Obligatory Election Post

tyunglebower ♦ November 5, 2012 ♦ 2 Comments

I intend to vote for President Obama. I don’t know if he will win. Most polling seems to indicate that in the final week or so things are trending his way, especially in the crucial Ohio. (No Republican so far has ever been elected president without winning Ohio. Ever.) Still, I am not sure who is going to end up on top.

I believe in my heart that Mitt Romney is a duplicitous fake with questionable morals. A sleaze who will clearly say anything at any time in order to get elected. Before he was the candidate, a great many Republicans felt exactly the same way. Go review the primary election season if you don’t believe me. (Not that any of the others seeking the nomination were in any way better people.)

There is ample proof that he doesn’t know what position he will hold on an issue until he wakes up and reads polling along with his breakfast. The rare positions that he holds which are consistent generally have to do with subjecting women to archaic laws, denying civil rights to homosexuals, and displaying not even the slightest understanding of what it means to be any thing but super rich in this country. His election would be quite bad for many people in this country, including, sadly, most that intend to vote for him.

The only reason I have heard even up to this very day to vote for Mitt Romney is that you hate Barack Obama. I’m an intelligent man, folks, and I have not heard one Republican mouthpiece express a single reason why they want Mitt Romney other than he is not Obama. (Maybe a few because he is, allegedly “pro-life”, which is humerous in its own right.)

So unlike in years gone by, there is no intelligent reason to vote for the other candidate. Sorry if that is being unilateral. So is half of what Mitt Romney says. That’s the way the game is played in a world where the Republican machine allowed biggots and lunatics like Sarah Palin to hijack their party in order to get more press. Maybe the party will return one day to merely being the opposition. But for now, they are the party of hate, ignorance, (intentional or otherwise) and laziness.

So, Barack Obama is a decent man, a far better man than Mitt Romney  and whose presidency would mean the most good for the most people, (even most of those who will vote for Romney.)

With that established, I’m not as excited to vote as previously in my life. Even if it were not a close election, I believe I’d feel the same way. I believe it is clear that even if the only decent man in this race, and the only intelligent choice (President Obama) wins tomorrow, the nasty, hate-riddled violence in this nation’s discourse will continue. Probably get worse as calls for armed revolution against the government by those who will have lost the election start to make the news. (Think that’s fiction? Take a look at some of the rallies held by “mainstream” Republican candidates during the 2010 midterm elections and see if you feel the same way.) Blame whoever you want for that, it is clearly the new, tea-infused Republicans responsible for 95% of it. And it will flare up worse in the event of an Obama victory.

In a way I’d love to see all those types get really pissed off. So smug, so sure of themselves, so angry and hateful, and yet…so gun-toting. Scary.

The point is, that will continue, even if better policies for our nation are in place. (Which with President Obama they will be, as they have been so far.)

That is reason number one why I am not as on fire for voting as I once was.

Another is that in the last few months, several people I know personally have experienced tragedy. A few others have had close calls. No election will change any of that, of course. Ever. I realize that in and of itself the fact that people I know have experienced bad things is not a reason to stop voting, and I’m not going to stop voting. Too many people have risked too much to protect my right to do so for me to stop.

But in the wake of certain kinds of pain and suffering and fear,( the kind that I have grown increasingly anxious about in the last few years), I can’t get excited about who wins an election. I can get sickened and scared of the prospect of a bad man winning, but even in that unfortunate event, what changes regarding that to which I am referring? The best economic policy on earth (which Romney obviously does not have) won’t change those things. I’ve said before that I suspect I may have the symptoms of clinical anxiety, so some of this may hit me harder than it should right now. But whatever the case, I confess to feeling a bit of detachment from the whole process now.

I will vote, and so should you. But I ask myself, on a policy or a spiritual level, does an election change anything? I confess, when I think about particular lives, I am saying “no” more and more with every subsequent election…even as I make my informed choice every time.