Monday, November 03, 2014

Go and vote. Period.

Moving back to a swing state in the months leading up to an election, even a midterm, has been interesting.  The "news" was on here the other night and after an ages-long commercial break containing literally nothing but campaign ads, the next story was about yet another campaign ad and whether it was true.  The segment after that was a few minutes of free air time for a couple of local candidates.

Between the flood of emails begging for money and the 24-hour mudslinging, I'm beginning to think that even if all the wrong people get elected, resulting in the most crooked and backwards outcome for each office in play, at least this madness will be over.  Small consolation, but palpable relief nonetheless.

I gassed on earlier about how preposterous amounts of money will be spent lying to us.  I sure wish I could say I was crying wolf. There are local politicians I like, those I consider a lesser evil, and those I dread.  But the bigger, money-soaked picture has been all dread.  Well, save for this fascinating little proposal:
https://mayday.us/

I've embraced the irony; the idea of killing ridiculous political spending by means of ridiculous political spending makes me smile (even if I'm also shaking my head).  If a politician's platform includes stamping out the absurd legal equivalency of money and speech, includes patching up known corruption vectors, includes valuing human citizens even if they aren't billionaires, then he or she has my support.

I hope you agree with that sentiment, wherever you find yourself on America's silly one-dimensional political spectrum.  But even if you don't, I hope you go and vote.  Period.

We have no right to complain about our civilization if we don't exercise our most basic civil liberty.