Hello. Hi. How are you?
You're wrong.
I was recently spurred to document my feelings on this issue, it being election
season and all. Here's the deal. I understand how you feel. Really, I do. For the longest time, I could have cared less about politics. I wasn't registered to vote for a while, and I didn't much care. I thought it was fun to make fun of the President when he did something stupid. I didn't know who my Congressman was. I did know who Bob Packwood was! But only because of the smutty news about him. I saw ‘Democrat’ and ‘Republican’ and thought it strange that these two parties took strange names and failed to be anything like a Republic or Democracy in their running or their issues and summarily ignored them.
The thing is, I have had an epiphany. One day, I Got it. That day was the day I finally understood that, while it was bliss to be ignorant, it wasn't in my best interests. I realized that, if I wanted to complain, if I wanted to speak out, and I had a problem with someone in charge of me, it became my responsibility, my duty to make sure that I had a say in giving those people that power.
Sometimes, it's bad. Sometimes, I have no idea who I'm voting for. Thankfully, in Oregon, we have the ability to research all the races before we vote. I can sit down and read about each person and figure out who I want to represent me. Which is great. I wish everyone had that opportunity. But I have it, and I am responsibile to use it.
Change is slow. I have my own vision about how this country should be run. Others have theirs. Change happens, but it happens slow. I can't find a candidate that will do everything I want. But I can find a candidate that will probably do some of the things I want. There might be more than one, so I can find one that will do more of the things I want. This is how we change things. Slowly, steadily, and in the proper direction.
The problem with the crowd of people that declare that ‘They're all the same, so I don't vote!’ is that they're wrong. They're uneducated about the people, process, and world they live in. They reside in a little bubble world where they have depowered themselves and convinced themselves they have no say in how things work. And they like that. Sometimes, they convince themselves that they're actually empowering themselves by not voting and not supporting a corrupt system! Yeah! fight the man! The problem is the people voting in in these cases are the sort of people that would tell these self-empowered twits to get a haircut and a real job. Rarely do the two groups have idealogical similarities.
However, here, in the real world, the adult world, we have come to a realization: It ain't perfect. It ain't perfect, but it's the best we have. It ain't perfect, it's the best we have, and it'll have to do. It ain't perfect, it's the best we have, it'll have to do for now -- but maybe I can make it better. See that little twinge of hope? As adults, we recognize that the world is flawed. We can rail and rant and growl and grow our hair out and fight the man and live in all sorts of denial about how things aren't the way we want them, but sadly, rarely have facial piercings and oily long black hair changed the world. We admit this to ourselves, as much as we'd like to rail and rant and scream and gnash our teeth and the unfairness of the world, we know it's not fair, and we move on.
We move on to the world where it's not fair, but we're adults, that is just the way it is. Life sucks. A lot. It's hard. It's hard and sucky and painful and crappy and overall, an unpleasant experience. But, it's better than the alternative. Unless you're emo, then the alternative is golden*. And despite all that awful, we adults sometimes think that maybe we can make the place a little bit better. We have a vision of how things ought to be. The world as seen through the eyes of a visionary is something new and unique and rare and wonderful and never valued by anyone, let alone the visionary.
And what happens when we're given a chance to maybe inch this shitty, crap-filled, awful, painful, gloomy, hostile world towards that perfect vision, one candidate at a time? We adults sit down and we make a decision. We look and we see and we research and we pick someone that represents some or most of our vision. Sometimes, a lot of people with a similar vision get together and pick someone that also has a similar vision. Political parties are born! But, people are human, and humans are stupid. And wrong. And they make mistakes. And no two humans have the exact same vision of the world as it ought to be.
We adults go into these decisions knowing this. We know our candidate is flawed. To claim otherwise is just as stupid as claiming the other guy is evil. Unless the other guy is summoning demons and devouring children on television, ain't nothing evil about 'em. You just disagree with him. But, we decide. We pick someone that we think represents us. Or represents us more than someone else. Sometimes, we just give up, finding our vision doesn't mesh with anyone, and we write in ‘Rosencrantz’ and ‘Gildenstern’ and so forth.
But we don't declare that they're all the same. We don't say that we're not going to make a decision. And we certaintly don't pretend that by refusing to make a decision, we're somehow better than the adults in the world that can make decisions.
*Note to my emo fans: Down the alley not across the street, everyone will be happier when you're gone.