Hold Your Nose And Vote

Election Day. I try not to write about politics anymore, except when I'm mixing it with vampires. But the old junkie in me surfaces as we get closer to November, and I spend more and more time reading political stories, shortening my life expectancy with each aneurysm-building line.

This year, I received Matt Taibbi's Griftopia in the mail on Saturday, and though I'm only halfway through it, I'm feeling less inspired to vote than ever before. Basically, Taibbi lays out the case that no matter who we put into office, the country will continue to be run by a series of con artists intent on wrecking America and stealing the copper plumbing to sell for scrap.

It's not a cheerful picture, but it's hard for me, at this juncture, to disagree. The sideshow is more entertaining than ever — Tea Parties, hookers, Palinisms, witchcraft, shoving, head-stomping — but it matters less and less. As Taibbi says in an interview with the AV Club:

For the purposes of this stuff—the rules of the financial-services industry and how the economy works—elections just don't decide a whole lot, because 90 percent of it is done in these rule-making sessions that take place outside of Congress. The few things that are debated in Congress, the two parties tend to be more or less in line on most of the issues. What we saw this summer with the financial-reform bill that got passed—they basically didn't touch about 90 percent of the stuff that made up this crisis. So, yeah, obviously elections are important, because a lot of other issues get decided through elections, but on this particular stuff, the stuff involving money and how the economy works? There isn't a whole lot of change, no matter which way they vote, which is the really depressing thing.

Still, I went to my polling place. Everyone there was cheerful and friendly and helpful. I voted, even though the registrar had somehow misplaced my address for the third year in a row.

You might ask why. I'm sort of wondering myself. Call it stupidity or stubbornness. Or patriotism. Or years of elementary-school indoctrination.

At this point, I prefer to think of it as an act of faith. I put my trust in people to rise above themselves at the most outlandish moments, to work together in defiance of all rational sense, and occasionally, I am rewarded. Occasionally, there will be firefighters who run back into a burning building, or cops who risk their lives to save another, or teachers who refuse to give up on their students despite insults to their dignity and safety. This is the real religion of America: the belief in America itself; the idea that, despite everything, we can be just like the smiling people in the civics textbooks. I have to believe, despite all the evidence to the contrary, we can be great and kind and just. Maybe we don't have anyone on the ballot who remotely resembles those qualities right now, so just the act of voting will have to sustain us until they show up.

Until then, we'll all just muddle along as best we can.