VOTE OR SHUT UP.

So Kid 1 and Kid 2 are having a "spirited" discussion. What you have to know is that Kid 1 is our resident cynic. He's convinced the world is headed to Hades in a handbasket and that we - my generation - have been the last in a long line of people who've screwed it up totally. Beyond the repair of his generation or his brother's generation. Kid 2 feels pretty similar, but he has a small belief in the "process" so that if enough people get involved, it can be a sea change. He sees his generation as the potential to start that change. Kid 1 is probably not going to vote. But he'll gripe about how rotten the system is, how politicians are corrupt and how we're all eventually going to screw ourselves into premature planetary implosion. Kid 2 just voted early with us - his first time to vote. The discussion, which included a few mutual friends, ended when Kid 2 said, "You know what? It ultimately comes down to this: VOTE OR SHUT UP. "The system is what it is till WE change it. And if you're not interested in VOTING, then you have no right to complain about how crappy the system is. Obviously, it's not crappy enough to make you get off your butt to change it. So then you essentially have nothing to complain about, right? "So either VOTE OR SHUT UP." Out of the mouths of babes...