Don't Vote, I am.

The chorus of voices on every side of nearly every debate has hit what might be all time an high - YOU ABSOLUTELY MUST VOTE. If you do not, THEY will win, and holy fucking Christ, can you imagine what THEY will do to our great country? Its terribly, vitally important that you VOTE.

Allow me to offer a differing perspective.

Don't vote. It really is meaningless. In January, John McCain or Barack Obama will become president of the United States of America. And regardless of which one wins we will all lose.

If you are a member of the Messianic cult that has risen up around Obama, then you may want to just stop reading now. Its not going to get any better for you. This is a man who has become who he is now by any means necessary. He has surrounded himself with an army of people whose primary goal is to convince you that that is someone who will "save us" from the "mess we're in".

What is the reality of the situation? This is a man who has never taken a bold, firm stand for equal rights for gay and lesbian Americans. Its hard to comprehend the "audacity" of America's most successful recipient of greater equality doing so little to spread justice. Hard to believe that is if you try to match the failure with Obama's image as a courageous progressive liberal.

Change your perspective; who benefits when Obama sells out the Gay Community? Obama does. He knows that Gays are going to overwhelmingly vote for him regardless of what he does for them. What about so-called "middle class white America"? One way Obama can reassure these armchair bigots that he is not "weird" is by making sure he doesn't seem to friendly to the queers. It's called pandering, and Mr. Obama is an expert.

Consider his speech to the Cuban-American National Foundation. Obama clearly states -

"I will maintain the embargo. It provides us with the leverage to present the regime with a clear choice: if you take significant steps toward democracy, beginning with the freeing of all political prisoners, we will take steps to begin normalizing relations. That's the way to bring about real change in Cuba through strong, smart and principled diplomacy."

So basically, talk about change and about doing things differently, but when you are talking to the right voting bloc make damn sure they understand that you are really not going to change anything at all.

Much has been made of Obama as a man of peace. Nothing could be further from the truth. Here is a man who has PROMISED to throw away more American lives in Afghanistan, as though this should be more palatable than lives lost in Iraq.

It may be somewhat transparently ironic for me to quote Martin Luther King Jr. right here... but what the hell. Lets hear what a true man of peace has to say -

"True pacifism is not unrealistic submission to an evil power, it is rather a courageous confrontation with evil by the power of love, in the faith that it is better to be the recipient of violence than the inflicter of it, since the latter only multiplies the existence of violence and bitterness in the universe, while the former may develop a sense of shame in the opponent, and thereby bring about a transformation and change of heart."

"The leaders of the world today talk eloquently about peace. Every time we drop our bombs in North Vietnam, President Johnson talks eloquently about peace. What is the problem? They are talking about peace as a distant goal, as an end we seek, but one day we must come to see that peace is not merely a distant goal we seek, but that it is a means by which we arrive at that goal. We must pursue peaceful ends through peaceful means. All of this is saying that, in the final analysis, means and ends must cohere because the end is preexistent in the means, and ultimately destructive means cannot bring about constructive ends"

I can't imagine Obama saying these words. He is primarily interested in the pragmatic viability of a military action, not the human cost. In this regard, he is very much like his former advisory Hillary Clinton; determined to acquire power by any means. Willing to sell out any position or stand in order to further the only real goal, power. This is what the Democrats had to offer us this year. Liars selling fake change.

McCain isn't even worth talking about.

I am voting this year, for the very first time in my life. I'm doing it because it doesn't matter, but it should. I'm doing in defiance of its meaninglessness. The idea of democracy is a good one. We should have one, but we don't.

I'm voting for what I want. I'm voting for someone I believe will do what I would do if I was president.

I refuse to vote for Obama because of who he isn't. I will not vote for someone because its practical. I will not balance my decision against how likely someone is to win. I refuse to be realistic about this.

The act of voting should, more than anything else I can think of, be an act of idealism. This is the moment you tell the world how you want things to be. If I sold that out to Obama just because he wasn't a stupid fucking republican, I could never live with myself.

I may never vote again in my life. I have no illusions about how useful or meaningful it is. I know (to paraphrase the great George Carlin) its just masturbation. But for me, this time, its about the principle. Voting SHOULD matter, so I'm voting for Nader.