The presidential election of 2016 -- if you only consider the presumptive nominees of the two major political parties -- is like choosing between being brutally beaten to death by a street gang and mercilessly Tasered to death by the police.
It's a masochists game. But I've never viewed voting as a game, no matter how minor the stakes or ridiculous the choices.
Maybe in the past, having a lower tolerance for deception and corruption, I've mirrored Ralph Nader's decades-long warnings about and battle against the corporatization of our society and the tyranny of an oligarchic elite which would inevitably result.
Perhaps until now, this appeared to be driven by a heady, theoretical, ivory-tower world view, an approach distanced from day-to-day realities.
Perhaps such abstractions seemed frivolous or self-indulgent, even dangerous. Need we revisit the spurious judgment that voting for Nader threw the election and set the stage for eight years of George W. Bush?
Perhaps all of my histrionics about the disappearance of democracy, the corruption of our Congress, the takeover of our government apparatus by self-appointed autocrats, the need for replacing at bare minimum 450 senators and congressmen, my railing at the duplicity of Obama, my warnings about the subversion of his allegedly "progressive" leadership, yes all of this may have been dismissed as hyperventilation and raving lunacy.
But with the treachery and abysmal hypocrisy of Bernie Sanders' endorsement of Hillary Clinton for president this past week, it couldn't be clearer where things stand.
Nor could it be more evident how broken our two-party political system is or what a trap lesser-evil voting has been all along.
Don't anyone dare tell me that by not voting for presumptive nominee Hillary Clinton or presumptive nominee Donald Trump, I am throwing my vote away!
Voting for either of these privileged-class monsters is the definition of throwing away my vote, of surrendering my right of choice, of rendering voting a meaningless exercise.
[ This originated at the author's personal website . . . http://jdrachel.com ]
Throwing My Vote Away?
