Addressing Busters

"The State is for Man. NOT Man for the State."  - Jacques Maritian




It's an election year, and I owe my friend Patrick an apology...

Back in '08, swept up in Obama fever, I shot an email out to friends and family drumming up enthusiasm, or at least sharing my own, for the upcoming election.
I was excited for much of the same reasons that others were, including voting for the first time in a place other than Western PA, and was- as I still am- a resident of Chicago, Illinois. Ground Zero Obamaville.

When I talked to my friend Pat about who he was voting for, he said: "No one. I'm not voting."
I then proceeded to give him a bunch of shit for it.
I'm not even sure I remember his reasons for not voting. But time, and experience, teaches.
Perhaps he knew something I didn't, and was afraid to tell me for fear I wouldn't listen.

My point being, I'm not sure whether I come to this out of the peculiarities of a generation so generally and swiftly jaded by a broken, static system, maybe each one feels more estranged than the last...
Although for me it was late 20's, I'm sure it's a more personal timeline for everyone. Some people never get to confronting that coarse of injustice that facilitates a nihilistic outlook on what is, at large, a wholly dysfunctional option.

But, to Pat and to whom it may concern: I'm there. I've arrived.
You were right, and now we have Occupy fever.

To digress a moment, my last two partners have been "Baby Busters". They were, are, 48 years old.
In speaking with the first one day, I had a realization that I should have had a long time ago, which was that this system and its politics are cyclical like anything else. The same samsara-trap set, the same trap going off again and again.
What scam that involves selling our rights back to us comes next is our only guess- "universal health care" seems like the likeliest candidate.
And the latest admitted a paradox, because the current Mr. President is himself a "Buster", a generation also plenty jaded with politics.

However complex the variables and outcomes, the primary conclusion is herein momentarily being: I've decided to divorce myself from voting.
No ballot casting ever again, for anything local, state, federal, international, universal.

Voting distracts.
And besides, don't we just vote every day anyway with a thing politicians are more interested in anyhow?
Money.