One can’t help but feel pain over what the citizens of Flint, Michigan, are going through, as many of their children have been poisoned with lead. That pain morphs into anger as it becomes evident that the undemocratically appointed emergency manager switched the source of potable water from the Great Lakes to the polluted Flint River to save $15 million.
That $15 million will cost Michigan taxpayers $1.5 billion—that’s the price of repairing the damage caused by the corrosive water flowing through old pipes. Absent Rachel Maddow’s excellent act of journalism, the story might have remained buried.
But the people of Flint, Michigan, are far from alone—and they are not entirely blameless.
A bright young high school student graduates from high school and realizes that mom and dad do not have the means to send her to college. The parents make too much money for her to get a grant or a government-backed loan. But not to worry, the private banking system is there to loan her all the money she needs. So she becomes a teacher—and realizes that loan is an anchor preventing her from buying a home or a car.
An engineer has been working for some time with her firm. While both she and her husband are still paying off their student loans, they move into their starter home. They decide it’s time for a family—but she realizes that she cannot afford to have a baby and go on unpaid maternity leave.
A young woman goes onto the healthcare.gov website. She inserts her income into the website and for the first time in her young adult life, she realizes that just maybe she can afford health insurance. She can now take care of many health issues she knows she needs to address. But then she realizes she lives in one of the Republican states that refused to accept the already-paid for Medicaid Expansion to the Affordable Care Act. She now has to make the choice between being able to pay her bills, or purchasing insurance without a subsidy. States like Texas have implicitly sentenced many of their citizens to death.
Right-wing ideologues are methodically killing and terrorizing Americans from South Carolina to Louisiana to California to Texas to Oregon to Colorado—and more. They believe their country is leaving them behind. As low information consumers, their gullibility is used as a conduit of deflection. Their media sources prey on their gullibility, and embolden their irrationality.
These are examples of serious problems within our country—but not once was the word vote used. Yet Americans are directly responsible for every single one of those problems, whether they voted or not.
Michiganders voted for a governor who never hid that he is a conservative, austerity-promoting, and cost cut-loving ideologue. Americans elected a right-wing, conservative, willfully destructive Congress and Senate that is anathema to a government that supports social programs which make a society better for all its people. Texas and other red states elected governors who basically promised the death of many of their citizens from denial of health insurance that was available for the taking.
Americans throughout the country have chosen to ignore, for ideological reasons, politicians who stir up the innermost fears of many who believe they are falling behind—not because of an extractive plutocracy, but because of some immigrant, foreigner, or “other.”
If you knowingly voted for the wrong politician, you are complicit. That is obvious. If you voted for the right politician who won or lost—you may still be complicit. Why? As your brother’s keeper, it is incumbent on you to encourage him or her to vote their interests. And if you didn’t vote at all, you are complicit for a lack of responsibility that has cost lives.
Many books have been written that try to explain why people don’t vote, or vote against their own interests. What’s the Matter with Kansas and The Political Brain both come to mind. While these books explain the pathology, they don’t place the responsibility where it really belongs: With the voter, the non-voter, and the ill-advised voter.
Americans must educate themselves. They must come to the realization of the importance and the power of their vote. They must understand that they are directly and indirectly responsible for the problems that afflict the country. Most importantly, they must understand that none of these problems are yet irreversible—if they do their part.
Vote locally, statewide, and nationally. Your life depends on it.