Don’t Vote

Raging Moderate, by Will Durst

Don’t Vote. You don’t have to. No one’s going to make you. This isn’t the Soviet Union. You won’t be forced from your beds and dragged to the polls against your wills. Relax. Take a chill pill. Let it go. It’ll all be fine without you.

Cartoon by Bob Englehart - Hartford Courant (click to reprint)

Things are pretty good the way they are, aren’t they? Well, okay, some stuff could be better. Then again, could be worse. If it ain’t broke, don’t fix it. And if it is broke, leave it alone; who knows, maybe it’ll fix itself. Or let someone who knows what they’re doing fix it. What if you make things worse? How would you feel then? Not good, I bet.

It’s a pointless exercise. You’re only one person. What possible difference could a single vote make? Forget Florida. That was a long, long time ago. Ancient history. You’re not going to change anything. They ignore you. You ignore them. And everyone knows those absentee ballots are impossible to fill out and they don’t fit in the envelope and then you got to find a post office and a lot of them aren’t even open anymore.

Besides, you’ve seen the ads. Who could vote for any of these people? According to the television, they’re all crooks. Corrupt agents working for special interests connected to the Chinese government or representatives of a dark, criminal conspiracy whose ulterior motive is to enslave our children and extort money for tropical junkets so they can cavort with naked room-service waiters.

They’re all alike. There isn’t a dime’s worth of difference between them. It’s like choosing between slamming your fingers in a car door or slicing a three-inch-deep gash in your thigh with a rusty screwdriver. Anybody who can be elected shouldn’t be. The inmates are running the asylum. It’s just a puppet show. Don’t you realize you’re being played? Politics is fixed, man. The Trilateral Commission runs everything. If voting were actually effective, they would have been made it illegal by now.

It’s all so confusing. Not just the lesser of two evils. More like the evil of two lessers. You’re supposed to know whether some barren, deserted beach does or doesn’t get blanketed by a thick film of 30-weight because of offshore drilling? Find another beach. What’s the big deal? What do you care if your 401k is now a 100.25k. You’re not planning on retiring soon, are you? Good. Best not.

Don’t you have better things to do than stand in line in some smelly garage? Jog on over to your neighborhood library during the hour it’s operating and read up on other people who never voted, although admittedly they didn’t write a lot of histories. You could work on that extra room for Grandma for when she moves in after the nursing home loses its subsidized funding. Or wave bye-bye to the paramedic unit and rec center while taking a farewell trip on your local mass-transit system. That would be fun.

No one’s going to blame you. Who’s to know? If voting is a right, so should not voting be a right. For some people Tuesdays are just biorhythmically bad. Don’t vote. Stay home. Who cares? But remember, if you don’t vote, you can’t bitch. And you do do plenty of that, don’t you?

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Will Durst is a San Francisco-based political columnist who frequently tells jokes. On stage. Catch an example Nov. 1 at the Rrazz Room, 222 Mason St., San Francisco; therrazzroom.com; 415.394.1189. Also at Rooster T Feather’s in Sunnyvale, Calif. Nov. 4-7 — roostertfeathers.com, 408.732.7781; the Lark Theater in Larkspur, Calif. on Nov. 12 — 415.924.5111; and The Bell Theater at Angelico’s Restaurant in Redwood City, Calif. on November 13. His new CD, “Raging Moderate,” is now available from Stand Up! Records on iTunes and Amazon. Coming next year: “Where the Rogue Things Go!”

Copyright ©2010, Will Durst, distributed by the Cagle Cartoons Inc. syndicate. Call Cari Dawson-Bartley at 800-696-7561 or e-mail cari@cagle.com. Will Durst is a political comedian who has performed around the world. He is a familiar pundit on television and radio. E-mail Will at durst@caglecartoons.com. Check out willandwillie.com for the latest podcast. Will Durst’s book, “The All American Sport of Bipartisan Bashing,” is available from Amazon and better bookstores all over this great land of ours. Don’t forget to check out his rooftop comedy minutes at: http://www.rooftopcomedy.com/shows/BurstOfDurst.