This headline by itself will draw hate from millions of pro-Palestine folks, which just goes to show: partisanship is the death of thought. Many of them won’t even know what the Romeo is or why it’s important.

(If you’re curious, I wrote about it a couple of months back. Go — read and learn.)

But that’s not what I’m here to talk about, at least not today.

No, today I’m focusing on the adage I bring up every time there’s an election:

Given a choice between two evils, choose neither.

Every four years, like clockwork, we’re presented with a decision between bad and worse. Sure, there’s a primary process, but all that does is create an environment in which party wheels get to choose the worst candidate they can, and the rest of us can protest — usually ineffectively. Obama was an exception, a protest candidate who actually came out on top, and he had the advantage of being filthy rich to begin with.

The past two cycles, however, we went from Trump – Clinton to Biden – Trump, this despite a whole slew of qualified, popular potential candidates. We could have had Amy Klobuchar, Liz Warren, even Bernie Sanders, any one of whom would have defeated The Donald in 2020. This time around, there wasn’t even the usual sham competition; Uncle Joe’s coronation was predetermined, and any opposition was relentlessly crushed.

Which is also, incidentally, what’s happened on the Republican side of the aisle, and God help us.

Anyone who didn’t see the debate has likely heard about poor old Uncle Joe’s miserable performance, and we’ve all heard Trump far too often to mistake what he said for anything remotely resembling truth (or complete sentences, come to that).

But let me be clear: Despite all that, and even considering his rather pitiful clinging to power, Joe Biden is not evil. Sure, he’s petty, vindictive, and not all that bright, but let’s face it: He’s never been considered the sharpest butter knife in the drawer. He’s a bumbling doofus, a serial plagiarist, and now it’s apparent that he’s superannuated. It would be incorrect to call him a has-been; he’s a never-was.

Which brings me back to evil. Uncle Joe, despite his failings, is not evil.

The party that keeps him in power is evil.

So is the opposition party.

Both have systematically deprived the citizenry of the ability to choose better candidates through obscure rules, press manipulation, extortion, and public vilification. As a result, our election process won’t yield a republic no matter which side wins; it’ll be an oligarchy of the unelected, a return to the status quo of party insiders becoming top advisers without any regard to the preference of the voters.

What’s the solution? What can we do to oppose this corrupt system? We can’t even vote the scum out.

What we can do, however, is make our disapproval known.

There are those of you who will object to me daring to stand on principle in a time of national crisis. “This is the most important election of your lifetime!” they cry. “Our democracy is at stake! We’re battling a tyrant!” Of course I agree: it’s always the most important election, and if we can’t vote for the candidate we prefer, we have no democratic freedoms left.

This election, like every other election, is too important to vote for the lesser evil, whichever that one might be.

Vote third party.

Hear me out: If you write in “Mickey Mouse”, your ballot will not be counted. It will be discarded, and you’ll be marked down as “Did Not Vote”. They’ll use you as a statistic to help them in their Get Out The Vote campaigns, and your protest will be useless.

But, if you vote third party, your protest will be counted — as a protest. Pick anyone else on the ballot, anyone at all, and the Powers That Be will pay attention. These are the people who buy opinion polls to see what they can get away with. If you don’t think they’re watching the numbers very carefully, you’re nowhere near as cynical as you need to be to survive in this system.

And no, your candidate won’t win. But ask yourself: What’s the virtue in voting for the winner? What does that get you? What does it change? NOTHING. It’s a wasted vote.

Now, okay, I’ll grant that some few of you really want to stick it to Donald Trump. (Or Uncle Joe. Sure.) And, if you live in one of the half-dozen states that will count this time around, like North Carolina, Pennsylvania, or Arizona, that’s fine. Vote your party; vote tactically.

But most of us don’t live there. California would elect a dead rat if it were Democrat, and Mississippi will back Trump even if he’s doing hard time in Folsom. That gives us the freedom to express our disgust with the present corrupt system.

Don’t vote for evil — instead, make your vote count! Vote third party!

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