Well, I voted. I almost didn’t, but as I like to tell just about everyone who listens, “don’t ever shut the door on a chance.” You can always back out at the last minute. You can always change your mind until you can no longer change your mind. But one thing you can’t do is vote from overseas if you don’t do everything you need to do by the deadlines. And so on the last day that I could request a ballot through email, I went to the website, followed the instructions, and mailed it in. A little over a week later, I got the email, and from there it was up to me to once again follow the instructions, print out my completed ballot and envelope, and send it in by the deadline (election day). But it never would’ve happened if I hadn’t made that first deadline.
And true to form, I voted for the best candidate. I never vote based on who’s likely to win. I stopped voting by party long ago – although I vote based on a party’s overall platform and whether they actually did, in good faith, do their best to do what they said they would. Which means I certainly didn’t vote for a Democrat or Republican.
And I’m right. I know I’m right, because I’ve got a mountain of evidence to demonstrate that neither of the major parties really gives a crap about what they claim to give a crap about. For them, the bottom line is simply doing what it takes to stay in power. You’ve got your true believers and near fanatic fringe, but it’s really all about how many of the rest you can fool into swinging your way.
You’d think that would mean promising and delivering, but in reality it only means “promising.” The “delivering” part is muddled by claims that “the bad guys on the other side are blocking everything we try to do” once a party gains power. Or worse yet, the “delivery” comes in the form of haphazard legislation that hasn’t even been read by the people voting on it, followed by fighting over it for the next 10 years (hello Obamacare!).
Face it – we’ve got a party that crows about “good, Christian family values” and “fiscal responsibility” supporting a man in the presidency who clearly stands for neither of these. A charlatan whose modus operandi is to attack and divide the very country he’s been elected to lead. And the you have a party on the other side who is sliding so far to the left that its nearly octogenarian presidential candidate is the only one left who remembers the days when moderation and compromise actually happened. Once he’s gone – and I suspect he won’t finish his term – any limiting influence on the anti-Trump pendulum swing that the left is chomping at the bit to implement (with a vengeance) will be gone. God help us then.
Here’s the absolute, honest-to-goodness truth: the federal government is too big. It’s entirely inefficient. It’s often painfully incompetent. It is unqualified to handle a lot of what it thinks it should be handling, and what it thinks it should be handling is often unnecessary and cumbersome. It lives by slyly paying off the people while slowly chipping away at at their very liberties, and its current trajectory is not promising in the slightest. I don’t need to go on to give you the idea. The constitution gives the federal government the power to provide for the common defense and the welfare of the people. Unfortunately, that “welfare of the people” part has grown larger and larger over time, and we have fallen into the trap of believing that the federal government is the only organ that can get that job done. This is simply not true.
I have said it time and time again – the best government is to be governed legitimately by those to whom you are in close proximity and to whom an accountability to the citizens is most acute. When your senator can ignore you because he can sucker tens of thousands of others into believing him (more often than not by using power and influence afforded by the deep pockets of special interests), you should treat him or her with the utmost suspicion (and there’s no doubt you should be treating them that way).
But when you can actually go to a city council meeting and have your say in what your city is doing – or likewise when you can walk into your state representative’s office and have your say in what your state is doing – you have some kind of power over your life. You have power over how you are governed. But for citizens to simply roll over and accept that the election of the president is the be-all and end-all of all political activity is to be painfully shortsighted — or is it farsighted (to see that which is farther from you as more important than that which is right next t you)?
And yet, I believe in the end – and ironically, this article is at odds with what I’m really saying by railing against the over-importance we put on electing the president – we give too much credence to politics on the national stage. Donald Trump is a disaster, but what he has done is merely nudged the ship of state a bit off its course. No doubt the gyroscope of bureaucracy and the unyielding dull drudgery of hurtling in a senseless direction cannot be denied – our course will be corrected. The dems will do their damage in the next 4 to 8 years; packing the court, attacking the Electoral College, stacking the deck in their favor. The Republicans (contrary to a recent NY Times editorial eulogizing the party) will recover in a couple of years because common citizens will wake up to the chorus of “I told you so’s” and the drumbeat of “fear the enemy” that will result — all the while forgetting the idiocy of the last four years.
I don’t believe though that we’ll be “right back where we started from.” The Trump pendulum swing was an anomaly (its depressing to consider what a real politician who had any sense of duty and integrity could’ve done during this time of economic upswing — but we will never know). The next swing to the right has to be much more sensible and moderate, or we are all sunk. It quite simply has to be someone who doesn’t suck — someone who doesn’t divide and attack senselessly at every opportunity. Someone who, in all his hapless flailing, doesn’t tear the country apart.
So I voted. I picked the best candidate, and now I get to sit back and say “I told you so” for the next four years. I can’t say it’s unfathomable that people continue to settle for something less than what is good for us all, because I know it’s human nature to march on doing the same stupid things hoping for a better result (isn’t that the famous definition of “insanity”?). I mean, we were promised plenty of “hope and change” just twelve years ago and see what that got us. All I can say now then is, “good luck to you all” and leave you to duke it out yet again (until next time).
As for me, I voted…