If there’s any lesson to last week’s deal in Congress, this is it: Please vote in 2012. Please. Consider yourself begged.

Don’t get me wrong; I’m not naïve. There are many more powerful factors than individual votes that run our country. If the Supreme Court’s Citizens United decision meant anything, it meant that the Golden Rule prevails in this country: He who has the gold makes the rules. That is the only reasonable conclusion to be drawn from exactly the way this country is screwed up. The richest among us would not be hogging the majority of this country’s resources unless they bought the government.

But this might be one time when entropy — the tendency of everything to fall apart — may actually work for us. If the wheels can fall off the current system before we’re driven off a cliff, this country just might survive. We’ll be bruised and battered, and it’ll be butt-ugly, but we’ll make it.

But we have to take some responsibility for what happens. After all, what has happened is the fault of you and me.

That’s true no matter how involved you are. If you’re politically aware and involved, you either agree with the Tea Party wing nuts or you don’t. If you agree with them, you might as well stop reading now; I having nothing to say to the irrational, cheesed-off racists who make up most of that movement. If you disagree with them, you let them win — either by inaction or by ineffective action.

We have come to the point in this nation where irrational minorities have become the driving force behind what we do. You know that neighbor you dread talking to because he froths at the mouth and tells you about how the Trilateral Commission is trying to form a one-world government, how the Bush administration was behind 9/11, how John Kennedy is alive and living on Mars? Well, he’s running things now. And you played a role in letting him.

For all of what’s been called the Kabuki theater of the budget talks (having seen Kabuki, I can tell you it’s an insult to the art form), we have to remember that our chowder heads in Congress and our appeaser-in-chief were dancing on strings held by the Tea Party. Hell, Obama wouldn’t even seriously mention raising taxes. And you don’t need a doctorate in economics to see that there just isn’t enough money coming in.

And because of that, we’re going to see things that we want from the government disappear. When your government bennies get cut, when your son or daughter in Afghanistan gets stiffed on payday, when the roads you drive on become a trip through the Baja, it isn’t going to be Obama’s fault or even the faults of empty suits like John Boehner or Harry Reid. It’s going to be the fault of the Tea Partiers and of everybody who let them acquire so much power.

Incidentally, this isn’t just true of economics. If you want to have a real chill go down your spine, read the recent story in The New Yorker about where Michele Bachmann gets her philosophy of government. Make no mistake, if she gets elected (which is, let’s face it, highly unlikely) and gets her way, this country’s government will be based on a book written for a preliterate, bronze-age civilization. I don’t know about you, but I’m not even nostalgic for the 1970s, much less the bronze age. Personal freedoms you’ve taken for granted all your life will be in real danger if this country turns into a theocracy.

And we’ve all let things get to this point. We’ve allowed ourselves to be manipulated by fear and anger and greed, in that order. When people like Bachmann, who looks great but talks like a not-too-bright insaniac, spew their venom, we let them. We don’t call them on it. We don’t stand up and make them know that we don’t appreciate being characterized as evil simply because we don’t buy their wares. We shrug our shoulders, figure we’ll survive and, on election day, turn over and go back to sleep.

What we have to realize is that like actions, inactions have consequences. We can find all the excuses we need if we want to duck responsibility. We’re all busy running the rat race. We’ve all got more pressing worries than the federal deficit. Those corporations that run the government all have more money than we do, so what’s the point?

The point is that your vote is all you’ve got. Never mind that people have died throughout our entire history in defense of that single right, let alone all the others we enjoy. Never mind that if people really adjusted their attitudes, and acted on a new way of thinking, we could effect change. We could make this country a better place. We could make it that “shining city on a hill” — doubly ironic because that was a favorite phrase of Ronald Reagan, one of the bad presidents we had who got put into office because not enough people voted rationally.

So please, for the love of God, use your vote. Don’t assume you’re going to change anything, because as one voter you won’t. But maybe if enough people exercise their franchise with intelligence and thought, rather than with fear and anger and greed, we can make this country work again. The stakes are high. Our future, in all its possible beauty and possible horror, is for us to decide. Us.

Maybe that is a little naïve. But, cynic though I am, I recognize cynicism is a lousy basis for self-government.