Election '08: The final countdown

November 4, 2008
AAAAAAGH!!!! VOTE FOR YOUR LIFE!!!!
11/4/08 02:39 am


Okay, this is rather funny......my current status message on Facebook, as of last night, is as follows:

Kagen is hoping that civilization will prevail over lies and humanity move forward tomorrow -- voting for Obama as if my future depended on it. (10 hours ago)

I had no idea whatsoever until I heard it on the The Daily Show that Obama had, in his 'closing argument' speech just the other day, used the climactic clause "work like our future depends on it."

I know that it does...I wish I'd been able to get more done, more said in terms of getting out the word of what I see and know to be true about this campaign and this moment in time. I don't see how people can actually still be undecided at this point, and if they are...well, let's just hope they can't make up their minds to get to the polls. And I can only pity those who are so vision-impaired by the wool (or milfy hockey-mom, or religious dogma) over their eyes that they can't see what this country really needs and deserves after eight years of the Bush regime, financial elitism and regressive culture-warfare.

Yes, I am an idealist, and I think that this nation is heavily populated this election year with idealists like me, who are aware of our domestic and global society's problems and have long been waiting for a chance to be actively part of the solution -- in a way that doesn't just involve shopping and maintaining consumer confidence, mind you.

This is the most participatory I have seen American democracy in my lifetime, and I'm damn glad of it. Creating a better world and a better future together? -- yes, emphatically yes. I want the grassroots to rise and topple the trickle-downs and fact-twisting gladhanders and smiling, smiling villains who have no regard for truth or decency. Not to mention to quell and humble the torch-and-pitchfork-wielding crowds of the late-stage McCain-Palin campaign rallies, an accumulation of real live vitriol and hatred that outstrips anything ever rhetorically thundered from the pulpit by the Reverend Jeremiah Wright. The difference in energy between rallies (not to mention the national conventions) has been immense -- and the dominant vibe of the Republican events, like it or not, has been hate and meanspiritedness, and the communal hope not of achieving some positive dream but of crushing down the dreams and aspirations of others in order to defend the status quo as permanently as possible. I have been feeling this all along and it makes me more certain than ever that this is a pivotal moment for the United States, in which we must decide what sort of a nation we want to be: one of social principles or one of self-defensive materialism -- one of humanism and cooperation or one of militaristic paranoia -- one of truth and responsibility or one of sanctioned deception and the ends used and warped to justify the basest means (let alone all the ends that a "President Palin" would seek under sanctimonious cover...). This is our chance to regain the high road and salvage our honour among nations, and to be again (and possibly as never before) "government of the people, by the people and for the people."

And so no, I'm not putting this under a cut despite its length and politicality*, because I want people to take this election seriously and not just as another day, same-old, whatever, business as usual, see-ya-when-it's-all-over. I know this is a crucial point in history, and I'm not going to downplay its significance and potential consequences. Hell, they've got Christian-cultural-conservative "prayer warriors" fixing their invocations on defeat for Obama / victory for Palin-And-McCain-Too -- so why not pull out all the stops on our wills and put them where our hopes are?

Or, to coin a phrase, put your mana where your mouth is, my fellow Americans -- and be sure that you've exercised your civic power and voted by this day's end. Even if you don't get a free coffee or ice cream scoop out of it.



[*Whether out of their own personal burnout or to de-stress from known political differences, several people on my LiveJournal flist had started/circulated a 'no politics' picture meme just a day or so before E-Day.....I, however, was not in a mood to avoid the issues and keep my opinions unvoiced.]
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