SWARVY

For those of us who live under the bombs, American elections are hardly the political spectacle we are expected to celebrate. We couldn't give two hoots about which party wins an election in a system that has perfected the art of manufacturing the illusion of choice while keeping the machinery of imperialism firmly intact. Choosing between two horse manures with the same smell is not democracy. And expecting us to applaud because one smells marginally less offensive is frankly insulting. The people casting ballots are told they are deciding their country's future, while the machinery that determines whose lives are expendable, whose countries get bombed, whose land gets occupied and whose suffering gets funded by American taxpayers operates well beyond their reach. And spare us the excitement over the Democrats. Was Obama not bombing weddings in Yemen? Did Biden not arm and shield the genocide in Gaza while Israel carried out its ethnic cleansing campaign in Lebanon? Apparently, we are supposed to develop selective amnesia every four years, pick our favourite shade of American imperialism and celebrate when the supposedly lesser evil wins. Forgive us if we aren't emotionally invested. When your foreign policy is someone's funeral, your democracy is someone else's nightmare. We are for sure not obliged to celebrate the electoral choices of an empire that keeps choosing us as its targets. طوشتونا عاد.