día de los muertos

(Via Marc Brands Liberty)

I don't vote. I used to. Religiously. But I've matured since then.

Ergo: I didn't vote in the last presidential election.

Some of you will be shocked. Some of you will consider me derelict in some sort of sacred democratic duty.

All I have to say to that is this:

F[expletive deleted] YOU, YOU SELF-RIGHTEOUS KNOW-NOTHING!

Go sell it to someone who hasn't spent his adult life thinking this stuff through!

The last thing anyone could accuse me of is apathy.

Laziness I may be guilty of, but not politically.

I now consider conscientious objection to voting as one of the highest forms of patriotism -- more: it's a vigilant defense of universal principle.

I will neither initiate force nor delegate its initiation. Any of you who cast a ballot cannot say the same.

Still, I didn't want Bush to win. I hate Kerry, but I figured anyone would be better than Bush. I'm sure that's not literally true, but it was still a safe bet.

I slept in the morning after the election. I avoided the news.

When I heard young people laughing and cheering outside I figured it meant the Democrat had won. (I live in a small college town.) Guess the young'ens had better things to laugh and cheer about. I admit: I felt relief at the idea that he had won. And when I later learned that my interpretation was way off, I felt very disappointed.

Kerry would probably have continued the war. Maybe he would have escalated it. Recent history has the rhetorical hawks making peace and the rhetorical doves scaling up the carnage, so we can't go by who says what.

But I can't stand the idea that anyone is celebrating the renewed power of this blood-soaked tyrant.