In 1964 The Lyndon Johnson presidential campaign released an AD designed to shake the voter to his/her core. Simple in its premise it opens with a three-year old counting petals on a daisy, as the camera pan to a close up of the little girls face the counting changes to a countdown followed by a Nuclear bomb exploding. The narrative ends with the ominous message that the stakes are to high for you to stay home.
In other words, use your voice; make sure that your vote tells every politician what you believe and where you want the future to look like. Not showing up for a vote quells your voice; the displeasure with our government isn’t recorded. The official count only reflects the votes counted; any disagreement is not part of the record.
So where does your right to vote come from. Our founding fathers believed the American citizens had a fundamental right to vote. John Jay said that we were the first peoples favored with the opportunity of deliberating on and choosing the form of government that we live under.
Samuel Adams put it this way, voting is one of the most solemn trust that we posses in society. We have a duty to vote and to exercise that vote thoughtfully and intentionally. It could be said that our vote is an inherited right form previous generations of Americans giving us a voice in our government.
We use that inheritance deliberately and wisely to protect our constitutional republic and to pass on to future generations the liberty it provides. It was inconceivable that the fate of our government, its in actions, the laws we made would be solely decided by electing a political party who believes in absolute loyalty; rather that “wisely and thoughtfully” administrating of the laws, or even whether we remained a free democracy.
In the simplest of term, all laws have exceptions that are applied as the situation dictates. Not all loyalty allows exceptions.
“There can be No Justice as long as laws are absolute. Even life itself is an exercise in exceptions.”
Recently, well within the last 40 or so years, we have seen the application of absolute to the second amendment. So much so that with a rising death toll we cannot change any law, create a common sense approach; require any safety protocols or exceptions causing justice to prevail.
As long as we continue to mute our voice at every election, we will see the loyalty of the absolute take over. They are those who deny the facts, deny the obvious, deny the exceptions that life cries out for.
In other words, in the upcoming elections, midterm and presidential, the major question we face isn’t inflation or a possible recession; it’s the return of practicality to our democracy. We need to recapture that time when we made laws for the justice of all and not the absolute rule of a few.
When we vote our voice is spoken, that vote tells those who represent us, how. By not voting we say nothing, we capitulate to absolute rule. By voting for the exception we say lets exercise the exceptions and try to make our democracy work for us for change.
In order to make your voice heard sometimes you’ll have to vote against the political party you’d normally support. It is when they see the votes move they hear your voice. Doing nothing says “you don’t care.” The singular power you hold over your representatives is that vote.
Every pundit has given the midterm elections to those who demand the absolute with no exceptions. Life isn’t an absolute, it’s full of exceptions.
“What we leave behind us is not as important as how we lived.”