Okay. I've held out long and hard on this one--I mean really, for someone wordy as I, I've really managed to stay away. But...
Tomorrow, of course, is election day. And I've gotta say, there are lots of reasons I've purposefully stayed uninvolved this year. The main one is that I think we are a nation of corruption and dishonesty, in a system that's broken, and I prefer to work on the grass-roots level in the local municipalities to put change that I can see in to action. I am disheartened, and have been, at the greed and shameless self-interest that masquerades in the Western world as the American Dream; at the excess of consumerism that we value under the label of Freedom, at the mindless circle that this system has created and at the personal powerless that strikes me whenever I look bluntly at the truth: that I, too, live as part of this lifestyle. That I can't not.
We as a people for the first time ever have the economic, intellectual and technological resources to feed every person the world over, to cloth every one, to see children educated and housed. And yet we don't. This is astounding to me. Simply, quite bone-baring common-sensical dumbfoundedly simple: why don't we, as a basic human species, take care of each other? Period. There is absolutely no excuse not to. This is just common sense people. Ethical evolution, it's the final frontier, it's the only one that truly matters. It's what will save us. Or, if continued to lack, will finally break us.
The rest of it is just pundit powwow and bullshit.
This leads me to my opinion on tomorrow, and to why I am voting, even though I think it's all broken and the whole sick "free"-market pillaging that we call "free-trade" backed as it is by bought politicians backed by corporate-funded lobbyists is nothing but a big, eye-rolling joke and not worth my energy. (There is no such thing as limitless anything. It does not exist. It is a scientifically impossible principle. Right down to the atom: equal parts negative and positive charges are what fire life. Everything has its balance. Capless "wealth" comes at the expense then of it's opposite, insatiable ravaging that quite literally sucks opportunity from the lowest classes in the most bottom of places, making millions of human lives, that is valuing humanity at a literally less than even average status quo--setting the standard of what is livable--what is HUMAN--at ten cents a day in the factories overseas that finance our vainglory. It sucks, it is disgusting, and that I am a living part of it, if I think too much about it, MAKES ME SICK.) So yeah, though I think that operating within this heartless system is pointless, here is why I am going to vote tomorrow:
Martin Luther King. He was assassinated on April 4, 1968, and his death almost single-handedly stopped in its tracks the momentous roll of the Civil Rights Movement, on the public front. Here's the deal gang. We hear these phrases in this country, like "Black" History or The "Women's" Rights Movement and we take for granted that special interests or movements have all but taken care of themselves, that they are polarized subsets and exist in isolated bans that are far away from us. And so long as we think that, it is true. But the truth is this: Black History, Women's History, this is OUR history. If you are alive and a citizen of the US today then the history of black slavery and subjugation and of the slow and powerful rise of an entire community of Americans from this degraded state is a part of YOUR history too, as an American. If you are an American than the story of the suffragettes and the Equal Rights Amendment that guarantees women the same rights as men and that HAS NOT BEEN PASSED even though it has come up in every congress since 1920!! is a part OF YOUR HISTORY. Period. And if you believe in change, if you believe you can be the change, as King did, as his hero Ghandi taught, or as Lucretia Mott did, or Barack Obama, or Hillary Clinton, or Sarah Palin, each of whom are changing the myth of America by the action, judged good or bad who cares, that each of them are taking--then you are alive and there's hope, there's still a fighting chance out there. To be the change. And to continue to evolve this story of us Americans. Of how good we can be, one by one. These stories aren't over, black history or women's history or our history, all of us, as a Nation, divided but one because the very concept of equality inherently implies differences and thank god for that. I will vote because at the end of the day we all are very different. We all are varied and many in all our beliefs. But thank god we can fight to tell and continue to evolve our stories, our history. Thank god for the many of us still devoted to being the change and for the opportunity to talk about it, to try, if we choose, to live it a little out loud---
at least the hell I've still got the right to actively, and out loud, be that change. So I'll vote for the hope of it, for the power of it, for what I will continue in my heart to believe is right.
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