The Flaming Torch - My Vote and Yours
Today I will be driving from my home in Patterson to Modesto, carrying my absentee ballot, which I have completed, but did not have time to mail. My destination is the county voter registration office, where I can hand my sealed ballot to an election official. Why am I doing that? To make sure my vote gets counted.
Why do I vote? Because there are people in power who don't want me to.
I am not going to name parties or names (do I really have to?), but in the past and today, people and organizations have discouraged and prevented Americans from voting. Historically, neither political party has been exempt from these practices; ask any Civil Rights veteran of the 1960's. More recently, low voter turn-out in prevous elections has helped that a misguided and destructive adminstration grab power and stay in power. Long enough to start an unwanted war and run the US economy into the ground.
A basic tactic of the power-holders and the power-hungry is to convince citizens not to participate in elections. This goes along with increasing restriction and destruction of Constitutional rights. If the majority in a country are economically beaten down, frightenened, discouraged and lied to enough, they cease to hope and they cease to vote. That is what the rulers want.
An apathetic, powerless constituency will not challenge even the most insane of government actions. A democratic republic slowly degenerates into an oligarchy, where few rule and many suffer. Those who rule know this well. They depend on it. They do everything they can to alienate and discourage the electorate, enlisting cynics in the opposition who joining them in crying that voting is rigged, useless, and the only answer to social injustice is violence.
Does voting make a difference? Look at the 2000 election where a few thousand mishandled ballots in Florida placed US foreign policy on a disastrous course toward war in Iraq. Look at the low voter turnout in 2004, where apathy and exhaustion gave the adminstration wht they saw as a mandate to continue the Iraq war and threaten Iran. Yes, voting makes a difference. Why else would those in power try to suppress it?
Denying people the right to vote is not just a tactic used in the 1960's South. This cruel and ugly beast reared its head in the last elections and is threatening this one. A side who thinks it is losing has pulled out the stops on voter suppression dirty tricks.
They've done it In Ohio, where the administration unsuccessfully attempted to have 200,000 new voters stricken from the rolls. In New Mexico, where private detectives hired by politicos intimidated poor and Hispanic voters (in their homes!) by asking them questions that intimated that they had no right to vote. In California, where phony petitions misled people into registering for the wrong party. In Florida (again!) where absentee ballots were thrown in the trash. In Virginia, where voters were given flyers telling them to vote on the wrong day.
And I am sure that before this election ends, there will be more. Much more.
That is why I am hand-carrying my ballot to the Elections Office. I want it to be counted and to speak out against the forces that are turning this country into a war-hungry oligarchy and a plutocracy, where a tiny super-rich group of individuals and companies suck the life from the rest, not heeding the fact that a parasite that kills its host will soon die.
Not to vote, for whatever reason, is to say yes to the destructive pillaging of our government and economy. Not to vote is to deny hope for change. Not to vote is to give in and say that representative democracy doesn't work and this great human experiment has failed. That we don't deserve the freedom our ancestors fought for. Not to vote is walk meekly into the dungeons and concentration camps that those who would exploit us have gleefully prepared.
To vote is to lift a flaming torch in defiance of those who would deny liberty, equality, justice, and hope.
If you are angry, as I am, at what you and your country have endured in recent years, defy the forces that would feed on us. Lift your flaming torch and VOTE.
links:
Blog the vote:
http://www.chasingray.com/...
http://www.rathascourage.com/...