Should we vote?

I’m thinking maybe we shouldn’t vote.

For one thing, not voting in harmless.

I don’t mean that millions of people of the same persuasion not voting – a mass boycott of millions of devout liberals, for example – is harmless.

Such a thing could be very harmful, indeed.

Though a mass boycott could be a very good thing, too.

Imagine if the Nazi voters had sat out the German elections of 1932!

No, I’m not talking about a boycott.

I mean one person – you, dear reader, or me – not voting is harmless.

Truth to tell, one vote is far too few to be a significant blip at any level of government no matter how few or many other people vote, except in cases so wholly improbable that we can ignore them, such as the case in which everybody else decides to stay home so the whole thing is actually up to you.

So an individual choice to not cast one’s own single vote is harmless.

And voting is irksome.

Since it can’t do any good, anyway, why go through all that fuss?

Voting for the lesser evil, if that was your plan, is humiliating and certain to be falsely depicted as some sort of mandate to do something or other that’s disgusting and awful.

And even if not you’ll be supporting someone and some party that are openly dedicated to policies you actually disapprove, though less than those of the other, greater evil.

Voting for a minor party that actually mirrors your own political preferences in all or even just the most significant respects (good luck finding one) has value only as a protest vote and a declaration of principle that few will notice and none will take to heart except the party loyalists of the lesser evil who will furiously blame you for the misdeeds of the victor, should he or she not be the one they supported and insist loudly you should have supported.

Too, a decision not to vote is liberating in another regard.

If you aren’t going to vote anyway you don’t have to pay attention, subjecting yourself to lies, fallacies, stupidities, dishonesties, moral suasion (bullshit), moral threats (bullshit compounded with hatefulness), and the endless flow of at best annoying propaganda that never does you any good and always wastes your time and ruins your mood.

Like this, for instance.

Chuck Norris warns of '1,000 years of darkness' if Obama is re-elected

Bilge from a moron, addressed to morons.

That’s a hell of a lot of wasted, ill-spent man-hours, you know.