In Election Times
I should not be paying any attention to the current elections, which are now just two days from finally wrapping up. They have always been a source of too much anxiety and pain, no matter which way they eventually went, though Republican success has been so great through all my adult life that usually I have voted for the losing side.
I always know for years ahead how I will vote, and so I am completely unlike those hordes who up to the last minute have the luxury of being among the highly sought-after Undecideds, the existence of whom I have no understanding and for which I have even less feeling. From the very beginning I have never had a choice, just as I have had no choice when it came to my physical features and in many other aspects as well.
Even if I could've voted on the day of my birth, it would not have been for H. Hoover, he of Great Depression infamy, just as today there's another Republican in the White House who, among many other high crimes and misdemeanors, has helped set the stage for a second disaster of that kind though quite possibly on an even larger scale, while another man is running hard to follow, for all his denials, in that man's exact footsteps.
I will vote for the Democrat every time.
For me, all my life, the Big Issue has always been Civil Rights, and everything else spreads out from there and is linked with it. That's because, unlike the majority of other American citizens, I was born without the basic civil rights that all of those others could and still can take for granted, and so now an always uncomfortable number of them can choose political candidates for President and other lesser offices for what strike me as often being the most picayune reasons, when compared to Civil Rights, which are at the heart of what the United States is supposed to be all about, though that principle is ignored and denied at every turn, because it doesn't conform with the personal comforts of too many in the majority.
I find that when thinking about voting I take the party much more into consideration than I do whoever is running. Some people think it's the height of cleverness to assert that they don't see any difference between the two major parties. But for me the difference is as stark as night and day, and that consists of the parties' attitudes toward Civil Rights.
I would insist that the great success of the Republican Party since the 1960's is mainly and possibly even purely due to the fact that it is understood but never openly stated that Republicans are pledged to stand in the way of Rainbows (aka black people, et. al) getting any more rights than the ones that they now so tenuously enjoy, while the Republicans are committed to rolling back, by any means they can contrive, the Rights that were so painfully won.
One of those rights is the one to vote, and so these days we see Republican operatives working with might and main to keep American citizens -- other than the ones that they consider to be real Americans and thus the country's only real people -- from voting. Just here in Virginia, leaflets have been distributed in the Tidewater saying that Republicans will vote this coming Tuesday while Democrats are supposed to wait till the next day. And probably every state has its own brand of chicanery waiting or already in effect, in the effort to install yet another illicit Republican administration.
It doesn't speak well for a country that it not only permits a party to operate on bases like that but even continues to think of it as being a perfectly respectable entity, when, by all the principles of common decency it is not.
And so for me every election is a scary moment when there is always the threat that once again the Nation will not adhere to its own high ideals, which this time it has a bigger chance than usual of observing, by choosing B. Obama, partly because of who he is but mainly because that choice will follow those American high ideals that exist on paper but run into difficulties when it comes to being put into practice.
I always know for years ahead how I will vote, and so I am completely unlike those hordes who up to the last minute have the luxury of being among the highly sought-after Undecideds, the existence of whom I have no understanding and for which I have even less feeling. From the very beginning I have never had a choice, just as I have had no choice when it came to my physical features and in many other aspects as well.
Even if I could've voted on the day of my birth, it would not have been for H. Hoover, he of Great Depression infamy, just as today there's another Republican in the White House who, among many other high crimes and misdemeanors, has helped set the stage for a second disaster of that kind though quite possibly on an even larger scale, while another man is running hard to follow, for all his denials, in that man's exact footsteps.
I will vote for the Democrat every time.
For me, all my life, the Big Issue has always been Civil Rights, and everything else spreads out from there and is linked with it. That's because, unlike the majority of other American citizens, I was born without the basic civil rights that all of those others could and still can take for granted, and so now an always uncomfortable number of them can choose political candidates for President and other lesser offices for what strike me as often being the most picayune reasons, when compared to Civil Rights, which are at the heart of what the United States is supposed to be all about, though that principle is ignored and denied at every turn, because it doesn't conform with the personal comforts of too many in the majority.
I find that when thinking about voting I take the party much more into consideration than I do whoever is running. Some people think it's the height of cleverness to assert that they don't see any difference between the two major parties. But for me the difference is as stark as night and day, and that consists of the parties' attitudes toward Civil Rights.
I would insist that the great success of the Republican Party since the 1960's is mainly and possibly even purely due to the fact that it is understood but never openly stated that Republicans are pledged to stand in the way of Rainbows (aka black people, et. al) getting any more rights than the ones that they now so tenuously enjoy, while the Republicans are committed to rolling back, by any means they can contrive, the Rights that were so painfully won.
One of those rights is the one to vote, and so these days we see Republican operatives working with might and main to keep American citizens -- other than the ones that they consider to be real Americans and thus the country's only real people -- from voting. Just here in Virginia, leaflets have been distributed in the Tidewater saying that Republicans will vote this coming Tuesday while Democrats are supposed to wait till the next day. And probably every state has its own brand of chicanery waiting or already in effect, in the effort to install yet another illicit Republican administration.
It doesn't speak well for a country that it not only permits a party to operate on bases like that but even continues to think of it as being a perfectly respectable entity, when, by all the principles of common decency it is not.
And so for me every election is a scary moment when there is always the threat that once again the Nation will not adhere to its own high ideals, which this time it has a bigger chance than usual of observing, by choosing B. Obama, partly because of who he is but mainly because that choice will follow those American high ideals that exist on paper but run into difficulties when it comes to being put into practice.
posted by Carl (aka Sofarsogoo) | 5:10 PM
1 Comments:
It's almost over; it's almost over; it's almost over. I am not sure I can handle the stress for another 36 hours, so I understand where you are coming from.
Good luck to us. Good luck to America!
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