Parties and office-seekers and office-holders and factions and interest groups need your engagement, votes, and money.
Newspapers and magazines and other media need to sell news to sell their politics and their ad space.
Public school civics classes sell "good citizenship" and "Americanism."
Texts and classes in American history sell engagement and patriotism.
All of these people have their own reasons for cultivating your avid participation.
They have every interest in sinking every reason for disengagement and refusal to participate.
No one has a stake even in mentioning such things.
It isn't that voting is allowed though not required by reason.
It is condemned as folly.
No matter how great the threat of the worst or promise of the best.
Unless, of course, your vote will be decisive.
Engagement is by no means foolish for those with actual power.
For those with only a vote it is ridiculous.
All the same, humans regularly and quite generally participate in rituals in the efficacy or point of which they do not believe.
Witness not only our political but our religious institutions.
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