The day was 8 November 1988 and I’m 19 years old when I’m desperately trying to get news about the election. You see, this is the first Presidential election that old enough to vote in and I’m pretty excited. I joined the Louisiana Army National Guard almost two years prior to this day and since I was currently in boot camp for the US Navy, I had sent my absentee ballot in about two weeks prior to the election and now I get to pick my Commander in Chief. Spoiler alert, I voted for daddy Bush and he won. It was a day filled with excitement; I was serving my country and cast my very first vote for the person I thought was best suited to lead us. One of the most patriotic feelings I’ve ever felt. I continued to feel this way throughout the 90’s, even when the guy I voted for didn’t win. I was doing my part. Even when 2004 rolled around and didn’t like either primary candidate (I did vote for Dubya in 2000), so I went third party. I told myself that this was how it should work, that we shouldn’t be limited to just two choices.
I continued to vote third party all the way up until the 2016 election, and in the aftermath, I lost faith in our government and the people in this country. You see, the 2016 election left me wondering if we, the people, were actually making a difference. In the run-up to this election, I saw a real chance for a third party candidate to break through. Maybe not actually win, but get enough of the votes so that they would automatically be included on the next ballot AND allowed in the debates. For the Libertarian party, we had two former Republican governors in Gary Johnson (New Mexico) and Bill Weld (Massachusetts) who seemed likable enough…well more than Hillary and Trump. I thought it was guaranteed that a third party would pull at least 5% of the national vote (the amount needed to be included in the debates), but when the election was over, the sheep got in their party lines and voted for two of the most despicable excuses for human beings and the Libertarian party only pulled 3.27% of the vote.
When 2020 hit, there was no one on the ballot that I felt comfortable voting for, so I wrote in my name (I didn’t win). I watched two “men” treat the election like it was an episode of Jersey Shore. Whomever got the last, best insult in wins. Biden, a career politician, who had already served two terms as VP of this great country and Trump, the incumbent who was just finishing up his first term in which he came close to unseating Jimmy Carter as the worst PotUS (in my mind). I thought to myself, we’re a nation of 330 million people and these are the best choices we have? It was then that I realized the politicians weren’t the problem, the people were. For some reason, the American populace got lazy, didn’t care, or something else that kept them from finding a palatable candidate.
I’m 55 years old now and will be retiring in about 8 years or less. My wife, who is from Canada, wants us to retire there. A few years ago, I never would have entertained the idea of leaving my country. I really believed in what we stood for…or at least what I thought we were supposed to stand for, but after watching every PotUS since Dubya’s second term take away more of our rights, I’m left wondering if the grass is greener on the other side. Congrats America, you’ve convinced me that our great experiment with democracy has failed and quite honestly, if y’all keep down this path, I will rest comfortably in Canada while the US of A burns.
Born and raised in South Louisiana and now living in Buffalo, New York. The sole purpose of this blog is for me to bitch about shit.