Why're You Voting?
So many polls. It's a horse-race. Does it matter? Do you care? Are you over?
Does this election matter to you? Are you invested in its outcome? Or are you undecided? Has anxiety set in and are you suffering from political overload? Or have you just blown the whole thing off? Is election day the end of it? Or start?
I use fb for liking family pics and trolling fragile friends. Trolling both ways - I’m binary that way - I usually get feedback or blowback. I’m good with either. My post this morning (below) got neither. My attempt at civil discourse fell flat.
I don’t think we want a middle ground right now. I feel both sides walking straight up to the line and spitting on the other side. I see yard signs for a candidate in places I wouldn’t imagine seeing.
Which is a telling sign. Subtle but telling. Carrying a flag for your guy/gal at the pier in Huntington Beach is one thing. Planting it in your front yard is quite another. They say the bravest fool is the second one, for just one fool is crazy.
We have, as a friend on fb repeats to me, 65 million built-in sheep-votes for each side. Makes sense, as most people are on autopilot, and critical thinking invades their personal space.
That’s mildly ok, as many are products of mass-production society. Food, drink, sex, entertainment, knowledge, and politics are all neatly packaged and easily ingestible. Not always digestible, but eternally easy to shove down the gob-hole.
I am soliciting any takes, interviews, back-and-forths, rap sessions, Q & A’s, or whatever you have in mind. No pain or humiliation please. Here’s a baker’s dozen of questions - answer one or all. Or a couple.
Are you voting?
In person day-of or early ballot?
Long-time voter or first-time or in-between?
Totally involved or casually interested voter?
Know the issues or vote the vibe?
Listen to celebrity endorsements?
Follow newspaper endorsements?
Have you changed your voting party preference in the last cycle?
College-educated? Blue-collar?
One issue voter?
Ingest multiple media platforms?
Political extrovert or introvert?
Share the same view as peer group?
Please, listen to curtis harding - it will strike a chord somewhere in your soul.
Reach out to me, I want to hear what you say
Ric
I reccomend you And have been for two plus years. I just cannot wait for this election to be over. I just hope it is an honest election. Hope.
I already voted early. Inasmuch as I care about the results, I voted for the school board candidate who pledged to raise property taxes, because I have two kids in my local public school and as much as contempt as I have for my second ex wife who works in the same district, I would rather she be paid fairly. Inasmuch as I care about the presidential, I voted against the candidate who endangered my friends who live and work in the Capitol on 1/6/21.
I have also worked in professional politics for two decades, and I can assure you and all of your readers that West Wing was a fantasy and real life politics is Veep with more drinking. The United States is not really a cohesive nation state with a strong central government and never has been. It is more like an accidentally ultra wealthy Holy Roman Empire or European Union. We are absolutely not a representative democracy, we are a creaky coalition of fifty representative democracies each of which votes every four years on who gets to control the army.
It is entirely understandable to refrain from voting on these or any other grounds. It is also understandable to vote any way one wishes for any kind of reason. These are just mine. But in no case should one feel especially invested in voting, whether for oneself or anyone else. Live your life by whatever religion and/or code you wish, and that is the extent of the social power you can realistically wield.