There is a bit of a pie fight going on in the voters-let-Hillary-down diary on the rec list right now, and I was all ready to add my 2-line comment, until it turned into 50 lines, and now I realize I am doomed to staying up too late again and writing a diary that only 3 people are going to read, and I should be doing something more productive like checking my fantasy football lineup or moving my shirts over into the dryer, and it’s going to seem like a simple, naive point and everybody knows this already, but...
For me, the main point that rises above the pie fight over there is this one:
Americans don't value what they have and are unwilling to even leave their homes to vote for it, much less fight for it.
When I read that, I got that same sort of dagger-just-under-the-sternum feeling that I got when Trump was elected.
It certainly unnerves me that there were lots of people willing to vote for Trump despite all of the open xenophobia, misogyny, mendacity, and disdain for American values like freedom of the press and due process of law. My wife and daughter cried about that. I couldn’t sleep because of that.
But even more unnerving is that there were 100 million people who could have gone to vote but did not. Now, I know some of those people were truly unable, and that’s one thing. But a lot of them either couldn’t be bothered or had some sort of “message” to send.
If you want to cast your ballot for Jill Stein or Bernie Sanders or Gary Johnson or Lady Gaga or yourself or even friggin’ Trump, that’s your right, and I respect your decision to do it. I might not agree with the strategy, or I might be utterly repulsed by your choice, but you still got off your ass and did the government-by-the-people thing and tried to keep it from perishing from the earth, and good for you then. Me and you yelling at each other over what we think the country should be about … is what the country should be about.
But you can’t just sit like the people who sat, because they weren’t pleased as punch with each and every one of the choices. Despite the ironic truth that it is their right to abstain, in my mind not one of those people has a right to complain about anything their government does or does not do over the next four years. You didn’t vote? I don’t want to hear it. Whatever it is, you deserve it. Because you asked for it.
You can write a 500-page treatise explaining why your views are the cat’s meow and how we should all bask in your erudite magnanimity. Enjoy your apotheosis into the pantheon of illustriousness, but I’ll go back to it. If you didn’t vote, and Paul Ryan takes away your health care, I don’t care how enlightened you are. You deserve it. Because you asked for it.
I read before the election that Colin Kaepernick decided that the best way for him to send a message (which is otherwise a legitimate and important one, but one he keeps managing to undermine by redirecting the focus to himself) was to not vote at all, and I was taken aback by the self-defeating nature of that. So Colin, when you find yourself stopped and frisked at the hands of Attorney General Giuliani, I hate to say it, and I’m going to get s**t on for this, but it’s hard for me to feel a whole lot of sympathy for you. Because you asked for it.
When I talk to people from Iran — who, if you have ever read my comments here, you know I think are the nicest and most thoughtful, intelligent people you could ever hope to meet — they tell me that the theocracy came to power there because liberal-minded people like them sat back and let it happen out of either apathy or the feeling that maybe these new guys would at least shake things up. It would have been relatively hard for them to do anything about it, but they kick themselves for not having spoken up and being more active.
But we have it easy here. All we have to do is show up and vote. If that’s too much to ask, then we deserve whatever we get. I’m talking to Bernie-or-busters and I’m also talking to Never-Trump-GOPers. I’m talking to all-a-yall out there. Like, enjoy your purity or self-righteousness or Miley Cyrus tweets or Pokemon Go or whatever it was that kept you from the voting booth.
But when something gets yanked out from under you, whether that’s Roe v. Wade or the bridge you happen to be driving on, don’t complain to me. You deserve it. Because you asked for it.