Vote.

The midterm elections are here and it is time to vote for someone who will inevitably let us down. Either someone who will raise taxes in an attempt to help the middle-class, but will ultimately lose the funds in a scandal, or someone who will lower taxes for the upper one percent and give the rest of the citizenry the shaft. If the fate of the Republic were not intertwined with this election, it would almost seem a fitting satire on how things fall apart.

This is the time of year primetime television watchers dread the most. It is "year-end clearance time" at your local car dealer, come on in and get a bad deal on a car, truck or SUV nobody else wanted. It is also the start of holiday advertising. If all you wanted to watch on television was "House," "Grey's Anatomy" or the ubiquitous reality show, you now have an extra five minutes of commercials to hate with the block of political attack ads, counter-attack ads, friendly ads and just plain lies that stream on seemingly with no end.

It seems a mathematical certainty that for every ad a congressional hopeful runs, two will come out refuting everything that was said. If there were an ad run stating that congressional hopeful "X" was good to his family, friends, neighbors and they will be good for you too, a few days later an ad will run stating that "X" ate babies, lied and voted against something important in Iraq.

Personally, I could care less if "X" can throw a mean BBQ; I care if he/she/it will show up to vote for things that matter. I care if they are adequate public servants who are fit to do the job they were charged with. In the past few years the list of people running for office has grown into a list of people I would not want to see operating a tilt-o-wheel, let alone the government. Is no one qualified? I am not satisfied with the "at least I'm not the other guy" tactic used to get people to slide into office at our expense. It needs to stop.

We need a change, a voting revolution. It would be easy to orchestrate a massive write-in campaign in which we would all vote for someone we could trust and had the intelligence and temerity to do what was right. Someone like Captain Planet, he is hard on crime, environmentally aware and great with education, not sure what his economic policy would be, it would probably contain some jokes like everyone else's.

We are supposed to be voting for leaders, people we can count on. We keep voting hoping for a change and it never comes. We are recycling the same candidates and as a result we now have a government we cannot trust, that does not trust us, and is shaming us in the eyes of the world. As Henry David Thoreau stated in his essay entitled "Civil Disobedience," "How does it become a man to behave towards his American government today? I answer, that he cannot without disgrace be associated with it." Written over a century ago, his words ring evermore true today. When will it change?

I want to be proud of America again. I want to be able to go overseas and hold my head high knowing that I come from a land where freedoms are upheld, not trampled by an oppressive government. An America in which I believe our grandfathers and great-grandfathers stamped out evil across the globe. Theirs is a legacy to be proud of. What will our legacy be? That we let the government of the free run rampantly into the ground; that we stood by and did nothing but complain that one vote does not count while the country burned around us?

Well, the midterm elections are here, and though it may seem a trivial thing, all things were born of trivial dust. The pyramids started with one stone and without each successive stone, the pyramids would not be a natural wonder. It takes all of us to vote to turn the tide of congressional inactiveness and scandal. And even though the choices are grim, and the electronic voting contraption has faults, show up, get your "I voted today" sticker and wear it with pride.