. “I want to help because I don’t think people should suffer as they do, because if there's no bigger meaning, then the smallest act of kindness is the greatest thing in the world.”

However, Angel’s final season offers a contradictory perspective. Conceding “defeat,” Wolfram & Hart offers Angel and his team control of their Los Angeles branch. They now have the resources to do good on a large scale, but they also have to keep the business running, which means actively enabling evil. This was arguably creator Joss Whedon’s frustrated commentary on the Bush years (and network television): Can you really make a difference while working within the system or does the system just corrupt you? The show’s position seems clear. Even their former enemy Lindsey calls out our heroes for working within the system and compromising themselves.

“Every day you sit behind your desk and you learn a little more how to accept the world the way it is … Heroes don’t do that,” he says. “Heroes don’t accept the world the way it is. They fight it. Every day the world keeps slidin' towards entropy and degradation. And what do you do? You sit in your big chair and you sign your checks.”

These are the accusations we hear from most political nihilists: If you accept the realities of the two-party system, if you vote for the “lesser of two evils,” instead of writing in some magical unicorn fairy tale candidate or just not voting at all, then you’ve given in to the system.

Team Angel gives up on trying to change the system from within — the moral cost is too great and it’s utterly futile. Instead, they vow to burn it all to the ground. In the end, Wolfram & Hart is left in ruins and L.A. isn’t far behind.

Yet, Lindsey’s speech and Angel’s epiphany don’t necessarily contradict each other. We can work within the system that exists, recognize its limitations, while fighting each day to make life better. We won’t give up. We’ll vote for Kamala Harris and the non-fascist members of the local school board. No, that won’t transform the world into a paradise but it will save lives. Now. Today.