I shall not vote during this presidential election cycle. Normally, in the past, I made sure to cast my ballot one way or the other, even if I resided in a state in which, due to my being in the clear political minority, my vote did not count. (Why are there instances in which votes do not count, and why are there only two parties to represent the political interests of over one hundred and fifty millions of individual voters? America's system of representative politics is strange, corrupted, and unjust, indeed.)
Being in a battleground state (Pennsylvania), and living as I do in a predominantly politically and socially conservative area (York County), I know that I should vote this November, but our sitting president, Mr. Barack Obama, has lost my support, and his opponent – a fabulously-rich 1%er named Mitt Romney – embodies so many of the things that I see as wrong with this nation that I would sooner put out my own eyes with a melon-baller than cast a ballot in his favor. Up until recently, Mr. Obama had my support, but he signed NDAA 1540 into law, a defense bill which allows the government of the United States of America in instances of martial law to imprison her own citizens indefinitely, and without trial. (To be fair, NDAA 1540 was ratified unanimously by both the House and Senate, thus implicating all sitting Congresspersons and Senators in this, their most recent crime against Liberty.)
The Constitution of the United States of America contains provisions designed specifically to guard us – the people – against just such tyrannical overreaches. In the first Amendment, the Constitution states that “Congress shall make no law respecting[…] the right of the people[…] to petition the Government for a redress of grievances," and in its fifth Amendment the document states that, “No person shall be[…] deprived of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law.” NDAA 1540 makes it so that the American citizen is viewed as a criminal, as a worthless lout, as no better than those dirty Taliban fellows we have spent so much time, blood, and treasure trying to kill over the last ten years; it rescinds the citizen's right to redress grievances; and while federal, state, and local governments have violated the fifth Amendment for decades now by enforcing blanket restrictions on the liberty of the people to smoke or snort or shoot any such drugs they should wish to consume, NDAA 1540 deprives them of their liberty for nothing more than speaking out, or, merely, for being outside of their homes at the wrong time.
This defense bill sounds the death-knell for our country's 224-year-long experiment in individual freedom, granting our government such fantastic power as to make it the most clear and present danger to the rights of mankind that the world has ever seen. Welcome to the police-state, ladies and gentlemen, and get ready for a good, hard rear-ending, because I have the feeling that our leaders in the White House and Congress are only beginning to flex such increasingly awesome might as we have allowed them to give themselves lately. Fellow Children of Liberty, weep with me in shame as we bask in the afterglow of our nation's abject failure, kneeling as we do among the shredded gowns of our goddesses Liberty, and Justice. This November, I shall choose not one of these two evils but none of them, preferring rather to sacrifice my sacred franchise upon the forgotten altar of silent disobedience, since neither of these men is worthy of the post of President. America delenda est.
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