I don’t want to hear you yap about your party, so zip it up, because as soon as the words “Paul Ryan” and “Medicare” left your lips, I stopped listening.
I get it — the powers that be are screwing us over. The two-party system is fucked. One is sticking it to me in the rear, the other is trying to get it in up front, and I’m fighting them off like the only pair of buns in a sausage factory.
The mere fact that I have to write about being a reluctant liberal annoys the hell out of me, and I only call myself a liberal because what the fuck else am I going to be? Certainly not conservative — I mean, fuck, I’ve already cursed at least five times in this thing and we’re barely 100 words deep. And I work for an alternative newspaper for just that reason, people. A super lefty with the Green Party? I like the principles — an emphasis on social justice, grassroots democracy, nonviolence, environmentalism — but I’m not a crunchy bohemian, don’t want to be viewed as one, and I’m not jaded enough that I’m willing to throw away my vote on a candidate who has virtually no chance of winning. Same thing with Libertarianism; I can get behind the party ideals, but enough to squander a vote on Ron Paul? I don’t even know how I feel about the dude, let alone whether or not he represents what I want from a presidential candidate.
My dad’s a hardcore Democrat who brings up the dastardly deeds of the Republican Party in every conversation. He is relentlessly involved in politics, and I was right on board with him, for a little while. I loved Bill Clinton, even wrote a college paper on the history of presidential adultery when the Lewinsky shit hit the fan, pointed out all the other heads-of-state who were guilty of the same crimes but didn’t experience any backlash because public officials had more privacy back then. But ultimately, I felt like I had more fire and conviction about the issues than the party representing me. So I ditched the Demos and stopped paying attention to politics.
I just don’t have the time, patience or energy for it anymore. Life is short, my time valuable, and I’d prefer not to use it getting worked up and bent out of shape over issues I have little or no control over fixing. I prefer positivity, and politics doesn’t give me that, ever.
Don’t get me wrong, I’ll be voting in November, and even though I’m a registered Independent, I’ll likely throw my cards in with Barack Obama again, because why the hell would I vote for Mitt Romney? And even though I’m voting for the lesser of two evils — better the devil I know than the devil I don’t — I’ll do it again in two years. It might not mean anything or give me any sense of satisfaction when I’m done, but it’s my right as an American citizen and goddamn it if I’m about to give it up.
But no matter how I vote, I don’t think my daily life will really change. So after all this election crap is over, I plan to re-focus my energies on the things that have consistently delivered joy to my life and rarely disappoint — friends, family, fellowship and high-quality music.
