Voting in 2012 should not be this dire of a situation.

I cast my first vote at the age of 18 during a Presidential election. Bill Clinton’s second term. I voted Democrat across the board. I voted for Barbara Boxer and Diane Fienstein as US Senators. I’ll never forget it. It felt so dull. It felt so inconsequential. Mundane. It was me and a bunch of old people. Most of my friends who were of age weren’t even registered. Never in a million years would I have believed then that my older self would be casting a ballot to maintain my basic human rights. But that is what today’s vote was about. Not progress. Not enhancement. Not improvement. My vote today is about maintenance at best. My 18 year old self was in a more civically secure position than my 34 year old self. And that is absolutely bizarre.

My mom had been a Democrat her whole life, but right before my first election she changed parties to the Green Party. I asked her why change when the Democratic Party represented her so well. She said that politics needs to evolve. It can’t stay stagnant. If we don’t direct the change, then the change will direct us. The Green Party was ahead of it’s time, she said. Plus, my mom has a thing for the underdog. Always has. Now that I’ve voted in my 6th presidential election, I can see the need for diversity. The strangle hold that the two party system has on our society is the opposite of evolution.

We’re devolving. We’re regressing. People are afraid on both sides. Dichotomies are the tools of the unimaginative. Life is never this or that. Never. Everything in nature exists within a continuum; our political choices not reflecting that reality has led us to this place.