So you go to the polls like a responsible citizen. You read up on the issues, or you just watch the ads. You press a button or pull a lever. You wear your sticker proudly and smile at the difference you have made. Romney or Obama? Your tax brackets may even change slightly. Your neighbor may pay more or less for health care. Such are the ways of the business cycle. Numbers change and provide fodder to political figures’ presentations and TV ads. Then the numbers dissolve in the wind.
It’s time to make the Decision. Left or right? This or that?
Making the Decision is one of the most important things we can do, and in fact, we are only permitted to do it once each presidential election. And we can only do so at the same age when can we buy cigarettes and get paid to shoot people while wearing camouflage dress up. In fact, the decision is so important that some fear others might make it illicitly, demanding they carry identification papers before being permitted to press the buttons. But millions of dollars and hours of airtime are on the line. The polls are always tight.
We are the Greatest Country in the World solely because we are free to make the Decision better and more excitingly than any other country in the world. They need to have countless revolutions and trade kings for dictators and dictators for supreme leaders. And they find their stand-in leaders unacceptable every decade and are forced to trade them in once more.
Our system is beautiful, even pristine. Every even-numbered year It changes. And then because nothing ever Changes after the electoral Changes, the Changes happen again. And again. Never is there any loss of hope. Every candidate is a newcomer — not part of the political machine. And if they are not, the other candidate is.
The balance of power is almost pretty. Even if the boring men in suits who look in the camera with very straight faces took themselves seriously, it wouldn’t mean anything. It’s a Rube Goldberg machine running on infinite momentum. If anything remotely serious ever came close to changing, the entire system would collapse.
But we want that, don’t we? We want to change the world. End the hunger. Cure the cancer. Stop the genocide. Civilize the rights. It all has to happen and happen right now. Call it the Manifesto complex. According to the historic dialectic that we ourselves have interpreted, now is the only time that revolution will change everything and end history. Right now. Real change.
Or tomorrow.
Turnout last election for the under-30 crowd was just shy of 40 percent. But we can do better. Make it a solid zero. Stop evaluating the issues like they are something serious. Like deficit numbers and employment figures are even within the grasp of such a suffocated system to change. The suffocation is the system. Why do you have to choke and change, too?
Take the only stand you can take. Be the change you want to see in the world. Vote for
no one.
A version of this article appeared in the Wednesday, Oct. 3 print edition. Andrew Karpan is a contributing columnist. Email him at [email protected].
