Here we are again, at the height of our nation's quadrennial exercise in masochism—that mother-of-all slick advertising scams known as a Presidential Campaign. I doubt even late-night TV's Ron Popiel could have fabricated more marketing-of-useless-products mischief than what the American people, forced to choose between the Devil and the Deep Blue Sea, are being subjected to in lieu of genuine political options.

Oh, for the good old days. In the midst of the Republican soybean fields of downstate Illinois, I was raised by two die-hard Democrats who had experienced, by way of the New Deal and the WPA, the difference government could make on the daily lives of average citizens. But by the time I was an adult, the Democratic Party had begun to shift its primary focus away from meat-and-potatoes issues of social justice, to Big Government support of an increasingly un-mainstream ideological platform that had more to do with social engineering than with social justice. This shift was epitomized, of course, by the Democratic Party's fierce embrace of pro-choice feminism, with all its attendant pieties, from gay marriage to abortion-on-demand, from surrogate parenting to stem-cell harvesting to Orwellian bans on "hate speech."

Choose your poison: Big Government Post-Modernism or Big Government Corporatism?

But I knew I could never be at home in the Republican Party, either. Although ostensibly pro-life, the GOP has remained, as ever, the party in the pocket of Corporate America. (And the bigger the corporation the bigger the pocket, not to mention, pocketbook.) Sure, the Republicans toss us pro-lifers a tasty morsel now and then. I rejoiced mightily when Bush signed the ban on partial-birth abortions; but as an increasingly convinced supporter of small-is-beautiful Catholic social teaching, I remain haunted by Eisenhower's prophecy about the Military-Industrial Complex, for which Dick Cheney could serve as poster boy. There was nothing for this ex-Democrat, non-Republican to do, in our lesser-of-two-evils bi-partisan mess of a political system, but turn (gag) Independent.

But I still have this November problem. I've never been a political junkie. Worse, a B.A. in History was just enough study to convince me that the Law of Unintended Consequences will operate in full vigor during the next administration, however clever we think we are in choosing the best candidate. For a while, I even toyed with the possibility of casting a protest ballot for a third-party candidate. But after investigating all the third party options this year—there is no Distributist Party of America, alas—I realized I couldn't even "make a statement" with a throwaway third-party vote. A close reading of the Directory of American Political Parties was one of the more depressing experiences in my recent memory.

For instance, as much as I like many of their positions on assorted issues, the Greens are as pro-choice as the Democrats, roast 'em, and the Libertarians are as goofy on the "lifestyle" issues as Gavin Newsom. Ditto all the Socialists and Trotskyists, who still spew old-line, hard-line Marxist blather as if 1989 had never happened. The "pro-life" extreme Religious Right parties, meanwhile, when not outright white supremacist or neo-Nazi, nevertheless give off a scent of John Birch-y anachronism, like those "family values" satellite TV stations that broadcast nothing but re-runs from the 1950s. I mean, what did the 1950s give us but the 1960s?

I suspect I’ll be voting for the devil that I know rather than the devil that I don’t know.

I've never been so close in my life to not voting in the presidential election at all—surely a cop-out and a sin for a conscientious citizen of any persuasion, religious or political. So, beyond sending a few bucks to Democrats for Life, I'm back to participating, it would appear, in that other quadrennial exercise in masochism, the one known as "the lesser-of-two-evils vote." What'll it be this year, Deb, choose your poison: Big Government Post-Modernism or Big Government Corporatism? Since both parties have gone a-whoring with the empire builders of every utopian persuasion, which gross national product should Empire America market to the unsuspecting world in the next four years? Madonna or Wal-Mart? Chemical abortifacients or chemical pesticides? Planned Parenthood or Planned Obsolescence?

In the end, seeing as how the worst of the damage has arguably been done on the international front—Lord, make it so!—and a Kerry administration in perpetual flip-flop would serve us little better in tidying up the ham-fisted Bush-Cheney mess in Iraq, I suspect I'll be voting for the devil that I know rather than the devil that I don't know, in hopes that Dubya may finally bring forth that longed-for but possibly mythical creature known as a pro-life Supreme Court. Were that miracle of grace to occur (and assuming that "four more years" don't push us even further down the road towards a cataclysmic Clash of Civilizations), I might actually end up looking on this campaign as one of the less objectionable.

I suspect, however, that the best thing I will be able to say about the November 2004 election, come November 2008, is that it gave us jibjab.com.

One thing for sure, when I complete that ballot in November, I'll be holding my nose.

And crossing my fingers.

And praying.

A lot.