According to her obituary in The Richmond Times-Dispatch, 68-year-old Mary Anne Noland cashed in her chips because of the nauseating lack of real choices in Election 2016:
Faced with the prospect of voting for either Donald Trump or Hillary Clinton…Noland of Richmond chose, instead, to pass into the eternal love of God.
I fully understand her pain and appreciate her conviction, but lest ye despair too, kind reader, remember that there is absolutely no reason to panic over politics. And, as important, there are fare more choices out there than either Team Red and Team Blue. I have never voted for a winning candidate in a presidential or congressional election, and I doubt that's going to change this time around. But it doesn't mean there's nothing left to live for:
Richmond Times-Dispatch
I fully expect to vote Libertarian in 2016, whether the party's candidate is bath-salt-snorting computer-virus-killing businessman John McAfee or (once again) Gary Johnson or even former Fox Business producer Austin Petersen. None is perfect as far as I'm concerned, but they're close enough for government work.
I'm open to voting for a major-party candidate the minute either offers up either a person or a platform that comes close to conforming to my beliefs in "free minds and free markets" and social liberalism and fiscal conservatism. But until then, I'll "cope" being outside the "familiar binaries of the two-party system" the best way I know how: By trying to change it, so that either we have more parties that allow more of us to express ourselves by voting for policies and people we actually believe in, or shrinking politics to a smaller and smaller part of our lives so that we have more time to enjoy all the different flavors of Astroglide and deodorant and Ben & Jerry's that are out there waiting for us to sample.
There ain't no party like a third party. Except for a fourth, fifth, or even sixth party. No apologies—much less coping—necessary.
