Voting

VOTE, VOTE, VOTE.  “It doesn’t make a difference where your political leanings are, it’s important everyone vote.  Our forefathers, blah, blah, blah.” It’s very important to me or us, how you vote and if it’s not with us, we’d just as soon you stayed home on election day.  Oh, I support the patriotic fervor as much as the next guy, that everyone should be involved. Who doesn’t enjoy a spirited political debate? However, cast your mind back if you will and collect the name(s) of anyone having had an epiphany and realizing, they’ve been wrong all this time and you’re spot on in your political assessments.  The midterm elections luckily put winners and losers in their place prior to the holiday season. With the election results in, there is time for the ‘losers’ to manufacture elaborate excuses to avoid family dinners, get togethers and so forth. The winners, hone their insults, barbs and other debilitating verbal attacks in front of a mirror, sometimes to the dismay of their spouses, sometimes with them.  They prepare with the same mental focus as a football player zoning into their pre-kickoff aggression zone blankly, while their ankles are shaved.

 

None of this affects  “cousin Jack,” whom every family has.  Jack laments the end of Falstaff beer and alternately swills the ‘now’ cheapest brew on the market.  That is of course until Thanksgiving dinner at whomever’s. Jack, a naturally abrasive soul accelerates to horse’s ass extraordinaire, after his fourth manhattan. He vigorously attacks  everyone’s political, religious and/or sexual orientation at the holiday table, not at the table, alive or dead. Cousin Jack unfortunately cannot tell you the governor of his state, has no inclinations on religious or spiritual leanings whatsoever and is blacklisted by dating services.  

 

But I digress.  Voting is, by its very nature divisive.  I want one thing and you want the other. Division and diversity are healthy components of the political spectrum, only if that division is mended at least to a degree and the diversified aspects are employed in a manner progressive, and not combatant.  A division of sorts will always be underlying, but when the focus becomes victory at any and all costs and the antagonism grows to irreparable hatred, civil unrest will ensue.  When the hatred is fed by propaganda and/or honestly held beliefs, that one side is righteous and supported by a higher power, people will proudly march to their death to defend their hatred in the name of their  flag or their god, right or wrong.

 

Events will be recorded from the  winner’s perspective. Any lessons learned, cast aside and history will continue to repeat itself.  This is not going out on a limb, or a daring prognostication, but rather, an elementary observation of human nature.  We will continue our self annihilation and even crank it up a notch because we are intelligent, but much too taken with our guile, to learn from our past.  If this makes you uncomfortable, I suppose you could still vote.