My favorite concise summation of the electoral paradox came from the British humor and sci-fi writer Douglas Adams: “It is a well-known fact that those people who must want to rule people are, ipso facto, those least suited to do it.”

This year’s elections offer a presidential choice slightly worse than the literal and proverbial plague that preceded it four years ago. It puts idealistic and concerned Americans in the most inescapable puzzle box this side of Shanghai: How does a citizen protest a desperately broken democracy without abandoning it by declining to vote?

Before you march out the ghosts of honorable servicemen who beat back fascism and play Sarah McLachlan songs over the faces of the oppressed masses who can’t vote, take a moment to consider the options.

In the blue corner is Vice President Kamala Harris. A couple of months ago, she was considered a disaster of a vice president. A cackling, pandering extremist from the Left whom the White House used everything but a shovel to hide from sight, Harris flailed to the top of the ticket when a deceptive Democratic Party finally had to admit its preexisting candidate was in a physical and mental free fall not seen since President Joe Biden took over the economy.

In short order, a new presidential candidate whom nobody voted for in anything resembling a primary underwent the most remarkable political makeover since Sen. J.D. Vance (D-OH) discovered eyeliner. Harris became Eleanor Roosevelt, Rosa Parks, and Oprah Winfrey as the party that boasts of protecting democracy completely ignored any application of it.

Since a nomination so rushed Jimmy Johns couldn’t keep up, Harris’s campaign has betrayed every progressive ideal she worshipped in California and Washington, D.C. The one-time proponent of an open border and defender of immigrants promised to turn the poor and huddled masses away forever. A woman who wanted to buy back America’s firearms forcibly boasted of being a gun owner. The former attorney general who wanted to defund the police became Willa Earp as quickly as her suffering aids could rewrite her stump speech.

You want us to support that?

Then we have the orange corner and the tired act that is former President Donald Trump. His own declining mental faculties stay lashed to the broken wheel of a campaign effort raising the question: Was his success in 2016 simply a fluke facilitated by boring Republican rivals and chronic Clinton fatigue?

A malignant narcissist who only campaigns in front of flag-wrapped sycophants who’d vote for him even if he murdered their firstborn, Trump is lurching toward the White House with all the grace of a grocery cart packed with rocks released at the top of a hill. It rolls well enough initially, but in short order, it’s a chaotic shambles rocking on three wheels and throwing dangerous projectiles in every direction.

You want us to support that?

Many readers encamped in either deep end of our bipolar, two-party septic tank answered “yes” to the questions above. They’re invested in a voting culture that relies on the creation of villains, voting against someone more so than passionately supporting their own candidate. Trump is Hitler Jr., and Democrats would vote for an Impossible burger with a D after its name rather than “destroy our democracy.” Harris is the alien love child of Karl Marx and Chairman Mao, and Republicans will support a conman from Queens who can’t pay his legal fees rather than, yes, “destroy our democracy.”

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Those of us who turn away from the poles (and the polls) see a democracy that, if not destroyed, is already broken and up on blocks in North America’s front yard. Rather than hold our noses and flip one of the two rusty levers, we sing in praise of turning up our noses and flipping off everyone who teams together to offer us such a choice.

Our country deserves better options and better arguments than anything this current system can offer. If we play along, we’re part of the problem.

John Lewinski, MFA, is a writer based in Milwaukee, Wisconsin.