Do I Need To Tell You To Vote? Vote. Vote!

VOTE. Jesus Christ on a Ferris wheel, voooooote. I mean, that’s it, right? You gotta participate in our democracy. This is it. This is the big game. You don’t vote, you bench yourself. You bench your choice, your freedom, your opportunity to grab a few inches on this big-ass steering wheel. People fought and died for this power. They still are fighting for the right to do so, to have their voice join the chorus. If you shirk that duty and reject a right that others are struggling to possess and maintain — that’s like parading a plate of food in front of a starving person and then deciding you’re not hungry, so you throw that shit in the trash. Vote, vote, vote. You gotta goddamn vote.

Make a plan to vote. Get others to vote. Vote early and in-person if you can. Donate to candidates, phone bank, knock on doors, talk to friends and family and neighbors. Voting is individual but democracy is a community, it’s about making your voice heard, and that neither begins nor ends at the ballot box. Let’s roll up on this democracy like a tide, like a healing wave, cool and nourishing to those who need it, salty and crushing to those who fear it. Let’s gooooo and get it done.

But Chuck, Who Should I Vote For?

I mean, you fucking know who. If your answer there is, “Well, Donald Trump,” then like Jeff Probst on Survivor, I got nothing for you, head back to camp. What the hell are you thinking? I mean, even if you’re a horrible person, answer me this: what has he accomplished? “He gave tax cuts to the uber-wealthy, he stole kids from their parents, he demonized opponents, he ignored and then prolonged the pandemic we’re still throttled by, he –” No, no, let me stop you there. What good has he done? What legislation has he passed? Besides the tax cuts, and besides cramming up the judicial with an unholy alliance of unqualified judges, what has he accomplished? Where’s his health care plan? Where’s the next stimulus? Where’s anything? Has he helped with the fires on the West Coast? Has he offered his mythical INFRASTRUCTURE PLAN? What’s his vision, beyond rage-tweeting from the dumper and avoiding his taxes? Guy hasn’t gotten shit done, and meanwhile, farms are fucked, manufacturing is fucked, and in the pandemic there’s a lot of extra-fucking going on with restaurants and the entertainment industry and the airlines. And there’s no lifeline. There’s no control.

There’s only chaos.

Selfishness and chaos.

That shitbird is in it for himself.

That’s it.

He’s here to get rich, while you’re here to get fucked. He’s a liar. He’s a vampire. A tick embedded in the American skin, drinking and drinking till he gets so bloated he can’t even move anymore. I mean, ha ha, never mind all the wanton bigotry and sexism, but maybe you don’t care about that. If you were thinking of voting for him, then you don’t.

But the truth is, he’s a brute. A bully. A thug. He’s one of those rich guys who pretends to be your friend while he makes you work for him at a cut rate, and then he takes all the credit. He’s spurned the military, the elderly, the blue-collar. He’s got all the curiosity of a bulldozer. He’s got the compassion of a dumptruck. He’s a liar. A conspiracy theorist. A fake Christian who couldn’t even name a gospel. He doesn’t care about you. He doesn’t care about his own children. On his forehead someone should write: DON’T OPEN, DEAD INSIDE.

“But the stock market.” Fuck the stock market. That’s not a real thing. It’s the heartbeat of the rich and powerful. Says nothing about the real economy. He’s gonna fuck with your health care, take away the restriction against pre-existing conditions, make you shackled to your employer again. Because that helps the rich and powerful stay rich and powerful — the less they give you, the more they take for themselves. He’s them. He’s not you. He’s not a common man. He’s not even a businessman. He’s a clown who took over the circus and all the other clowns love him.

Don’t vote for Donald Trump, for fuck’s sake. Jesus Christ. What the fuck.

But Chuck, Biden Is Something Or Other Blah Blah Blah

I dunno. I like Biden. I liked him as Veep. He wasn’t my guy in the primary, wasn’t my second, maybe wasn’t even my third, but he’s who we have, and I’ll be honest, he’s done a helluva job so far. He’s kept it together. He speaks with compassion. He has plans and vision for the future. What, he’s not perfect? Whoa, no way. He’s not the shining emblem of the left? Listen, he can be moved. He already has moved left. Bernie’s moved him left. Warren’s moved him left. Harris has moved him left. We have moved him left. He’s progressive while at the same time still running to be president for ALL of America, and not just his supporters. That’s what a president does. He doesn’t single-out the blue states or the red states and deny them care and aid.

Shit, he was in the White House. He actually knows the job. He’s a legislator. Not even a politician — an actual lawmaker, proven for decades.

“But he’s still not perfect and he did this or said that.”  We’re on a deserted island, okay? And there’s two boats off this thing. One is a janky hell-boat full of disease and rats and scurrilous Russians, but there’s a gold toilet on it which is honestly too heavy and is probably gonna sink it eventually. The other one is a fine boat, a normal boat, it’s maybe nothing fancy, it smells a little like Scranton, but you know what? It’s solid, it’ll get us off the island. It’s a good boat. We like that boat. Don’t piss on that boat just because it’s not the yacht you wanted, okay? We never get the yacht. There are no yachts coming. The yachts don’t come out this way. The yachts are bullshit anyway. We need real boats, and this is a real boat, so get on the real boat and let’s get off this fucking island.

But Chuck, Something Something Third Party

No! No. Bad voter, bad. What did I tell you? There are two boats. Two! Not three. Two. That third boat you’re gonna vote for, it’s never showing up. It can’t. The dock has room for two boats. I wish it had room for three boats, but you can’t wish the third boat into existence. It’ll always stay out to sea because it can’t get close enough to land because the docks don’t allow it.

Do I wish we had a more robust political menu here? Hell yes. I do. We’re a huge country and we only get two parties, one of which is drifting so far right you can’t even see them anymore, and the other which is… well, they’re somewhere between a Noble Institution and a Hot Mess, and often end up with all the aplomb of a Homeowners Association. So yeah, I wish we had a more variegated landscape, politically. But I also wish for a pony and so far, one hasn’t showed up.

To get that landscape, we need third party candidates down-ballot first. We need ranked choice voting. We need the electoral college to fade into history.

This is an existential election. It’s not the time to play games.

A third party vote is a vote thrown into a hole. It has a zero percent chance of doing what you want and will de facto lend strength to one of the other candidates. I don’t make the rules, I don’t enforce reality, it’s just, them’s the breaks. All you’re doing is ceding your choice to fate, and further, suggesting that you are of such great privilege that neither candidate matters to you, and that the problems that will afflict most Americans will escape you entirely, so fuck those people. That’s what it says. So don’t do it. Care about people. Your vote is a ladder to help them up.

Seriously Please Just Get It Done, Fucking Hell, Ahhhh

We’re all trapped in a room with a loud-mouthed shit-monster and it’s honestly tiring and horrible. We’re gaslit and abused and harried and harangued and aaaaah fuck I just want it quiet. I don’t want be ignorant of politics or the president, but I want to have a few moments of quiet. I want to go back to being able to talk about something else for fifteen minutes without the next scandal, the next rage-tweet, the next batch of inept malevolence to land on our doorstep. So vote. Don’t vote for Trump. Vote down-ticket too and send a message to the GOP because they have no moral compass anymore. It’s power over people. They don’t work for you. You work for them. And that’s not how a democracy is supposed to operate. So to hell with them. Go vote, vote blue, ever and ever amen.

Here is a picture of a bird. The bird wants you to vote.