Words to Keep in Mind

I finished reading Hunter S. Thompson's Hey Rube. The edition I had was murder to my copy-editing eyes, but I've learned (or am trying to learn) to read for content when I'm not on the clock. (When is that exactly? I don't friggen know.) The following is found at the end:

Politics is the art of controlling your environment. That is one of the key things I learned in these years, and I learned it the hard way. Anybody who thinks that "it doesn't matter who's president" has never been drafted and sent off to a fight and die in a vicious, stupid war on the other side of the world---or been beaten and gassed by police for trespassing on public property---or been hounded by the IRS for purely political reasons---or locked up in the Cook County Jail with a broken nose and no phone access and twelve perverts wanting to stomp your ass in the shower. That is when it matters who is president or governor or police chief. That is when you will wish you had voted.