My Vote Counts, Right?

My Vote Counts, Right?

I'm not feelin' the significance.

Having moved, I had had to re-register to vote. Having before that stayed put for 15 years, the longest stretch I'd ever lived in one spot, I hardly knew where to begin.

The Post Office, I had remembered.

I had remembered that, in a previous period of social unrest, voter registration had commonly been available outside supermarkets...no doubt owing to the bipartisan need for food, but I had seen neither hide nor hair of that activist ploy. Except last fall in Alamo, California...next berg over from Danville...but THAT was owing to a fevered municipal issue, not the "national dialogue" that is about as national as universal healthcare is universal.

The re-registration form presented, I realized, a timely opportunity to change my party affiliation. And I was on the verge changing to that quintessentially American all-about-me moniker Independent...thinking I'd show them that they would have to EARN my vote henceforth...until I was reminded that, as an Independent, I would be excluded from the primary.

Oh, you're gonna play hard to get? You think YOU'LL show US? Au contraire, peon voter, WE'LL show YOU....we won't count you at all. How do you like THEM apples?

Does this sound right, okay, or even remotely democratic TO ANYONE?

It sounds about as right as tiny, white Iowa launching and setting the tone for the nationwide election of the highest officer in the land.

IOWA? For whom do Iowans speak, but Iowans?

I did not change my party affiliation, what was the point? I can vote however I want in the general AND vote in the primary, though strictly by party, or I can vote however I want in the general and not vote in the primary...a no-brainer. As it is a no-brainer to see that our Government is not the least bit interested in opening up the election or policy processes to the input and influence of the people without whom democracy is meaningless.

Self-serving sham, through and through...THAT, more than anything else I can think of offhand, well describes American Politics. We are an embarrassment of injustice, corruption, manipulation and aggression. It was a stunning realization that the Boss Men...the Big Big Boss Men whose names most people will never know, and Little Big Men who do their bidding in exchange for lives of ease and self-importance...Boss Men do not CARE that the People are neither represented nor served.

Where have I been, right? It has been thus across centuries and continents, right? No new thing under the sun. Not even Torture, even THAT is so fifteen minutes ago.

But I will suggest this. I will suggest that, driven into the heart of political history, are spikes of such jagged harshness...often with purposeful cruelty-read-that-torture...as to make later generations shake unified heads in disbelief and derision, 'WHAT WERE THEY THINKING?'

I will suggest that the Bush Administration constitutes one of those spikes. An Administration, it is exceedingly important to recall, includes EVERYONE in an official capacity there under. And, by proxy, the People they ostensibly represent.

And when later generations demand, 'What were they thinking?' of the tyrants, they also demand it of the far greater number of people who permitted themselves to be abused so badly for so long. Take Nazi Germany, everyone's favorite touchstone...chiefly because most people's knowledge of human history only goes that far back.

For some years, of course, we are suitably outraged by the Bad Guy. Adolf Hitler, Uber Bad Guy...but we quickly add his henchmen. After a bit, we rightly identify the German People as co-conspirators...not directly, perhaps, but indirectly without question. Eventually, we see fit to hold the oppressed/incarcerated/exterminated a little bit accountable, too. We are exceedingly egalitarian about spreading blame.

Spread Bad, yes. Spread Good, not on your life. Wealth Re-Distribution will get people hopping...Socialism! Communism!...but Blame Re-Distribution is right there with baseball as a national pastime. A-Okay.

I digress.

My vote.

I took that re-registration card TO the Post Office...wanted to make sure it didn't get "lost." I have no confidence in my government, nor in any of its branches of service...how sad is that?

I forget what was goofy about the form, something that made me think I should involve the professionals...I think maybe some boxes that were to be completed by an Official.

One thing I WAS clear on was the command to neither tape nor staple that form.

One of the ever-friendly and ever-helpful employees of the United States Post Office took one look at my form, folded it not exactly even and sealed 'er up with scotch tape. Kinda man-handled it, I thought, especially considering the big effing deal I was making out of it.

Scotch is a brand. It happens sometimes that a brand name becomes a generic term. Kleenex. Band-Aid. Champagne. Post It. In England, they refer to vacuuming as hoovering. Wake up and smell the Starbucks. I am the opposite of Forest Gump, I've got more to say about that.

But I'm trying to write about My Voting Experience...a grown-up, un-fun variation of How I Spent My Summer Vacation.

"What about the 'do not staple, tape or seal-it-wrong' thing?"

She wrinkled her nose and shook her head in a grandmotherly don't-you-fret way. Or maybe it was a 'good enough for government work' way. But I did wonder...right up until I received my voting materials did I wonder whether I'd receive my voting materials.

You'd be surprised how much unexpected, unwelcome, upsetting, expensive, pain-in-the-ass shit, pardon the pun, attends a re-location. People who tell people that they should "just move," if conditions suck where they are...especially well-off people who tell struggling people...are CLUELESS as to what they are proposing.

THAT'S a little something I wanna come back to, too.

I didn't vote until near closing, well after 7 pm. Would my vote have counted more if I had placed it earlier? I cannot be the only person who has noted media's tendency not only to call out results well before they are in, but to call out results before contests even begin.

Saturation. How many times can you hear the word Kleenex, which is trademarked, before tissue = kleenex? A strip with an affixed gauze pad as to tape over a wound = band-aid, regardless who makes it.

On dot connection, that last paragraph was not what I had in mind when I typed that I've got more to say about trademark infringement, and blocking trademarks. It was an out-loud mental note about McDonalds Corporation...suspecting that, if I'll produce this requested blog entry/day, it will produce...as by accident, not design unless divine...a more focused To Do list with respect to writing.

It is, for me, most desirable to work from home...even better now, from wherever...but it is also a big challenge. Not to get rich, not to be famous...just to be productive. It is so free-form, and there are so many OTHER things that beckon...most of which I wouldn't even CONSIDER did they not constitute handy avoidance of something harder. Cleaning Telephones, I call it, and I am here to report that telephones DO get quite dirty.

Or I get swept up on these Boards. I can do that all day long...find myself yet in pajamas-not-to-be-confused-with-a-two-part-matching set, about which I have also more to say...because the subjects are established for me, and production is steady whether or not I participate, I can jump in whenever I please.

Thank you, Eric and Everyone. Thank you dsolo and wayside, and Everyone there. Thank you Bill Maher-I-thought-but-perhaps-someone-else. Looking at a blank screen and contemplating a thousand thoughts that are careening around in one's head, surprisingly, does NOT inspire the prolific outpouring that one might intuitively expect. At least this one.

Such a great bit of comedy before Gee Dub took office, "This stuff is haaarrd."

I'll post a picture of my new voting facility, another senior center. Even nicer than the senior center in Beverly Hills. What a gym! How many seniors play basketball, by the way, any stats on that? Or do some enclaves simply have so much money that they can appoint their senior centers in ways that serve the larger community?

I have zero understanding of objections to a national I.D. card. It seems like the most obvious thing in the world. In the country, I should say. It seems to me to be EXACTLY the occasion on which to demand, "What have you got to hide?"

I am being told, by my Government, that Others mean me harm. The very first order of business of my Government, I should think, would be to determine whether any of 'em are here, on our turf.

We've got problems aplenty with welfare and healthcare, too, and some of those problems can be traced DIRECTLY to our having a significant population of people who A.) are here illegally, and B.) prevail upon the system.

We need a head count.

There was a long table of volunteers in the voting place, but that doesn't mean you can walk up to whichever of them appears to be free. Everyone's gotta line up before Volunteer Number One, who painstakingly hunts down your name and address in a super-sized journal...walk softly, and carry a big ruler.

I give you our paper trail.

It happens that it happened that I handed this woman my sample ballot. The mind REELS to think how long it would have taken her without a Reference Guide. How do you spell that now, dear?

- cont'd, today or tomorrow, if the pace holds, good on me, thank you character count restraint -
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