2016 Election Cycle

I am so physically ill at the thought of this election. Both political parties have shifted hard to the right, and if we continue this way 20 years from now the general election will be Martin Shkreli vs. David Duke with both of them pushing us to vote for the “lesser evil” yet again.

Not all, but most of the people insisting that everyone must vote for Hillary Clinton because she is the only way to stop Trump are the same people who are going to pull the lever, sigh loudly in relief that they’ve done all they can, and go back to not participating at all in our nation’s political system.

Participating is difficult, especially for people with a full time job and family commitments, and for most people voting is already a big enough hassle in their lives that they can’t always be bothered to do it. People aren’t avoiding voting for senators, mayors, sheriffs, and other people in power because they don’t care, they are avoiding it because it takes time and effort to research the candidates and schedule time to get to the precinct and all of that jazz. So they’ll throw the switch for Hillary and occasionally yell at the broadcaster on their TV because, true to form, she abandoned her progressive platform and did what the people who pay her want her to do.

They'll natter about how there shouldn’t be money in politics and how we should clear out all of these corrupt politicians. Maybe they’ll even go vote for their local congressional representatives (straight ticket, of course, with blind trust that the blue candidate is obviously the better choice and no consideration paid to whether or not there is a green candidate or a libertarian candidate even running for the position) but that is where their commitment will end. Then they'll be outraged when the next presidential candidate is someone even more corrupt than Hillary, and they’ll wail and gnash their teeth until it comes down to the wire, and they’ll throw the switch for the next candidate that they hate slightly less than the other guy. In 20 years, as Shkreli and Duke (or their equally horrible equivalents) push people to get out and vote, we’ll look back and wistfully talk about what could have been done to change things, but moan about how in that moment we have to vote for the lesser evil. And so it will go all over again.

What a miserable way to run a nation.