Make your mark...

Speak softly and carry a big pencil.

A couple days ago I filled out my absentee ballot. I took my pencil and carefully colored in the ovals. Not just a little check mark or X; a fully filled-in space that is MY VOTE. How can such a quiet private act arouse so much feverish hustle and bustle?

We are in the crescendo now. All the brouhaha, all the mayhem, all the bordering on evil stuff that some of these ruffians fabricate to persuade the gullible to fill in the particular ovals that will confer upon them the power they want so badly. They will try any trick in the book (and any trick not in the book) to get what they want.

In the face of adversaries who are willing to ‘win by any means’ I’m not sure how much power all those filled-in little ovals will have. It is my hope that they embody a system that still has enough guardrails and protections to withstand an ambush. I want democrats to win the next election, and win big, so that the inevitable skulduggery will be less effective.

I don’t understand the concept of an undecided voter this time around. There are people who love the orange guy for reasons that are so irrational that no reason applies. And there are those who see this election as a choice between relative sanity and an unrestrained urge for domination—a choice between a nice mid-priced rosé and a shot of pure arsenic.

I understand that people are naturally concerned with what seems immediately beneficial to their lives. I also understand that people can be driven by fears and desires they don’t even know they have. I understand that the less safe and secure people feel about meeting their most basic needs, the easier it is to trick them into believing anything.

The fact that we live in a culture in which lies, damned lies, and advertising have greatly weakened our ability to identify BS doesn’t help.

If you think that you are choosing between different sets of ‘policies’ think again, undecided voter. That’s not what this election is about.

There is a spectrum that has a desire for public service on one end and a desire for power and domination on the other, lubricated by power corrupts and absolute power corrupts absolutely.

If two candidates are sliding around at roughly the same area on this spectrum, then sure, let’s look at their ideas about what matters and what policies they think will be effective. In this case the two candidates, and the two parties, are so far away from each other that the spectrum analogy hardly works. This is Sesame Street’s one of these things is not like the other with only two choices instead of four.

The difference between the two parties at the moment is not liberal/conservative, left/right; it is something much more profound, like okay/craycray. By the way, I am not saying that democrats are perfect; I’m just saying that democrats are closer to understanding cause and effect (sustainability) than the republicans who have truly lost the plot and are wandering in a parched desert without water or a guiding star.

Let’s vote. Let’s see what voting can do. Let’s see if voting can counteract all the ways that some of these players are trying to game the game, game the system. Take your soft quiet pencil and fill in those ovals, fully and completely. Tell your friends to do it too. May sanity and our system of democracy prevail.

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