Educate Yourself & VOTE

Today, I was going to begin a series on the Bill of Rights. I wanted to talk about what rights we have, why we are in danger of losing some of them, and why it isn't one single presidential administration that is at fault for the erosion of our rights.

It ended up turning into a history lesson, however, and that's not what I wanted to do. Instead, I decided to explain why this is really our fault.

Complacency and laziness have turned a vast majority of the population into sheep. We go where we are told to go, we eat the grass we are led to, and we walk right into the fleecing rooms and the slaughter houses. We only have ourselves to blame; we actually elected the shepherds and asked them to do everything for us.

During the 2008 Presidential Election, we had a first that was very noteworthy. The Democratic Party had a woman and a black man competing for their party's nomination. That's great in some ways. In others....not so much. It's great because it opened doors that were closed for centuries in America. It began to look pretty ridiculous, however, when the media began talking to the general public.

I heard people say things like, "I am voting for Hillary because I am a woman too." or "I'm voting for Obama because it's time a black man was in office." WTF? What does that have to do with their stance on wars on foreign soil, foreign policy, human rights, states rights, or YOUR rights?

Voting for someone only because they have different genitalia or a different skin color from past Presidents or because you identify with their skin or genitals is just as ignorant as voting for someone just because they are a white male. This doesn't mean that either of these candidates would or will fail as a President. It means that failure or success isn't determined by how much of the spectrum of light is reflected from their skin or whether their reproductive organs are inside or outside their body.

We live in a Democratic Republic. We elect our officials democratically, and they get to make the laws that we have to abide by. It is not only vitally important that we know why we are voting for someone, but it is also important that we vote in the first place.

Voting is the single most important responsibility we have as citizens. It is the only true voice we have in our government, but less than 60% of eligible voters have voted in presidential elections in the last 40 years. The numbers only get worse when you drill down to the local elections in most cases.

If you don't like something an elected official has done or if you are tired of the two party system that has taken over, it is your responsibility to vote for someone else, and you should tell as many people as you can why you are doing it. Sitting in your house and bitching at the evening news isn't going to change anything. And you are right, your one vote isn't going to change anything either. That's why you have to get out there and participate, change people's minds, and win people to your side. But that's not what they want us to do.

They can be political parties, lobbyists, corporations, foreign governments, self-appointed spokespersons, and even criminal organizations. They want us to be complacent. They want us to feel that there is nothing we can do to change the status quo. They want us to spend our lives narcotized and apathetic. They want us to go to work every day, spend our money every week, and take the happy pills that keep us on the hamster wheel. They want us to stay put as just another cog in the machine that keeps churning out positive results for them. As long as we do nothing, the people we don't like running our country are going to continue running our country.

It isn't necessary to keep 100% of the population in the machine. Just like herd immunity with vaccines, you only need enough people in the machine to keep revolution from spreading. The machine is made up of the 40% that don't vote at all, the groups that vote down party lines without understanding the issues, the people that vote based solely on gender or race, and the people that think they are voting against someone else instead of for someone.

We have allowed ourselves to be swooned by promises of prosperity that no one can deliver but us. Then we sit on our hands and wonder where our reward is.

If you take anything at all from this article, I hope it is this:
1) Learn more about the candidates you could potentially be voting for.
2) Tell others what you have learned.
3) VOTE!
4) If you don't like the results, repeat steps 1, 2, & 3.

If we don't do these things, then we can only blame ourselves for what happens in this country.

-A.W.C.