I find it amusing that I searched LJ for my past voting rants, and found this post about maybe voting Democrat from 2003, which includes the line:

[1] Doh! Here I was trying to cut back on writing things people would disagree with and be emotional about and I've blown it already...sigh...I'm not surprised :).

It's 5 years later, and I'm still "trying to cut back on writing things people would disagree with and be emotional about" and constantly blowing it :).

Guess it's a deep-seated issue, and maybe I should just accept it instead of wasting energy trying to fight it...

I do consider it an issue, b/c it makes me less effective at reaching my goals. Actually, in a very similar way to the criticism of voting and voting support that I just made. Ranting on LJ lets me blow off steam, yet in a way which is unlikely to have much permanent impact on the world. If I could instead direct that energy into producing more compact, polished, high-quality work for larger audiences - like a book - I think it would have much more impact. But polished, high-quality work is, well, work, whereas rants are fun.

Oh well. At least I know that I rant for fun. Part of what makes me sad about voting is that people think it actually makes a difference, that they are actually doing meaningful political self-determination, and so they check off the little box in their head that says "I want to have influence on my government", and then go about their merry way.