Believe it or not, my point wasn't to justify my own reluctance to vote, much less tell other people to vote. It's more that I've been seeing a lot of people saying we ought to vote, it's patriotic, and if you didn't vote you ahd no right to complain about the outcome.

All of that's true for people who just can't be bothered to vote. But I think there are different kinds of silence, just like there are different kind of undecideds. (Here it is October, and I'm one of those infamous undecideds who still aren't sure who they'll vote for.) So I was dealing with a bit of political frustration with myself and with the way people talked about not voting - and there were those people of District Twelve, standing their silent sentry. It struck me that there was a deeper point here, and those people illustrated it as well as anyone: that voting was patriotic, but it also meant buying into a certain system. And it got me thinking about the nature of protest and joining in. I guess it helped me organize my thoughts in a way I hadn't been able to up until now.

I did hesitate to go so thoroughly political, because to my mind the current election is just one way this plays out. How do you deal with an unfair system - do you use it to clean things up, or do you refuse to have anything to do with it? (Heck if I know, most days!)