![\"By](\"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/planetwaves.net\/news\/wp-content\/uploads\/2008\/10\/picture-4.jpg?resize=333%2C220&ssl=1\" "\\"picture-4\\"")
<\/a>Around the water cooler in my office, the feeling is definitely one of a nationwide pregnancy in its last week. This is the political equivalent of the period before the baby drops low, your water bursts and the contractions and dilation and the pushing and the doctor yelling “Breathe!!!!” begins.<\/p>\n
There are articles I’ve started in the Planet Waves hopper that are looking at me like abandoned children, eyes wide open and innocent pleading, “…where are you?” My sleep is plagued with waking at 3 am wondering if I have something to do. Anything. I wander around my little cottage, switching the TV on and off. Nothing.<\/p>\n
Last night, I dreamt I was in bed trying to make myself scream. And not in the way one might think, oh prurient ones, but literally trying to scream my head off in total rage, using that scream to beat away the scary beast that was looking at me, bemusedly, wondering if I was ever going to get up off my butt and scare it back.<\/p>\n
Then this morning, I read this diary<\/a> at Daily Kos, and everything became crystal clear.<\/p>\n In my mind’s eye I can see my mail-in ballot on the kitchen table. It is covered with a stack of bills, neatly piled, but still on top.<\/p>\n AS IF THIS WAS JUST ANOTHER ELECTION.<\/p>\n If all my pent up, stacked-up continuous, layers-upon-layers of rage over the last eight years had a face, it would look exactly like those bills piled up on top of my mail-in ballot on the week before the biggest election in our country’s history takes place. So simple, yet so telling.<\/p>\n How easily we’ve been fed the lies, the cover-ups, the thefts of this country’s soul these last eight years. Eight years of criminals so dark and crimes so deep you only need a few words to remind you, like Watergate of their nature and historic precedence: Bush. Cheney. Rumsfeld. Rove. Gonzales. Alito. Roberts. Brownie. 9-11. Iraq. Guantanamo. Abu Ghraib. Falujah. Katrina. Military Commission Act. Patriot Act. No Child Left Behind. To all, these last eight long years looking like so much junk mail and bills piled up on a kitchen table, with so much processing, shredding and check-writing I have to do, I added yet another chore: voting.<\/p>\n I guess this is why I needed to scream, even while I was sleeping. And maybe that’s the whole metaphor right there. Maybe I have been holding back because I wanted to carry out my public wailing a little longer, perpetuate the victimhood perpetrated on us by the cabal of Victim-Perpetrator-Saviors who bum rushed us into a war that’s killed close to 4,200 Americans. Whose incompetence drowned a city. Whose machinations disenfranchised people from their voting rights. Whose bullies scared and separated immigrant adults from their children, and elevated bigots to the top of their ticket.<\/p>\n And whose thieves did a regulation-free run on our national treasury for the last eight years if not longer. For those of you wondering where your taxes paid for public education went, maybe you should Google “Cayman Islands.”<\/p>\n Like Obama says: enough<\/em>.<\/p>\n Now this is what I’m going to do with my ballot, this 2008 AD, American, presidential election. First, I’m going to take it out from the bottom of the pile and rub it with rock salt. Next, I’m going to expose it to sunlight for 2,920 seconds, each second counting for each day for a total of 2,920 days, the equivalent of eight years. This breaks down to approximately 48 hours.<\/p>\n I am going to boil up some clear spring water with special cleansing herbs and spices: peppermint, ginger, black and red pepper and add some garlic to the mix. I am going to pray while doing so. For peace. For compassion. For justice. For forgiveness. I will then allow the steam of the brew to touch both sides of the ballot, to cleanse it.<\/p>\n When its dry, using my special calligraphy pen, I am going to mark down my choices for President, Vice President and ballot measures. With each stroke, I’m going cast aside all doubt, all worry, all concern and focus the intention of confidence<\/em> that my will as a voter will be done.<\/p>\n After meditation for five minutes, I will sign off my ballot with my most perfect calligraphic signature, insert the ballot into the envelope, seal the envelope and beautifully, artfully write in my return address at the upper left hand corner of the ballot envelope. I will then WALK with joy to the post office, five blocks from my house, purchase the most spectacular postage stamp they have, put it on the ballot, and tenderly, sweetly embrace this ballot one last time, clutching it closely to my heart with all the love I can muster before I drop it, with purpose, into the mail slot.<\/p>\n I’m performing this ritual not as a joke, but as my personal sacred rite. A rite for my right to participate in the most critical function for any citizen, anywhere, any place on this planet. We’ve been so close so often to losing this very right, so vital to the sustenance of any republic, to vote rigging, vote-caging, election-fraud — here in America.<\/p>\n We’ve had our nation’s own Justice Department penetrated by racists and partisan hacks who would litigate our exclusion from the democracy that was promised each of us. We’ve all been set one against the other, divided from each other to satisfy the interests of those who have no interest in us at all.<\/p>\n I don’t want to ever ever lose the feeling that I have of being an active citizen of my nation using my single power of the vote to make my nation what I want it to be. Enough. I’m going to scream it. ENOUGH. That’s my mantra every day from now to November 5th until all demons are rooted out like a good thorough surgery on metastacized cancer. It’s over. It’s done. It’s finished.<\/p>\n Let the ritual commence.<\/p>\n Yours & truly,<\/p>\n Fe Bongolan in San Francisco<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Dear Friend and Reader: I’M WITH LARRY DAVID. Enough of this. I am so ready to get this election over and done with that I don’t know what to do with myself. Around the water cooler in my office, the feeling is definitely one of a nationwide pregnancy in its last week. This is the … Read more<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":9,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"generate_page_header":""},"categories":[111],"tags":[36,52,117,446],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/planetwaves.net\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4556"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/planetwaves.net\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/planetwaves.net\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/planetwaves.net\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/9"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/planetwaves.net\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=4556"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/planetwaves.net\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4556\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/planetwaves.net\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=4556"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/planetwaves.net\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=4556"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/planetwaves.net\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=4556"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}