Don't take my tone here as ascerbic as it reads. I don't intend it that way. To quote George Carlin, "I just get pissed, goddammit!"
I see it every election year. Somebody suggests that if you don't vote, you have no right to complain about what happens next. And quite frankly, I'm about sick of it.
Listen, folks - picking hemlock over curare doesn't improve your chances any. I do NOT vote. I don't vote because I think we've outgrown our current system and that politicans are absolutely corrupt. Everyone wants to believe that the Messiah of politicians is coming, but I'm sorry. I just don't see it.
In the older days where this system was conceptualized, the presidential candidates would have to go reach all the people. They did this in numerous ways - none of which was so expedient as photo opportunites, interviews with sympathetic press members, and a whole truckload of supporting pundits on the internet. These days, Presidential candidacy is all about spin, and while I LOVE the band "The Spin Doctors," their namesake is absolutely abominable to me - as I'm sure it was to them. To me, they represent the temple that Jesus supposedly broke up when he saw it had been filled with money grubbers.
Don't ask me to pick between meat Puppet A and meat Puppet B and then tell me if I don't pick, I have no right to complain. I have a very good right to. I think they both do whatever they have to do to get them what they want. Power, mainly. I haven't seen a genuine interest in actually solving any problems in years - if ever - and I'm tired of the self-righteous hypoAmericans claiming some sort of intellectual authority over my decision simply because I didn't choose death by strangulation over death by drowning. I'm looking at you desselpastrami. Or whatever your name is.
Some of you folks need to take a squeegee from your nearest gas station, and clear, completely, the crust off of your third eye. (That would be the one that sees from within the brain) If you think for a skinny second that any one of these candidates is going to actually do anything except what their campaign donators want them to, you're living in a naive dream. The decisions that will come from the next president of the United States are already being determined beneath tables and behind closed doors. God, am I a conspiracy theorist now? Really? Read your history and look at what you have to choose from.
The question is, American citizen. When will you finally get tired and fed up with it? Well, that's actually a silly question. You already ARE tired and fed up with it. But what choice do you have? Meatpuppet A and Meatpuppet B. And that's about it. When will you notice that yet another 4 years have gone by, and none of the promises by either side - in Congress, or in the Oval office, or by your local state senates and governors, are coming to fruition? When will you garner the courage to turn those tables over?
Sadly...very sadly...the only thing that disappoints me more than politicians are the people they dupe. What would happen if we all refused to vote? It'll never happen, but man, I can dream.