For The 2008 Presidential Election Cycle: I Am Not Voting So Fuck Off

I would like to take a moment and reason out very clearly with everyone out there why exactly I am not voting in the upcoming election. For many different reasons I have found myself whole-heartily disillusioned with the election process and politics in general. Now, I enjoy gossipy stories and juicy details just as much as the next poltico, however I have studied politics and been in both political science and law school way too long to every appreciate how the sausage is made. I guess I could claim that is reason number 1. I am disillusioned with American politics in general. Public service went the way of the dodo a long time ago. Today people are career politicians, not basing their lives on serving others, but serving their own ends. I don’t enjoy that game. I find it distasteful. Onward. I imagine my next reason would go down to a selfish stance. I vote for my friends and relatives. These are the only people who could ever impact my life. Because I line up with someone who I have never met, who could care less about me and only flashes rhetoric in my face, does not impress me enough. And the issues they stand for? Pro-life, pro-choice, entitlements, national security, etc… None of these things impact my life. Taxes going up? Who gives a shit? I make crap. Why would I care if people who make over 75K a year get taxed more. That doesn’t affect me. I truly don’t have an opinion on abortion and I live in the Deep South. I am not worried about terrorism here. Now foreign policy I could get behind, but anything besides the current administration is a step up, so that doesn’t affect me either. I guess my last reason is that I don’t like being bullied into voting for someone. And no, I’m not going to write myself in or vote for a space alien or some other dumb shit. If I truly believed that real change would occur, then I would vote for someone, but the point of the American system is about having a choice. A choice, goddammit. Not being obligated into lining up. That is what has happened to this country. No one sees it. Our country is polarized. Everyone is so goddamn angry. The left hates the right. Blacks hate whites. Women are hating other women. Intellectualism is being supplanted by terrible rhetoric. “A chicken in every pot” is being promised and will never be delivered.

And to everyone that keeps telling me this old chestnut, “If you don’t vote, then you can’t complain.” I just complained. And I’m not voting. So fuck off.