By Brian McKay

What is a conscientious voter to do? We either have status quo or worse. That’s it. Stay the fucked up same or be even more fucked up. What a great choice.

One could say that the American people are getting screwed. I might go so far as to say that we screwed ourselves. We refused to educate ourselves and we refused to accept actual positive change over the status quo. The funny thing is that exceptionalism comes up in every narrative of the major parties and allows us the opportunity to forget how far other nations have started to eclipse us because obviously we know what is best and can only be right.

We are running out of time. Start marking C on the unfinished questions.

Race relations are deteriorating and starting a downward spiral based on years of unaddressed systemic inequality. Wealth disparity has exceeded levels last seen in the Golden Age. Mass shooting have become commonplace. A significant proportion of our population believes the statement written on the Statue of Liberty is pure junk. Families that have lost children in war zones are fair game to be criticized and a major political party can attempt to censor the best candidate it has had in years. Oh… and the Russians might be involved in a bunch of it.

What is a country to do when our best options are third party candidates? Maybe it is time to vote for them for once. Actually I like them… both. They are better than anything the mainstream can seem to put together with their manipulation and dysfunction. I’ll take either one, though I lean Green for sure.

That’s it folks. America got left with subpar. The least of two evils is what we have with major parties. I am imploring you to reject that notion for once and all. It’s time. Let’s rethink for once and bash on the system that has been failing us. Seriously, Congress has an 11 percent approval rating and you will most likely reelect the same guys. For fucks sake, just vote for the guy that wears horns on his head and promises free ponies for once. Seriously, he might actually get more done.

And this whole exceptionalism thing? Let it go. Large companies will often tell their employees how spectacular they are while being surpassed by the small and nimble startups. Yeah, the U.S. has become that large company. Hubris kills and it is now killing us as a nation.

Our health care is abysmal at 37th in the world. We have crafted a narrative that anyone can make it in America when we sit at 17th on the social mobility list and let’s not get started where we are on the happiness list.

So why do we keep buying the same shit? Both political party conventions were train wrecks. One candidate easily challenges Andrew Jackson for the asshole award and wins while the other one probably runs her own crime syndicate.

How did we get here? Laziness? Stupidity? Buying the lies and hype?

I have no idea but the U.S. has become a powder keg that is ready to blow. 2017 will most likely be one of the most disruptive years in our history regardless of who wins the Presidency and the captures the Senate and House. And guess what? It’ll still be a stalemate disaster where nothing gets done.

So at this point I guess we have nothing left to lose. Go out and vote third party this year. While you’re at it lift a middle finger to the traditional parties we have been saddled with for far too long.

Even Sisyphus found redemption in telling the gods to “Fuck Off” while pushing that boulder every day.

Brian McKay is a co-founder of zenruption. He is basically done with it all. The minute your child states her desire to move to Canada, that tells you where we truly have ended up. Vote your conscious this year and forget the winner equation.

Feature photo courtesy of Flickr, under Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial license