Below is something I posted on November 2nd, 2008. I talk about my passion for voting in general and how that grew after 9/11. I talk about how important it is to vote for Obama, despite polls predicting victory. And I forecast that once Obama is elected, we will wake up from our long nightmare and begin to repair the damage that has been inflicted upon us over the last many years. I say that we will have hope. I say that Obama will belong to us because of the unprecedented amount of small individual contributions that helped propel him to office. I say that I believe our democracy has enough working parts that we can have our voices heard and do good work.
I am a world class chump.
Have we woken up from our long nightmare?
Do we have hope?
What have we repaired?
Essentially, what the fuck?
I would like to work for Obama’s campaign and I still understand the importance of opposing any Republican candidate. But my heart is not in it. I don’t actually believe.
Nothing will ever happen within our political system that will displace anyone in the health insurance industry, the factory food industry, the fossil fuel industry, or the arms industry. Democracy is dead.
Please explain to me why I’m wrong and what I can do about it that’s legal and non-violent, ‘cause, really, I’m out.
Here’s my pile of steaming bullshit from November 2nd, 2008:
On September 11, 2001 – Primary Day – I walked from my North Brooklyn apartment to the school that was my polling place to cast my vote. As I approached, I saw the children pressed up against the windows watching the black smoke mass above the carnage of the World Trade Center. I signed myself in, dripping tears, and although I knew the election would be canceled, I entered the booth and I voted because I was honestly afraid I may never have the opportunity to do so again.
As I left the building, I saw the smoke rise across the river and knew that I was watching a smokescreen rise for a regime that had little respect for the democratic process, and that this horrific crime would be used to grant legitimacy to an appointed leader and his ideologue cronies. This regime, who’d been awarded power by eliminating votes and through a Supreme Court decision that – unique in our history – both had no precedent and set no precedent - would make this abomination into their opportunity. I knew, before I’d ever heard Bush utter the word “trifecta,” before I ever read of the PNAC’s craving for a “Pearl Harbor type event,” I knew this day’s grief would be used to make drastic changes in our country and I was afraid. I remember thinking that whoever had orchestrated this attack had the power to destroy lives and property but not the power to destroy Democracy – that could only be done from within.
So I voted, knowing that it wouldn’t count and not knowing if my vote would ever count again.
Like all of us, in the coming weeks, months and years I watched our leaders use the most extreme fear tactics to bully Americans into believing it was crucial to the War on Terror to give up rights, to give up privacy, and to embrace torture and preemptive invasions of countries that had never attacked us. Like many of us, I became more politically active, researching, writing, networking, organizing, protesting and working up to the 2004 election. I believed that our democracy still had enough working parts that our voices might be heard and we might possibly be able to begin to make reparations.
2004 was disappointing on so many levels. How can a party claim to represent the people when it benefits most by not counting us? Widely reported incidents of voter purges, voter suppression, intimidation and tricks, along with many votes being keyed into machines with proprietary software and no paper trail, did not improve my confidence that election results were real. Still, Bush claimed “mandate” and he and his junta continued to hack away at the American dream in stubborn pursuit of New World Order and personal profits.
It’s been a long 8 years.
Despite pre-election day polling, with the McCain/Palin campaign submitting to the same subversive forces that have so severely undermined our election process, how can we win? We need to come out and vote in such tremendous numbers that Republican operatives can’t possibly purge, suppress or reverse enough votes to tip the balance. We need to arrive at our polling places in such unprecedented masses that a McCain/Palin victory would be completely implausible. We need to deliver on such a massive scale that we become tamper-proof. We need to be undeniable.
When we do this, and Barack Obama becomes President of the United States, then we truly will have hope. We will being to repair the great damage that has been done and finally begin to move forward. I don’t think that Barack Obama is perfect and I don’t think he has a magic cure for all that ails us. But I do think that he is ours. He’s where he is now because we put him there. We’ve already voted in the one way we know still works - through unprecedented financial contributions. The bulk of Obama’s campaign contributions have some from individuals giving $200 or less. Barack Obama is where he is now because we put him there. We are his life’s blood and he will be accountable to us.
When we wake up from this long nightmare, there will be so much work to do. I know we’re anxious to do it. Let’s keep up this great momentum and make sure we have the opportunity.
P.S. In 2004, I worked for Kucinich.
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