I’m Not Voting
October 7, 2008 · Posted in General · 7 Comments
I try very, very hard to stay away from social issues on this blog — everyone else does a much better job of it than I do, and quite frankly, most of the time it just doesn’t interest me at all. But I want to break tradition here and say something that will probably inflame some people, irritate others, and that a few will probably find unpatriotic to say the least.Three words: I’m not voting.
The beautiful thing about democracy is that the people get to choose who is going to lead them. In a free democracy, they even have the option to not choose if they like. I’m willfully exercising that right, the right to be silent, the right to not have my voice heard.
I don’t look at it that way, though I know that’s how most people will take it. I see it as speaking very loudly, actually, because it’s not through laziness or apathy that I choose to withold my ballot.
I’m tired of politics. I’m tired of partisan politics, and I’m tired of the mudslinging campaigns that clog the airways. I’m tired of seeing a country divided between red and blue. I’m tired of every web site, radio show, or television show mocking one candidate or the other. I’m tired of hearing so much about why Obama is the worse candidate, instead of why McCain is the better candidate, and vice versa.
The reason — as I see it, at least — that the media polarizes the country into red and blue and that the candidates attack each other so viciously is that the public eats it up. We fall for it, hook line and sinker. It’s not about who has the better ideas to run this country, it’s about who can convince the population that the other candidate would be a stupid choice. It’s not about trying to make this country better, it’s about trying to get one party in over the other, regardless of the cost.
I don’t want to support that. I don’t want my vote to be counted as one more reason to run a smear campaign. I don’t want to be one more person trying to get one party into power over the other party.
When the nominees were finally announced, I was happy. We were going to have either a black president or a woman vice president. Either way it was going to be a first. Instead, we just have another campaign of mockery and attacks.
Get this: the first time I heard Sarah Palin’s name was in a topic posted to criticize her on a message board dedicated to discussing suicide (don’t ask why I was there; wasn’t a good time for me). People are talking about “exiting,” as they call it, and still there’s people who think so vehemently about a vice presidential candidate that, instead of trying to help someone who’s about to kill themselves, they’ll post messages about how evil this person is. Am I the only one who sees something wrong with this picture?
I know I could always do the write in thing. I’ve thought about that, but seriously, who’s ever going to hear about it? How is that going to make the slightest difference in the world? At least if I’m willing to vocalize that I’m not going to vote, most of the time it’ll piss people off, because it’s considered unpatriotic. Pissing someone off must be a good tactic for spreading a belief, otherwise every candidate would be running some kind of “My opponent is a good person, who’s never done anything wrong, but I promise to do <insert political issue here>.”
Let me know when that happens, and the odds are better than even money that I’ll be one of the first at the polls.
We have enough negativity in this world. There’s enough cynicism, enough bad mouthing and criticism. We don’t need the future leader of our country contributing to that.
Been a While…
Just realized that it’s been over a month since I last posted; figured it might be time for a little bit of an update here. Let’s see….For starters, I’ve all but forgotten about Like Glass and writing in general. Not that I don’t want to, it’s just that there’s way too much other crap going on right now. Maybe in a couple of months once things get sorted out.
And it’s official: Patti and I are moving back to El Paso. Next Friday is going to be my last day at my current employer. I’m flying down there for a couple of weeks to get familiar with the company, then coming back up here for about a week to tie up whatever loose ends we might have.
Things are really weird around work now because of that, and it’s probably just me. It’s very much so a “lame duck” period — there isn’t much point in getting started on anything major, and there isn’t really anything minor to work on. Sure, there’s always documentation, but seriously, who documents their code? That’s not something real developers worry about, I mean c’mon…
It’ll be nice to get back home. The weather up here’s been quite schizophrenic, going from snowing during the first official week of spring to around the 60’s this past week. El Paso’s got some strange weather too, but I dunno … I don’t seem to be able to handle the cold like everyone else. In El Paso, it’ll storm like a hurricane for twenty minutes, then be the most beautiful day you’ve ever seen for a few hours. Then it’ll get windy for a while, then another storm, then back to being nice and clear. Maybe it’s just because that’s what I grew up with, but that’s easier for me to deal with.
Another thing I’m looking forward to is the lack of politics back there. At least, the crowd I used to hang out with — and Patti’s family as well, if I remember correctly — weren’t very political. I can’t seem to get away from it up here. And I’m sure it’s just my imagination — I’m sure not everyone up here really cares a tick about liberals or conservatives — but it seems like it to me.
Even my own mother’s become quite political in the time since she’s lived up here — I think it’s probably mostly because of the guy she’s with now, who’s quite conservative. And that’s one of the things that really gets under my skin. I consider myself an “extreme moderate”, leaning towards being a liberal I guess. For the most part, I really don’t care what happens in D.C. Hell, I don’t really care what happens in Olympia (or, rather, Austin now). If asked, yeah, I support gay marriages. I’m also pro-life. I’m all for universal health care but I want the government to keep their hands out of things as much as possible. I’m for assisted suicide, and against organized religion.
At the same time, that’s putting it too black and white. I really don’t care enough about any of that stuff to worry about it. It just doesn’t interest me, sorry, and you can say what you will about how it should interest me, how it should be important to me. It just doesn’t. And quite frankly, I’m tired of hearing about liberal this and conservative that. It’s old. People have their own ideas, that may or may not fit under a certain dogma. People may even have their entire belief structure under one umbrella term like either of those words. I don’t though, and most of the people I know personally don’t either.
Okay, enough of a build up here. What’s been eating at me lately — really eating away at me — is that my own mother has taken to fighting the conservative fight. For the most part, like I said: it doesn’t bother me. But a couple of weekends ago, Patti and I were over there for dinner (a rare event in it’s own right, especially with my sister and her husband there as well), and somehow the conversation moved to a point where I could mention that I listen to NPR on the way to work and the way home. I like NPR — the station up here at least. They have a lot of interesting stories that seem mostly apolitical (seriously, how controversial could the Seattle Times food critic be?), and the news coverage seems — to me at least — to be a lot less biased than a lot of the other news stations around. That and there’s no commercials, which is probably the main reason I listen to it.
I mention that though, and she (and her significant other as well, mind you) gets this disgusted look on her face. “Ugh. Why would you want to listen to that? They’re so liberal.“ Probably not verbatim, but whatever — that was the gist of it.
So I still listen to NPR every morning and ever afternoon, but there’s this little part in the back of my mind that keeps saying “You shouldn’t listen to that — it’s liberal.” WTF? It’s just a damned news broadcast. It’s stories about Americans — not liberal or conservative or republican or democrat or whatever, but “people” who did something that may or may not be noteworthy.
Anyways, that’s one thing I can’t wait to leave. I need to get running here though — it’s a little late and I’m not feeling too hot today (think I’m coming down with a nice weather-change-induced bug).
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