1. I don't give a flying fuck who you are voting for. In fact, unless you're my wife or brother, keep it to yourself. It's private. It's none of my fucking business and I DO NOT WANT TO KNOW who you're voting for.
2. If a current president is up for re-election, I don't give a flying fuck what you think about him. However, keep in mind that if you're the type of chump who fills cyberspace with negative publicity about the guy ("Obama maybe sold cocaine ohmygosh!"), you're routinely showing the world that you're somewhere between a sissybaby who helped elect a guy and now regrets it (and I don't give a shit if you voted for him or not...we're still ONE NATION, despite what your precious parties want you to feel; WE put the guy in office whether he got your vote or not) and some un-American asshole who refuses to acknowledge the Commander in Chief. Fuck off and suck it up. You're part of the team no matter how far above it you like to tell yourself you are.
3. If I even catch you THINKING about telling another person how to vote, I will hack your fucking arm off and set you up for an Obliteration Technique. I don't care if you come right out and say "Hey fucker, vote Dukakis," or if you're one of those passive aggressive pansy-types who will instead embark upon a campaign of constant trash talk about the other candidate. I am not kidding here. I have seriously deleted people out of my contacts over this kind of crap. I once changed my mobile number to make sure I'd effectively eliminated the person from my life who was trying to cast my vote as well as theirs. Remember - when someone does this, they're saying that they know what to do with your vote better than you do. There should be few things in life that offend or insult you more.
4. Political parties are for small-minded fools. Seriously. You have no idea how badly you're being snowed right now. The powers-that-be learned many many moons ago the power of a Good Bad Guy: Americans will eat that shit up like we just pulled it from a McDonald's drive thru window. Anymore there's basically one mishmashed bullshit party (still one too many if you ask me) but it's masquerading as two polar opposites in order to give you sheep a good bad guy to foam at the mouth over and distract yourselves with.
5. When 2016 rolls around, if possible, quit all forms of social media for the year. I am so not joking. I am so going to do this in 2016. Actually, wait - whatever happened to the notion that it's impolite to discuss politics or religion in public? I say whoever coined that concept was right on. I say we bring that back.
An aside - I am NOT VOTING this year. The reason I am not voting is simple: I would rather get stabbed than have to sit through Jury Duty again. Here is what Jury Duty consists of for me: endless hours in a courthouse surrounded by sick, sweaty assholes who all want to sit next to me and talk. Time stands still. Hunger pains creep in much earlier than usual but the vending machines are always out of order. I start craving cigarettes again for no reason.
Around the third or fourth time I shave for the day in the courthouse bathroom, as I'm panicking over my lack of provisions, my group will invariably be called. Want to know how that goes? I'll tell you: as soon as I open my mouth, I am booted the fuck out of the courtroom. You see, I have a unique blend of circumstances wherein my so-called criminal record in conjunction with the fact that half of my immediate family works for law enforcement makes me the Single Most Undesirable Jury Candidate of All Time.
[To all of you who are rolling your eyes behind your narrow-framed glasses and scratching your beards and drinking coffee at times of day other than the morning and rubbing your high foreheads - first off, shut up. Your argument is that my civic duty is to waste my whole day and to get kicked out of the courtroom without participating because that's what society needs from me at that point in time. I get it. My argument is this: you've given me a way out of a negative experience by allowing me to escape jury duty by not voting. You need to find a new way to force me into Jury Duty that is separate from voter registration. That is the first point I'm making. Second, get a new look, professor. Your look screams "Future Mugging Victim."]
Now - how does this relate to voting? Simple: I don't give a half-shit what you've been told about how potential jurors are selected; they'll tell you that you're registered when you get a driver's license, they'll tell you that you're registered when you have utility bills in your name. HORSE SHIT. I have had a driver's license for twenty years and I've had utility bills in my name for about eighteen years. I was never selected for jury duty until I registered to vote, and between that day and the point where I effectively un-registered myself, roughly three years later? I was selected FIVE FUCKING TIMES for that bullshit. Now that I'm happily unregistered? My life is blissfully devoid of those terrifying notices in my mailbox.
So...D.H., what's the point, exactly? The point is this: voting should be the last process on earth that has anything even remotely negative associated with it, let alone something that could be perceived as punitive (and trust me, if your Jury Duty Misadventures are like mine - you will, on some level, come to view the process as punitive). I challenge the American government to come up with a new way to register potential jurors that is completely separate from voter registration. Jury duty sucks balls and if you give me a way out of it, I am genetically predisposed to take it, even if is at the expense of my vote. Other things I would gladly sacrifice to get out of Jury Duty: any one of my cats. My transmission. The pond in our backyard I built. My music collection. The PIN number to my checking account (not the joint one, honey). My Stratocaster. (And yeah, the PIN to our joint checking account, too.)
You show me a president who fixes that shit and I'll show you a a president who will not only get my vote, he'll get me to vote to remove term limits too.
- D.H.
