It’s an election year, which means that the amount of time I spend getting dragged into arguments on Reddit has tripled in the last quarter. I know, I know — it’s a complete waste of my time and energy (and I am proud to say this tendency has decreased since my early 20’s, life being too short and all of that, but still. It’s a thing, so work with me here).

As I was saying, it’s an election year. In 238 days, the United States will relive 2020’s hellish showdown between two rich, senile ghouls. Given this, the moderate rhetoric around every urgent political issue has shifted to the “vote about it” angle. It feels borderline hysterical, the way that large swaths of our society shriek about the need to “vote!” It’s so rare that this instruction to vote is ever coupled with any encouragement of something to vote for. It’s almost as if it doesn’t matter.

This year, things feel a bit different. In a show of protest against the United States’s involvement in the Palestinian genocide, organizers are successfully encouraging voters to select “uncommitted” on their ballots, as opposed to an actual candidate. In my home state of Massachusetts, 10% or 55,000 voters declared themselves uncommitted.

The goal of this organizing strategy is to send a message: our votes are not guaranteed. Every four years the Democratic Party relies on youth, relies on women, relies on people of color, relies on the disenfranchised and vulnerable to prop them up without question — all the while their policies and figureheads inch further and further rightward. An uncommitted vote is meant as a wake up call that — shocking — we actually expect our candidates to engage with and to act based upon our ideas. Seventy-six percent of Democrats are asking for a ceasefire, but no Democratic candidate is willing to reflect the will of the majority. Oh right: we live in a republic. Sorry, I forget myself.

The funny thing is, I’m actually not the cynical one. I remain unsurprised and unjaded by the actions of my corporate-sponsored overlords. It’s freeing — you should try it! The choking mass of cynicism all around us becomes apparent why you try to encourage someone to think beyond the CNN and Fox News binary. You will be informed that by doing so, by demanding more from the powerful, you are the threat. You are the one putting the entire system at risk. The neoliberal mindset would have me believe that I am the sole barrier between democratic order and authoritarianism. Me? How charming!

Regarding the aforementioned Reddit debates, I did find myself at the center of such ungodly controversy last week when I proclaimed my pride that tens of thousands of my neighbors opted to vote for “uncommitted” in the primary. People whose post history was comprised largely of thinly-veiled racism towards brown people pleaded with me not to “throw away” my vote. “You don’t get it — it will be so much worse if we lose!” About three seconds of introspection could illuminate that complacency does more to uphold individuals like Donald Trump than I ever could.

I will speak more on that individual as well, as it unfortunately needs to be said. A complete lack of imagination has lead us to a general discourse where any overt critiques of the Democratic Party are perceived as a “de facto” endorsement of Trump. How shameful. What I would love to know, though, is what any of these weak-minded individuals were doing the four years Trump was actually in office. I surely didn’t see them doing much more than sharing whatever Saturday Night Live segment was relevant that week. Were you at the airport after the Muslim Ban? Were you in the streets screaming out against his lawmaking against transgender people in the military? Were you working to ensure that reproductive freedoms would remain protected? No, I don’t think you were — because I was there and didn’t see any of you.

This will be the third presidential election in which I am an eligible voter, and it turns out — per the violently desperate superpac emails in my inbox — they are all the most important election of my life! Wait…I’m getting a vision. Something tells me that no matter who wins this election, life in the United States will continue to deteriorate at a rapid pace — and 2028 will officially be the most important election of my lifetime.

I do feel deeply sorry for the vote-crazed. You wake up every morning and you really see the world as a pale and changeless mass of rot. You think to yourself “I won’t even try for something better, I will just eke out my meager existence on this plane and be grateful that I don’t have it quite so bad.” The guys who do have it quite so bad don’t even enter the equation. What an unfortunate way to be — your only joys in life are for voting (just the simple act will do — it’s all style no substance for you anyway), and bemoaning those who yearn for more as unrealistic troublemakers.

I am, and proud of it! I will go down kicking and screaming, asking to live in a world worth living in. I will never be satisfied; I will continue to beg for more. Please, just a scrap of a better future. Just a drop! Anything!