If you don’t vote, you can’t gripe

The primaries are over, and now there will be some griping about the poor choices that will appear on the general election ballots.

If all Americans would involve themselves in the process of selecting the candidates who will appear on general-election ballots, we would never be faced with the choice of the lesser of two evils.

Too many complainers satisfy themselves with being so righteous that they do not participate in any party and then pretend to stand above the mess that their slackness has largely created.

Were this nation to have two parties of equal membership (regardless of name or position on the political spectrum), we the people would have to split hairs to consider which of the outstanding candidates should receive our vote.

If one does not have the gumption to participate, or professes to have despaired, or is just incompetent in choosing candidates, stay home and don't vote for someone whose selection has been made in absence of their interested participation.

If someone's outlook on life dissuades them from consideration of any political matter, their sentiment should be respectfully accepted as a matter of personal conscience. However, when one hears someone boast about being totally inactive in the workings of any political party, but is also griping about the failure of our political system, the compliant is naught but pretense proffered in mask of failed citizenship.

Sam Osborne

West Branch