Four more years? Of what? Same old shit, no matter who wins.

I have cast a vote for president every four years for nearly half a century. Doing so is an obligation of citizenship. Each cast ballot has reminded me of those, in other nations, for whom voting is neither easy nor free of fraud or coercion. Sadly, in this election, voting may not be easy for some Americans: Lawyers and legislators stand in their way for the sole reason of protecting power or seeking to gain it.

But, as usual, I digress. Mea culpa.

Each cast ballot in my lifetime has usually brought satisfaction: I considered the candidates carefully and said my piece. In each race (well, maybe not Nixon vs. McGovern or Bush vs. Kerry), I voted for a candidate instead of against the other.

But this time? As I’ve written, I will be voting for a liar. One lied much more than the other, but both allowed deceit to be practiced routinely in their names. I’m prepared to swallow that.

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Congress: Why throwing the bums out won’t improve it

I like sausage. I don’t care what names attach to them. I like sausage, be it bratwurst, kielbasa, bauerwurst, chorizo, bangers, Italian, summer, or linguica. Different meats (beef, pork, even reindeer) and seasonings produce the vast panoply of sausage found worldwide.

But, after a while, no matter how different the ingredients, it’s still just sausage.

At the heart of sausage making is a common device: the meat grinder. Drop meat into the hopper. Add seasonings. Crank the handle. Grind chunks of meat. Slide into casing. Result: Sausage. No matter what enters, what emerges is sausage.

Congress has become little more than the meat grinder that produces sausage. Yes, there’s the old saw: Laws are like sausages. It’s better not to see them being made. That’s not the point here. Rather, it’s about the machine. It’s about why no one should foster belief in the “throw the bums out” approach to correcting continual congressional ineptitude and ethical malfeasance.

Consider: I plan to vote for a 29-year-old hospital administrator, Nate Shinagawa, to replace my current congressman, Tom Reed. Reason: I don’t like Reed’s ethically ambiguous approach to communicating with constituents. I like Shinagawa because I was young once — and believed in politics as an honorable calling. He believes; I don’t.