Yes, this presidential campaign has stretched beyond entertainment, beyond bizarre and beyond perverse to downright discouraging, depressing and even disgusting at times. But that’s certainly no reason to sit this one out. If you think you don’t care about politics or are turned off by this year’s bare-knuckle, gutter fight, then what about the price of gas, Middle East wars, the cost of food and health care, our rights to choose what kind of guns we can buy or what a woman can do with her own body?

Democracy is more than a philosophic construct. It’s about real life choices, the choices we make as a diverse collective to reach consensus about how we and our neighbors live. Being part of a democracy means participating in that process, to shape those decisions. And the most fundamental way you can participate is by casting your vote.

Not voting is making a choice. At the presidential and congressional level, it means letting others decide for you about your taxes, your health care, about war and peace, about your future.

You want to blow up Washington in disgust about its over-reaching or under-achieving? Fine. But not voting isn’t how you get that done. You need to vote for someone to dismantle the system or reshape it.

And at the more local level, this particular election has set before you several decisions to make. Choices you can only make in the voting booth: Should we end the prohibition on marijuana? Should we impose on our poultry and pork farmers someone else’s view of humane treatment? Should we allow creation of another tier of public education through the charter school system at the expense of the existing one? Your choice.

And yes, your one vote can make a difference — especially at the local level in a very practical sense because the electorate is relatively small and there is no electoral college — but also at the federal level, because if too many of us opt out, at some point, even in blue Massachusetts, the outcomes can change. Someone else will shape your world for you, and you may not like what you get.

We live in a democracy, which although an imperfect system, is the best human society has developed so far. But that government of the people can be hijacked, by special interests with big money, by self-serving politicians on the take, but only if we let ourselves get discouraged and allow apathy to get the better of us.

We are part of the system, it’s not apart from us.

So, vote.

And afterward, whether things go your way or not, stay or get engaged in our democracy. Run for something, lobby, write a letter to the editor, let your elected officials know what you think, support the people or organizations that will make the changes you want to see.