Posted by Bunny.
Hi. Today is "Election Day" here in the U.S., also known as "Choose Your Leaders From a Pre/Self-Selected Group of People Who Are Better Than You Day". And if today is like other recent election days, about half the eligible people in the U.S. will not vote. Why not? Some possible reasons:
• "hate all the candidates"
• "don't HATE them per se but still sickened by idea of actually voting for any of them"
• "they're all the same/crooks/liars/etc."
• "won't make a difference"
• "don't care"
• "too busy"
• lazy
• sleepy
• ominous gloomy feeling
• "life already seems good enough so it's not worth the effort"
• "voting is just a tool to distract you from real democracy, man!"
• can't find car keys
• doughnuts
Cats are barred from voting in U.S. elections in all 50 states. Prisoners aren't allowed to vote in almost every state. Ex-felons aren't allowed to vote in most states. Children, all 50 states. "Undocumented" people same. Certain crazy people, et cetera. All of which, in my opinion, sucks. But the biggest bunch of people who aren't allowed to vote are everybody else in the world. Which is ridiculous, considering this is the United States of America. Don't get me wrong, I don't think I should be allowed to vote in Iraq's elections. But I think they should be allowed to vote in ours. Actually I've been saying this is a good idea for years and then recently I saw that guy Zizek stole my idea, saying it on TV like it was his idea. Oh yeah, another good idea would be to link voting to knowing-and-doing, although that probably wouldn't work in a country like the U.S. since hardly anybody knows or does anything.
Here is a thing I got in my e-mail this morning from the Common Dreams people, with the subject heading "It's Okay to be Impossible! Vote!" It's an excerpt of an interesting speech given by Bill Moyers this past Saturday:
"But let's be clear: Even with most Americans on our side, the odds are long. Money fights hard, and it fights dirty. Think Rove. The Chamber. The Kochs. We may lose. It all may be impossible. But it's OK if it's impossible. You heard me right. I've learned something about this from the former farmworker and labor organizer Baldemar Velasquez. The members of his Farm Labor Organizing Committee are a long way from the world of K Street lobbyists. But they took on the Campbell Soup Company - and won. They took on North Carolina growers - and won, using transnational organizing tactics that helped win Velasquez a "genius" award from the MacArthur Foundation. And now they're taking on no less than R. J. Reynolds Tobacco and one of its principle financial sponsors, JPMorgan-Chase. Some people question the wisdom of taking on such powerful interests, but here's what Velasquez says: "It's OK if it's impossible; it's OK! Now I'm going to speak to you as organizers. Listen carefully. The object is not to win. That's not the objective. The object is to do the right and good thing. If you decide not to do anything, because it's too hard or too impossible, then nothing will be done, and when you're on your death bed, you're gonna say, ‘I wish I had done something.' But if you go and do the right thing NOW, and you do it long enough good things will happen - something's gonna happen..."
There's a few things about this that bug me, but I agree with Mr. Velasquez 100% about doing the right thing even if it seems impossible. That's a good idea too. Essential.
Okay, today's blog entry was very disorganized but sometimes I think it's okay to just rant for a few minutes.
CATS = NO VOTE = UNFAIR.
~Bunny.