Life As We Blow It: Electing Not to Elect

Election Day approaches, and I am weary beyond description.

I’m tired of local-news segments. Tired of soundbites. Tired of wave after wave of attack ads that seem to ironically underscore the current focus on the problem of teenage bullying with a certain malevolent humor. Tired, even, of the sarcastic intellectual mockery of Jon Stewart and Stephen Colbert.

But most of all, I’m tired of two decades of being told it’s my duty as an American to choose between the obvious criminal, the well-meaning incompetent, the charming human Eggo. Of being told it is socially, culturally and politically imperative that I exercise my right to pick, to settle on, several individuals from the wide array of people I would never want to tell me how to live, EVER, and throw my support behind them. Of feeling the pressure to choose between a punch in the face and a kick in the crotch.

Fuck that.

This article appears in Oct 21-27, 2010.