Vote? Me? No, thanks.

With the close of the recent elections, I thought it timely to divulge this (though some of you already know, but maybe not why)…

I don’t vote. Why does that make me such a bad person? I’ve heard ‘em all: “It’s your right,” “it’s your responsibility,” “if you don’t use it, you’ll loose it,” “if you don’t vote, you can’t complain,” etc. Yeah, it’s my right, and it’s my right to NOT exercise it, too. The last time I voted was for Obama, but that was as much as a vote AGAINST McCain/Palin as it was a vote FOR him. I had some big hopes for him, but when he took out the Public Option on his healthcare plan, he kinda lost me. I still like him because it’s refreshing to have an intelligent person in charge, instead of “someone like us” (to borrow a quote from a Palin follower), like we had the previous eight years. Anyway, politics isn’t what I wanted to talk about. I wanted to talk about why I don’t vote.

My wife watches a lot of Real Time with Bill Maher, and I sometimes watch it if a good panelist is on, or an interesting person is interviewed or featured. Last week, Bill interviewed former president Jimmy Carter, so I decided to tune in for it (a great interview, by the way), and I wanted to keep watching because Zach Galifianakis was on later in the show. One of that week’s panelist said something that made sense to me: “People vote their values and aspirations.” And then it clicked. THAT’S why I don’t vote: I do not value much (if anything) in this world, and I aspire for very little (if any) in this life. Some (if not most) people won’t understand that, but I don’t expect them to. I feel that both this world and this life are too temporary to invest so much time and energy into something that won’t endure. So that’s it.

Oh, one more thing…to quote the late George Carlin: “I have solved this political dilemma in a very direct way: I don’t vote. On Election Day, I stay home. I firmly believe that if you vote, you have no right to complain. Now, some people like to twist that around. They say, ‘If you don’t vote, you have no right to complain,’ but where’s the logic in that? If you vote, and you elect dishonest, incompetent politicians, and they get into office and screw everything up, you are responsible for what they have done. You voted them in. You caused the problem. You have no right to complain. I, on the other hand, who did not vote — who did not even leave the house on Election Day — am in no way responsible for what these politicians have done and have every right to complain about the mess that you created.”

Now time for me to sit back and watch the show…it will prove to be interesting…