Hey Asshole, stop asking me to vote!

It's not like I don't want to vote. I do. In fact, I want to vote so bad that I once thought of voting for Indian Idol or one of it's clones. But then, thankfully, the next second I realized that it would involve voting for ugly, talentless karaoke singers the highlight of whose life would be a few weeks of constantly trying to impress Anu Malik. That's even worse than being the ghostwriter for George Bush's upcoming pop-up book (tentatively called "Dumbassery for Dummies") or handling PR for Osama Bin Laden.

Although, whoever is handling Osama's PR seems to be doing a pretty bang up job. That guy is huge is Afghanistan and Pakistan. Kind of like a medieval Micheal Jackson, but instead of little human children, he likes to have "fun" with goats.

So as I was saying, I'd like to vote for a candidate in the upcoming general elections. I would. But the problem is that out of the thousands of possible candidates, I can't even find one person who, in my opinion, should hold an office in our government.

Now, I remember a few months ago I was all like "Dude, you gotta vote.." and stuff, but as usual, I seemed to have flip-flopped.

It's easy to say "go out and vote", but really FOR WHOM?

Being asked to vote for the anyone in the current dispensation is like being asked to pick the talented Hilton sister. Or taking sides in the whole Brangelina-Aniston feud.

Democracy is supposed to be easy, isn't it? You vote for people who would do minimum damage to your taxes and spend the next five years regretting your decision. And then you vote for the other guy, and spend the next five years regretting your decision. And then it goes on and on, just like the Lord of the Rings.

Although our democracy is still better and more resilient than the madhouse inmates we have as neighbors. At least it pretends to give everyone a voice, even if everyone is shouting and no one can really hear each other.

What we forget is that a government is supposed to be as good as the people. So, our current government, who in a time of a global economic crisis does not even have a dedicated finance minister, is a perfect metaphor of how much we really care about the people who run our government.

We can pretend that having a bad government does not affect us, just like our board of education pretends that sex education can be imparted without actually talking about sex. We can tell ourselves that having people who have no knowledge of the nuances of foreign policy as leaders in our government does not really affect us directly, even when our leaders make a Bond villain seem like a saner choice. We can assure ourselves that we are lucky to be able to grease palms for getting things done, even for those activities which are essentially our fundamental right. After all, it is infinitely better than not being able to "afford" one's freedom.

Everytime a terrorist attack takes place in our country, we can feign helplessness, call everyone we know to find out if they are doing okay, blame the damn government and then go back to ignoring reality and voting for our favorite contestant on a reality show. I mean, c'mon, isn't Dancing with the Stars the best thing since sliced bread? And have you heard, the Bachchans and SRK are friends again? OMFG.

Unless we are part of the solution, we are also part of the problem.

The people "leading" our country are a mirror to our society. I completely agree that our leaders are supposed to be better than the swarming, bumbling, pathetic, out of touch, low life criminals having a rather large sense of entitlement we currently have.

But that's us too, isn't it?

The real question isn't whether they are better than that or not.

The real question is, are we?