{"id":62245,"date":"2012-11-05T12:47:13","date_gmt":"2012-11-05T17:47:13","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/planetwaves.net\/news\/?p=62245"},"modified":"2012-11-05T13:12:25","modified_gmt":"2012-11-05T18:12:25","slug":"love-your-ballot","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/planetwaves.net\/news\/fe-911-2\/love-your-ballot\/","title":{"rendered":"Love Your Ballot"},"content":{"rendered":"

If you have voted already, you don’t have to read this. If you haven’t, weren’t planning to, or have doubts as to whether you should, please follow me. For the first time in five elections, I am not mailing my ballot in. I am walking to the polling place around the block from my house. I am going to stand in line. In my hands will be a cup of Fellini’s dark roast coffee with cream and sugar, a banana, a copy of Edna Lewis’s “In Pursuit of Flavor”<\/em>, and my ballot guide with my selections checked off.<\/p>\n

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I am going to dress comfortably, wear comfortable shoes, and be as excited at the polling place as an 18-year-old in front of Best Buy at 3:30 am, waiting for iPhone version 5. If there are people waiting in line, I am going to smile at them, and engage in conversation if we can. And maybe, hopefully, we will laugh together. And if the line is way too long, I’m going to double that energy. <\/p>\n

This election, this time around, I want not only to feel my vote, I want to enjoy my voting. I want to express love for my ballot. Before you think I’ve gone off the deep end, note that I’m just as cynical over this election as I have been during previous elections. Maybe now more so after being over the Moon for Barack Obama in 2008.<\/p>\n

But I am sober now. I have had my faith shaken by state and national politics so much that you could fill me with salt. But that cynicism is not going to stop me from voting to re-elect Obama and Biden. On balance, with the NDAA and drone aircraft warfare aside, President Obama has done plenty for health care, women, gay people, the elderly, immigrants, alternative energy and the economy to deserve re-election. And I want them to come back and do more. Let’s not forget Obama put Justices Elena Kagan and Sandra Sotomayor on the Supreme Court bench, and could replace possible retiring justices like Anthony Kennedy and Ruth Bader Ginsberg in the future.<\/p>\n

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A lot is at stake in this election. We’re not just testing our resolve in deciding what our government will be in the next four years. It’s about deciding whether or not we will be governed by a government at all. Yes, special interests have overwhelmed Washington to the edge beyond gridlock, and we are stuck. But there are far, far worse things that could happen.<\/p>\n

First and foremost, think about your vagina. I don’t know about you, but my vagina does not have an anti-ballistic missile system locked and loaded to repel and attack baby-making sperm from a rape. Nor do I believe pregnancy from rape is intended by God.<\/a> I do believe, unlike some people running for Senate,<\/a> that statutory rape and incest can cause pregnancy. I think we can safely say here at Planet Waves we don’t want congress crowded by even more sex-fearing, fact-challenged morons taking up air space at Capitol Hill, or want to allow their form of stupid to be perpetrated on the country.<\/p>\n

Then there’s the Supreme Court. Presidents and congresspeople come and go every four years. Senators in six. But Supreme Court Justices are for life. Is there another Clarence Thomas waiting in the wings? Or an Antonin Scalia? The agenda of the American right wing has not decreased because Democrats are in the White House and the Senate. It has accelerated, becoming, in short, rabid. They are determined to take down not only Roe v. Wade<\/em> but also Griswold v. Connecticut<\/em>, challenging the very notion of women’s right to contraception. <\/p>\n

Following the tsunami that triggered Japan’s Fukushima nuclear power plant disaster, some members of my family mused that before any country builds another nuclear power plant along a highly active tectonic plate, neighboring countries and continents should have a say over whether or not that plant should even be built. <\/p>\n

Since the United States still has such a large-scale effect on the rest of the world, what about the rest of the world being allowed to vote for our President and Congress? Naive? — Yes. But with the deterioration of our public school system under thirty years of conservative education policies accompanied by, at best, a complacent media, confidence that American voters are well-informed to make the best choice is rightfully diminishing. This is not an election where we determine who we can have a beer with.<\/p>\n

Campaign 2012 has been one hard fought race-baiting, mud-slinging, lie-throwing slug fest. With Citizen’s United allowing corporations to foot the bill for their candidate, it is quite transparent whose agenda is being pushed, and pushed hard. <\/p>\n

Our choice on Tuesday is not about taking our country either across the line toward a new beginning or stepping back to where it was four years ago. Our choice is about keeping our country and the planet from going backwards by decades, maybe even a century. Our choice is about how long we give our world a chance to heal — if that’s still even possible. And no, both parties are NOT the same. Our choice is to determine whether we continue having a democracy, as flawed as it is, or an out and out corporatocracy, where our choices won’t matter.<\/p>\n

This election for me is not about trying to unseat Bush-Cheney in 2004 — a noble but disappointing effort. It’s not about trying to close the door on the eight disastrous years of Republicans and neoconservatives in power by electing an iconic figure who embodied the very nature of change we desired — however fleeting that was. This election for me is not about fear or hate, because there is no fear or hate in me left. It’s about LOVING this opportunity to vote, embracing the ballot pamphlet I have in my hand, and even the flawed election process we’ve got. For me, it’s about appreciating my community and the country we are attempting to co-create, as well as the world in which we live with billions of others.<\/p>\n

This is a pivotal moment and election regardless of a Mercury station on Election Day or the end of the Mayan calendar on the winter solstice. This is no time to be cynical or fearful of loss or change. It is time to fill yourself up with your own love. Love your ballot. Read your ballot initiatives thoroughly. Read them aloud to each other and learn them. Read them in iambic pentameter if you have to, for fun. Just learn them. And love every step you take as you walk to your polling place. Our love and our vote really do mean something in this world because they really do have an effect. Believe it.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

If you have voted already, you don’t have to read this. If you haven’t, weren’t planning to, or have doubts as to whether you should, please follow me. For the first time in five elections, I am not mailing my ballot in. I am walking to the polling place around the block from my house. … Read more<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":9,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"generate_page_header":""},"categories":[1740],"tags":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/planetwaves.net\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/62245"}],"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=62245"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/planetwaves.net\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/62245\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/planetwaves.net\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=62245"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/planetwaves.net\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=62245"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/planetwaves.net\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=62245"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}