10/29/04

I’m sure just about everyone both in the US and elsewhere know that the United States is involved in that peculiar phenomenon known in these parts as “election season.” Media pundits have spent the last few months – indeed over two years – trying to second guess the Presidential election. Local media sources have only recently begun hitting us with campaign commercials extolling this or that candidate OR, if you live in California or Arizona, this or that initiative creating new laws or fiscal policy.

Whether it be a choice as to whether or not to free up some of the local sales taxes levied several years ago to pay for freeway systems not yet completed in order to begin installing things like light rail systems (can you tell I just got back from a trip to the Phoenix, AZ area?) or whether or not to require all persons arrested for a felony to have their DNA samples entered irrevocably into a database, the proper exercise of democracy has these regular periods of managed chaos. Most of them bore a lot of people to tears and can cause a sense of “I don’t know what it’s about – best I just say nothing. My vote doesn't count anyway...” apathy.

That’s not a good idea.

The Presidential election of 2000 was decided by a mere five hundred and some odd votes in Florida. That’s a national election in which millions took part – and the tiniest fraction of that number was the key. How anybody could possibly think their vote doesn’t matter when things can get THAT tight is a form of Flat-Earth mentality that I don’t think I’ll ever understand.

Yes, the US has its problems. Yes, the federal government, in OUR names, does things that we personally don’t approve of. Yes, the federal government hides things from us that they don’t think we’d be able to deal with well. Yes, we all gripe and moan about it, viewing the government as a “Them” against whom the “Us” (We The People) has to stand.

But you know what? That last statement – that the government is a Them and we are an Us – is illusion.

Ladies and Gentlemen, that Them was put there by YOUR vote – or lack of it. You can gripe and/or moan ONLY if you voted. If you didn’t vote, then you got what you paid for and should, in this blogger’s opinion, keep your mouth shut. If you didn’t vote last time and didn’t like the results, then get off your butt this time and VOTE.

Think of it this way: if you don’t vote, my vote counts double. Are you SURE you want ME speaking for you? No??? Then speak for yourself, damn it!!

The United States is a democratic republic – where we democratically elect representatives to take responsibility for voting our sensibilities in a republican-style forum. We are a country where the rights of the minority are not capriciously abrogated by a powerful majority – and vice versa. We are a country with a complex and intricate system of checks and balances between three main branches of governmental service: the Executive Branch, with the President, VP and various advisors; the Legislative Branch, with the Senate and the House of Representatives and their various advisors; and the Judicial Branch, with judges and clerks and lawyers. Everything done by one branch touches and is checked by the other two – or, at least, that’s how it’s SUPPOSED to work.

And who are the ones who watch those who run these three branches of civil service?

We are.

Every so often, on a regular schedule, we get to give these folks (or at least the elected ones) a firm idea of whether or not we think they’re doing a good job. If we like what we’ve seen, we vote them another term of office. If we don’t like what we’ve seen, we vote the jerks out of office. We need have no more bloody revolutions to change our government and change the direction our country moves in – we only need an election and an inauguration.

And that’s why getting out to the polls on Election Day and making your voice heard is so important. We are the life’s blood of the democratic element in our society. That means you, and me, and the dimwit down the street.

Democracy – or even a democratic republic – isn’t a civic system that can run well on apathy. Apathy leaves room for special interests to gain a foothold – and those special interests are only interested in one thing. I’ll give you a clue: IT AIN’T THE WELFARE OF THE COUNTRY AS A WHOLE – and you, as an individual, don’t even register on their import meter.

In the end, I really don’t give a darn whether you, my reader, are for this candidate or that – whether you support or oppose this proposition or that. What I DO care about is that you respect your country enough to do the right thing by her. This country, despite all of her problems and attitudes, is a grand place – and it is the practice of asking the common man on the street to raise his hand ‘yea’ or ‘nay’ from time to time that gives us all of the many blessings we Americans enjoy. Each and every one of us owes it to this land to be counted.

Vote your conscience, by all means. Inform yourself and make your voice heard.

A mere two centuries back in our own history, people fought and died for that opportunity – and in other parts of the world today, people still ARE fighting and dying for that privilege.

Don’t squander the riches you were given.

Vote.

Please.

I promise the next blog will be on something light and stream-of-consciousness-related. But this one just HAD to be written. It’s too darned important. -MMB