Reaping the Whirlwind, Again
President Barack Obama during a news conference in the East Room of the White House in Washington,
November 5, 2014. (Photo: Doug Mills / The New York Times)
Reaping the Whirlwind, Again
By William Rivers Pitt
Truthout | Op-Ed
Friday 07 November 2014
I am tired. I am tired of speech
and of action. In the heart of me
you will find a tiny handful of
dust. Take it and blow it out
upon the wind. Let the wind have
it and it will find its way home.
- Tennessee Williams
Here in rural New Hampshire, in this town without a traffic light, with a population so small that it would have trouble filling a Pop Warner football stadium, the old folks came out to vote in force on Tuesday.
We vote here at the Community Center on Main Street, an old clapboard building with a coat of white paint that remembers the Eisenhower administration. It has wheelchair access, and thank God for it, because squadrons of elderly voters on Tuesday went through the long endurance required in order to simply leave the house, and came out, and made it inside the polling place, and got their ballots, and cut their chosen "X" through the provided spaces, and slipped their ballot into the box, and left the way they came: proud voters, each wearing an "I Voted" sticker that announced they had done their duty.
I am world-weary enough at this point to swallow my tongue when I witness this kind of phenomenon first-hand while reading about how national turnout for Tuesday's midterm elections was historically low. When the President of the United States gave a press conference the day after an electoral wipeout of historic proportions to basically apologize for even feigning to represent the things that inspired people to vote for him in the first place, I didn't blink. People for whom voting requires half a day's hard effort showed up to cast their ballots, while the President could not summon the will to explain why his party might deserve their vote, and I refused to be surprised or astonished or disappointed.
Par for the course.
Hell, I called it on the third of October. "Come November," I wrote at the time, "if the Democrats wind up flopping and flailing for an explanation as to why they got routed at the polls, let me offer a succinct reply: You stand for nothing. You are the Washington Generals to the Harlem Globetrotters. Everyone expects you to go down to defeat, because you always lay down, because you are paid to do so. It doesn't have to be that way, but that's the way it is. When the midterms eat you alive, remember what I said. When you stand for nothing, you get nothing in return."
(snip)
We managed here, with the geriatric squad being the only crew with the requisite number of damns to give in order to summon the will to actually raise their hands on the most important day of the year, to jettison the unendurable political herpe that is Scott Brown. Maggie Hassan likewise managed to hold the governorship. It's a hell of a thing when New Hampshire comes off as the liberal whackadoo state that actually votes for people who intend to govern. Go figure.
I'm really glad the DCCC sent out those thousands of doom-and-gloom fundraising emails over the last couple of months. You know, the ones that said "It's over" and "Don't bother" and "TRAGIC NEWS" and the like. That really seemed to do the trick, yeah? I hate to quote myself again, but I'm going to: "Here's a memo to whoever came up with this particularly obnoxious fundraising tactic: You suck. I hope you get fired with such velocity that you can't even get a job drowning puppies in a kill shelter."
(snip)
The environment. The wars. The economy. The living and the dead, and the damned besides. We are not our brother's keeper, despite all the strident oratory that would have us believe this nation actually stands for something beyond bedrock greed, lazy coddled indolence, and bluejeans on the cheap. That much, at least, was proven on Tuesday.
"God is a comedian," said H.L. Mencken, "playing to an audience too afraid to laugh." The old folks here in rural New Hampshire came out on Main Street to vote on Tuesday. Most of the rest of the country couldn't be bothered, or weren't given a reason, or were denied the chance, and we will all reap the whirlwind because of it, again. So it goes.
The rest: http://www.truth-out.org/opinion/item/27300-reaping-the-whirlwind-again
= new reply since forum marked as read
If not for you, and the estimable Mr Pierce, I think I'd have fled into the wilderness long ago, carrying a "The World is Coming to an End" sign with me...and it may yet come to that...
I've voted every election since 2002 (missed 2000 due to being born late). And with the exception of one judge (he was Alaskan Independence party, back in 2002. I don't remember why) and one city council member (Kshama Sawant) it's been straight Democrats. And this is what I've picked up over that admittedly brief span of time.
No matter who I vote for, my nation will forever strive to massacre multitudes of brown people somewhere far away
No matter who I vote for, my nation will forever support other nations doing the same.
No matter who I vote for, education policy will revolve around purging teacher unions and letting Texas write textbooks
No matter who I vote for, petroleum will be subsidized until the last well runs dry.
No matter who I vote for, the police will be militarized.
No matter who I vote for, neoliberal economics will be enshrined in policy
No matter who I vote for, it seems that Republicans win
So like I said, I've voted consistently. Like you after all, I learned that voting was a duty, and that men and women paid for the right with their lives.
But
It's become clear that while I may have this duty to participate... that's all it is. Participation
Put that one on the shelf!
Essentially, I van vote and vote and vote, and all I get are the same policies no matter who wins. You might be content to have platitudes and frames, but i prefer substance. and the substance I'm getting for my endeavor is pro-corporate, anti-worker, pro-war, anti-education, pro-fossil lobby, anti-environment policies that revolve around the desires of wealthy and upper middle-class white men of the Baby Boomer generation. Which if you couldn't tell, is not what I want.
No matter who wins, I lose. This is despite my efforts to push liberals to the general election. This is despite my votes for the most liberal people on those general ballots. Despite my calls and letters. It's exceedingly difficult to look at the votes I have made, the effort I have spent, and not call it a waste of time.
And the only thing that makes be different from average, is that I'm apparently insane;
Insanity: doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results.
Most other people see that they get the same result no matter who wins, and they decide to not participate at all. They don't get their little sticker, but they probably don't mind the lack too much.
What is the worth of voting, when there are no choices worth voting for? Where no matter how the vote swings, you get hte same scripted policy? And that policy is formed to screw you, the voter, over as hard as it can?
Excellent post, succinctly put. and LOVE the ribbon! 
that you and many in your generation see the reality. Yes, it's bad. Every bit as bad as you say. Yes, these negative directions are deeply entrenched in our socio-political sphere now. Yes, the forces against all the things we care about are strong and should never be underestimated. You have expressed the issues well in what you wrote here. You have not been wasting time. You have been learning how huge is the job ahead, and how necessary.
Us older ones who also get it--we sincerely hope you will help us dig out of this pit. We need fresh ideas. We need your energy and vision for a different future. Don't buy the generational divide thing--that plays into our opposition's goals. We all need to pull together. We need every one who sees how hard it is and still refuses to give up. Whatever you can do to stay in it, stay in. Find strength. There is more to come.
Well said. Keep talkin 
My sense is that young voters who didn't turn out is/was highly tuned in to this fact. As was I think, most of us who did participate in the mid-term elections to vote.
We have to realize this. They succeed because they convince us to keep trying to fix it within a system that no longer exists. We need to regroup and reorganize and realize that party is a tool being used against us now.
(emphasis mine)
This can't be repeated enough, imo.
(emphasis mine)
Indeed! Well Said!
people do have to actually vote in order to have their voted counted. 
Apparently that's a hard concept to comprehend.
Critiquing and complaining just isn't showing up in the tally, can't imagine why.
So many nitwits say the same thing, "one vote doesn't matter". Well we all only get one vote, we all vote one at a time. Logically then, the point they're making must be that they expect to get MORE than one vote for themselves -- would that be dozens? or hundreds? or thousands even? I wonder how many votes they'd need to get to cast, before they'd consider it worthhile bestirring themselves for an hour, once every two years?
In my book, those people may as well be right-wingers, because it amounts to the same thing, that's who their (in)actions elect.
A picture of Obama is "right-wing agitprop media"!
That's gotta burn.
it was a slice of Good News for us Alamedans.
Trish Spencer was the underdog, underfunded, anti-establishment candidate who actually WON.
The sitting mayor was endorsed by the Democratic party, heavily funded and campaigned for her, and was also funded by out-of-town Real Estate Developers who've been trying to usurp our elections process, buy off our (with some success) our mayor and city council members with an aim to do a land grab of decommissioned military base for their highly profitable projects.
Greed, graft, corruption. Fortunately, we have a very active community, with two town newspapers keeping Alamedan's informed of these shenanigans.
But even so, I found myself pleasantly surprised as we got closer and closer to elections, Trish Spencer for Mayor yard signs began appearing everywhere in the neighborhood. Then all over town.
Three months ago, I could count no more than three or four of her signs including mine. I didn't figure she had a chance going up against the establishment, especially since she was endorsed by the Alameda Green Party.
But your point still stands as the norm, unfortunately. I just want to remind ourselves that it is still possible to get a different result. Just depends on whether or not the community is informed and involved. 
. . .for the most part.
BUT. . .
The Democratic Party had LOUSY salesmen/women for these issues.
And I absolutely agree with you, Will: If you run away from your own party and its issues, you'll lose. We need candidates and legislators who make absolutely no fucking apologies for their beliefs or their votes - and who don't give a shit what the Fux News factoids are.
Just wanted to give ya a shout out for giving me an occasional smile and laughter in these time
s.
Policy number one for the Democratic Party needs to be
FIXING THE VOTING PROCESS!
As long there are barriers to FULL PARTICIPATION
we will continue to lose elections.
Gerrymandering, voter purges, electronic voting,
limited ballots, long lines, and on and on
all add up to disenfranchised DEMOCRATIC VOTERS.
Policy number one: FIX THE VOTING PROCESS!