Don't Vote. You don't have to. No one's going to make you. This isn't the Soviet Union. You won't be forced from your beds and dragged to the polls against your wills. Relax. Take a chill pill. Let it go. It'll all be fine without you.
Things are pretty good the way they are, aren't they? Well, okay, some stuff could be better. Then again, could be worse. If it ain't broke, don't fix it. And if it is broke, leave it alone; who knows, maybe it'll fix itself. Or let someone who knows what they're doing fix it. What if you make things worse? How would you feel then? Not good, I bet.
It's a pointless exercise. You're only one person. What possible difference could a single vote make? Forget Florida. That was a long long time ago. Ancient history. You're not going to change anything. They ignore you. You ignore them. And everyone knows those absentee ballots are impossible to fill out and they don't fit in the envelope and then you got to find a post office and a lot of them aren't even open anymore.
Besides, you've seen the ads. Who could vote for any of these people? According to the television, they're all crooks. Corrupt agents working for special interests connected to the Chinese government or representatives of a dark criminal conspiracy whose ulterior motive is to enslave our children and extort money for tropical junkets so they can cavort with naked room service waiters.
They're all alike. There isn't a dime's worth of difference between them. It's like choosing between slamming your fingers in a car door or slicing a three inch deep gash in your thigh with a rusty screwdriver. Anybody who can be elected, shouldn't be. The inmates are running the asylum. It's just a puppet show. Don't you realize you're being played? Politics is fixed, man. The Tri Lateral Commission runs everything. If voting were actually effective, they would have been made it illegal by now.
It's all so confusing. Not just the lesser of two evils. More like the evil of two lessers. You're supposed to know whether some barren deserted beach does or doesn't get blanketed by a thick film of 30- Weight because of offshore drilling? Find another beach. What's the big deal? What do you care if your 401k is now a 100.25k. You're not planning on retiring soon, are you? Good. Best not.
Don't you have better things to do than stand in line in some smelly garage? Jog on over to your neighborhood library during the hour its operating and read up on other people who never voted, although admittedly they didn't write a lot of histories. You could work on that extra room for Grandma for when she moves in after the nursing home loses its subsidized funding. Or wave bye- bye to the paramedic unit and rec center while taking a farewell trip on your local mass transit system. That would be fun.
No one's going to blame you. Who's to know? If voting is a right, so should not voting be a right. For some people Tuesdays are just biorhythmically bad. Don't vote. Stay home. Who cares? But remember, if you don't vote, you can't bitch. And you do do plenty of that, don't you?
Will Durst is a San Francisco based political humor columnist who frequently tells jokes. Out loud. On stage.
Catch an example November 1 at the Rrazz Room. 222 Mason St San Francisco 94102. therrazzroom.com. 415.394.1189.
Rooster T Feather's in Sunnyvale Nov 4- 7. roostertfeathers.com/ 408.732.7781.
The Lark Theater in Larkspur on November 12th. 415.924.5111
The Bell Theater at Angelico's Restaurant in Redwood City on November 13th.
His new CD, "Raging Moderate," now available from Stand Up! Records on iTunes and Amazon.
Coming next year: "Where the Rogue Things Go!"
Follow Will Durst on Twitter: www.twitter.com/willdurst
-Joseph Stalin
At the end of the day there is no evidence that votes are even counted, the people running these elections could simply declare a winner and everybody will simply follow it.
Elections are not really democratic anyway, since the candidates that you have to choose from are hand selected by the respective parties. The average everyday man will never be able to become president simply because he will never be given a chance by the party to run.
Tell me what the point of pushing a button on a machine built by a suspect corporation is, when the choices of candidate are 2 corporate-media vetted caricatures who differ slightly in rhetoric but continue the same wretched policies of their predecessor and/or enact their own corporately vetted (and most times corporate written) legislation under the approval of the very same lobbyists for these industries?
No really. Tell me why I should bother.
Wake up. The government doesn't represent you. It represents itself and its corporate subsidiaries, and puts on a puppet show for the benefit of the drooling simpleton hordes who still believe that the grand game is on the level.
There is no longer a pretense of government of the people, by the people or FOR the people.
The only thing left is the consent of the governed, such as it is!
Remember these words when you vote: "you just got served!"
Don't you worry,my "type" is only needed for the numbers game. You know, the "shut up an vote, then go back to your hovel, because even if you get a President who "looks like you," no elected official really represents your interests, and if you say something about it, you're a reverse racist."
Happy voting!
I didn't vote, and I had a reason for not doing so. I used my choice to revolt in a peaceful manner doing the only thing I could when there were no other options left to me. I left my ballot blank. This is my tribute to Thomas Jefferson, to George Washington. To the framers who left me an option for peaceful revolution. I am educated, and continuing to be educated - I don't claim to know it all but I know enough to know that it is my responsibility to try.
"It is the duty of the governed, to endeavour to rectify the mistake, and appease the passion. They have not at first any other right, than to represent their grievances, and to pray for redress, unless an emergence is so pressing, as not to allow time for receiving an answer to their applications which rarely happens. If their applications are disregarded, then that kind of position becomes justifiable, which can be made without breaking the laws, or disturbing the public peace. This consists in the prevention of the oppressors reaping advantage from their oppressions, and not in their punishment. For experience may teach them what reason did not; and harsh methods, cannot be proper, till milder ones have failed.
If at length it become undoubted, that an inveterate resolution is formed to annihilate the liberties of the governed, the English history affords frequent examples of resistance by force. What particular circumstances will in any future case justify such resistance, can never be ascertained till they happen. Perhaps it may be allowable to say, generally, that it never can be justifiable, until the people are FULLY CONVINCED, that any further sub-mission will be destructive to their happiness."
- John Dickinson, The Pennsylvania Farmer's Remedy, 1768.
The movie 'Patriot' drove home the point about how very hard it would have been to choose sides.
Most people just want to be left alone to pursue their own lives. Thats the majority of us.
Including those who don't vote.
I did not elaborate on what else I am doing to try and peacefully revolt but according to the framers, in the Constitution and in the Federalist papers, Jeffersons other works the first place I can start that revolt - peacefully - is in the ballot. I cannot help that before I was born this process has become denatured and we are being led by the 'tyranny of the majority' but since I am now able to start doing something about it I am.
And since we were talking, about voting, I spoke about voting.