One Man, Unvote

I'm just a few weeks away from the fourteenth federal Election Day of my voting lifetime, which is coincidentally also the fourteenth consecutive MOST IMPORTANT ELECTION OF OUR LIVES. I can't really speak to whether or not the elections prior to me turning 18 in 1992 were also the MOST IMPORTANT. While I certainly remember the outcomes and some of the rhetoric around them, it's hard to imagine an election where one candidate wins 49 out of 50 states that the overall partisan mood of the nation was slightly more muted than the current moment, shrouded in a chocolate-brown cloud of weaponized powdered bullshit.

I'm registered of course and I intend to vote. In fact I've never actually failed to vote in an available election, presidential, off-year, midterm (like this one), primary, special election to make the guy from Terminator the governor, all of them featured a Vote By Me.

Also featured this year for the first time, I will be indirectly responsible for a second vote as the eldest of my progeny, a whole human who did NOT EXIST until I participated in his creation 19 years ago, has finally reached voting age. I have trained him to vote for Democrats, so I'm sure somehow this will count as voter fraud. I'd be afraid of the awesome justice of Jeff Sessions, but I live in the asylum state of California. Any federal agents who show up to molest or impede me will be met with the righteous fury of pacifist vegan nonviolent resistance of my fellows. You go ahead and put your guns up against our collective sanctimonious passive-aggression.* I dare you.

Now, when I vote, I will do so without cynicism or irony or nihilistic despair. I don't vote strategically or in defiance or because I think I'm voting for the winner. I live in a weird spot in very blue California where I've been stuck with the same shady-ass Republican congressman, no matter how many times I've moved or how many times the congressional boundaries have been redrawn and no matter how many times he's been caught with a prostitute. How many times has he been caught with prostitutes? More than zero! And yet, he persists, like the HPV one might get from frequenting prostitutes. And will likely continue to persist. But I still show up, still vote against him, with neither a foolish optimism or defeatist pessimism. The outcomes are beyond the control of my one vote. All I can do is contribute to the collective.

It's getting harder and harder to stay emotionally tethered, however. Rational systems produce predictable outcomes. There used to be an expectation that politicians, starting with the president, regardless of party, would be a steady hand on the tiller, or at the very least would have the decency to pretend. The thing about pretending to be a decent person is that it requires a certain amount of emotional and intellectual discipline to maintain the pose. This is not consistent with President Flood The Zone With Shit, a political philosophy predicated on chaos and allergic to the limiters of truth, evidence and logic. I can't know what to expect anymore. A resultant total failure of composure is beginning to seem like the only rational response.

The anxiety is obviously widespread, which is why we keep hearing about how this is the MOST IMPORTANT ELECTION OF OUR LIVES. With unprecedented interest and projected massive turnout. Let's stop and note however that the turnout in the last midterm in 2014 was 36.4%. Maybe this time we'll shoot up to 45% and then we'll all die of civic-pride poisoning.

Here's what wears me the fuck out: after we weather this entire cycle, November 7, 2018, is the first day of another 24-month dedicated presidential election cycle. Which doesn't at all sound like the last straw for even the hardiest of emotional constitutions leading to a nationwide scarcity of barbiturates and anything humans might fashion into a noose.

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*Actually please don't. I'm not a vegan. I don't even drive a Prius anymore. The power of my own personal sanctimony isn't anywhere near what it could be.