" Excuses are the tolls of incompetence, used to build monuments of nothingness."

Millions Americans feel disenfranchised with Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump being the candidates for our two major parties (1 in 4 Americans, as a matter of fact, as polled by Gallup), and have come to resent the two party system for creating a bad choice like this. I'm here to tell you that it isn't the system's fault - It's yours.

It's because we live in a world where our predecessors have wanted the easy way out, and have dared to think that real change can take place just by picking a good president. The fact of that matter is such a thing just isn't true, and if you didn't want this to happen, you should have been more politically involved.

While not true for everyone, for many of you that feel disenfranchised now, you have no right to that because it was you that fed into this broken two-party system.

Any time you voted for an issue based solely on loyalty to one of the two major parties, you fed into the system.

Any time you refused to vote, you fed into the system. The US census bureau found that a mere 40% of eligible voters vote in congressional elections, yet Congress is what actually writes the laws and shapes the policies of our nation. It is the president's job to work with and guide them, and to approve of their legislation. Congress is the true backbone of American law and democracy. So any time you failed to vote in congressional elections, you fed into the system.

Any time you failed to research properly, and allowed merely the nightly news or one side of media to dictate your opinion, you fed into the system.

Any time you allowed yourself to be swayed for a candidate merely because of ads and subliminal messaging from their expensive campaign, you fed into the system.

Do you see where I am going with this? What makes our country tick isn't just the President. It's also Congress. It's Congress that writes the laws. Congress that can disapprove of the cabinet, or the President's picks for Supreme Court Justice. Congress that handles the local stuff, the stuff that matters to your day to day lives.

If you wanted a different party in power, you should have started by voting third party candidates into power in Congress. You didn't have to be swayed by one of the two major candidates or who spent the most money to publicize their name. You could have looked into other people yourself, and done some research.

If you wanted better lawmakers and better presidential candidates, you should have paid more attention when you were voting to begin with. You should have looked into the histories of each candidate facing you, and voted up and down the board for council members, mayors, congressional representatives, and Senators. You should have thought to look into other people and voted for them.

If you'd been more researched, we'd have had better people in Congress, and that environment would have fostered better people running for President. If you'd bothered to vote at all, you could have had more people with mindsets like yours up there in power.

What we have now is not the fault of our system. Our democracy isn't broken. You're just not using it correctly. Insistence of anything else is nothing more than an excuse of the incompetent or of the lazy. If you really cared, and you looked into people more closely when they ran, you could vote for who was best, not who campaigned most, and big money would lose some of its grip on politics. If you were serious about wanting change, you would vote at every turn where you had the option.

Anyone who has disdained politics because of their dislike for it only serves to perpetuate the very things that drove them away from politics.

It's time now. No more excuses. No more laziness. It's time to make our country great. Get out there and vote for all the smaller elections, too. If all you do is vote in the presidential, then our country will rot.