VOTE... dammit!!

To the non-enthusiastic millennial voters

I get it, you're just not jazzed up about voting, because you're not feeling it. You believe a vote should be of value, and therefore if you're not enamored with the choices, why bother.

Simple: People died for your right to vote.

Look, we were all younger once, and felt that way, hell, even Billy Joel wrote a song (Angry Young Man) a generation before even mine that included the lines:

I once believed in causes too
I had my pointless point of view
And life went on no matter who was wrong or right

We were all you, we get it.

But here's the thing. It matters. Your vote matters. Every vote matters. If you're not impassioned by either candidate, well, honestly, suck it up.

Life isn't here to please you at every single moment in time. It's not here to serve you based on your needs. Get out of your own self and vote, because it's critical to the future, to my future, to your future, and to the future generations.

Voting is a right, and you benefit (and suffer) from the outcome of the votes of others. So choosing not to do it is allowing others to control your life. Now, we all know, you don't like how that sounds, do you.

Vote out of respect, vote out of disgust, vote out of anger or disenfranchisement. But vote. Because you can.

You're likely closer to the college years than I am, so it's reasonable to expect that you're pretty fresh when it comes to math. Use it. Do it. See if voting for a third party will make a difference. If you're choosing to do that because you want a vote, ok, I understand that, but that distaste and disgust you're trying to avoid by not voting for the candidate you hate but also not voting for the one you just don't trust or like.... try math. It means you're voting for the one you hate.

And that makes you just as responsible for the outcome as if you had voted for the one you hate.

And lets just be clear here for a minute: There isn't a choice of equals in the two main party candidates. There just isn't. It's not an opinion, it's facts.

Don't go tit for tat, that's not how mature adults act. I know, it's confusing, because it's what you see on all the news channels, but they're all just afraid of being sued, and focused on getting ratings.

But lies aren't truths, and opinions aren't facts. You know this, you just learned this in school.

Don't forget it. What you learned in school matters. Shit, look how much you paid for that knowledge, so don't just throw it away. Recycle your knowledge, and apply it, reuse it. DIY-it, and don't just trust the sound bytes, use your critical thinking skills.

Look, I'm gonna be honest with you. I'm with Her. I've always been with Her. Since I voted for her husband, and especially since that time back then when she said she's not the type of woman to stay home and bake cookies and have tea parties.

But I'm not with Her because she's a her, I'm with her because she's amazing. She's accomplished, and collaborative, and is human, and gets shit done. She's living history, and she's already changed your millennial lives without you even knowing the impact she's had on it.

Look at who she is, what's she's done, what she's accomplished in her life. See the threads of what she fights for, and what she stands for. It's not about pneumonia, it's not about transparency. It's about decency and competence.

So if you're not enthused, so what. I've voted for the lesser of two evils many times, that's part of life. I've had to make choices that don't suit my immediate needs, that in the long run pay out. So do it.

Life isn't about appeasing you, it's about you making the right choices, that extend beyond just you. Your vote can affect millions of people, billions, potentially, across the globe, as you vote for the leader of the free world. It's not about you being pissed off about Bernie, or testosterone levels, or not telling you about pneumonia because you think you had a right to know to make an informed decision.

You didn't. Just as you don't have a right to know how long it takes one to take a piss (to ostensibly gauge the risk of an enlarged prostate).

So vote, vote on what matters, but look it up, on multiple sources, like you did in college, because we don't have journalists anymore, we have pundits, and that means they don't have to be objective, and THEY aren't held to the standards of truth and transparency that they whine about.

Use your insanely expensive college knowledge and skills to learn and educate yourself, because the answers that are handed to you are someone else's gains, not yours.

Make the effort. Vote. People died so you could...
Laurissa Doonan