By Odeisel
If you aren’t a red or a blue state, you have probably been bombarded for months on end with ads trying to convince you that Barack is a Socialist Muslim and all sorts of things he most certainly isn’t. You’ve been bludgeoned by ads proclaiming uncle Mitt a tax cheat and a liar and a host of nonpresidential things. We’ve seen four debates, read numerous articles and have heard pundit after pundit discuss poll after poll in a daily dizzying drama. Now we finally come to the end. What does it all mean?
Don’t get it twisted, I vote whenever I have the opportunity, same as jury duty. Civic duty to the fullest, that strange fruit was picked so I could taste that juice, but there are many times when I wonder what the actual election means. With each side spending a billion dollars to tell us why we should pick them for a job that pays on $400k, you know that inequality will manifest itself during the term of whomever gets chosen. In other words it will come time to pay the piper regardless of whether you vote blood or crip.
Then you look at that brilliant bastion of truth, the daily/morning/nightly news. Only truth has very little to do with maintaining readership and securing advertising space. We’d like to cast Fox as truth enemy #1, but anyone who has seen the Ed Show on MSNBC knows that he is little more than Bill O’Reilly for Democrats. There is no objectivity in news and the pandering to readership has gotten so bad that there is very little room for truth, even when it comes to fact checking. So much for fair and balanced.
I got so sickened by this stuff I could no longer stomach even five minutes of Morning Joe, whose host normal Reagan romance-driven narcissism has gotten all but unbearable. Even Rachel Maddow went too far, making mountains out of molehills when discussing early voting and creating persecution from nowhere. The other night she was talking about North Carolina and how they separated the vote by party option from the actual President/VP vote. I early voted in NC. That option makes it easier and more fair to the process. It was probably the first time I ever gave Ms. Maddow the side-eye. Then you realize that there have been hundreds of millions of dollars going to these networks, both free and cable. Their job at that point is just to keep the race interesting and develop news cycles to ramp up the drama of this contest.
So where does that leave the people who actually vote? Some of the effects of a Presidential election exist so far above most of our pay grades that it probably won’t matter who is President. So you ask yourself, why should you vote? Some would tell you that none of this matters but they aren’t informed. While many of these things are over the heads of our collective peonage, there will be many things that affect your future. The next President will probably end up choosing four Supreme Court Justices. They will preside over budgets and taxes and sign laws that will govern the lives of your children.
The reason you should carry your asses to the polls tomorrow is because aside from the main event, the smaller, municipal fights on the undercard are what REALLY count in your life. Those Appellate Court Judges and Representatives and local officials whose decisions will reach your block, your hood and your cul-de-sac. This is a strange time in America, where there is no consequence for lying on camera or making shit up or saying anything to make your opponent look bad. Your children are being failed by schools for which you pay taxes. Whatever class you consider yourself you need to take a really good look at how the decisions these people make affect your way of life and vote accordingly by the race and not strictly down the party line. Whatever decision you make, get off your ass. Vote.
