I have done my bit for democracy.
I have cast my ballot in this most critical of elections – the most recent of them, anyway. It is easy to get jaded by all of the “most critical elections” that we’ve been having recently, but the sad fact is that whenever an outright Fascist has a chance to win it really is critical that he be destroyed at the ballot box so that we don’t need to do that in the inevitable violence that will result if he wins. Fascists do not tolerate dissent well, and they like the Big Shiny of jackbooted thugs enforcing their whims. We’ve seen this movie before. It didn’t end well. It needs to be cut off before it starts.
Do not be jaded, because it really is that important. Do not be discouraged by the prophets of doom who see no hope, because while there is life there is hope and if they want me they can goddamn well take me themselves because I’m not turning myself in. Do not be misled by the propagandists who tell you that your vote doesn’t matter, because they wouldn’t be trying so hard to stop you from voting if that were true.
Do not go gently into the long dark night of Fascism, but rage against the dying of the light until the fading stops and the light returns.
I left work a bit early today, as it is a Friday and for long and frankly rather aggravating reasons that I will not go into here there are vanishingly few classes taught at Home Campus on Fridays and therefore equally few students who want to make appointments with their advisor on that day, and I headed over to City Hall. Here in Wisconsin we’ve been able to do early in-person voting since the beginning of the week and I have to say that this is an idea that has definitely found its audience.
I got there at 3:30 or so on a Friday afternoon, about an hour before the place closes, and there was quite a line in front of me.
It took me over an hour to get to the voting machine.
It has to be said that the line moved pretty briskly. It wasn’t stagnant – it was just that long. If nothing else, this gives me some hope for the survival of American democracy.
They’ve redone the process since the last election where I voted early. You used to get a big paper ballot and you’d fill in the bubbles by hand with a marker and then you’d fold it three or four times to get it into the envelope and turn it back in to the clerk. Now you get a thin blank ballot – maybe 4 inches by 11 inches or so – and you take it to a touchscreen computer. You feed it into the slot, then vote on the computer and when you’re done it gives you a chance to say “Yes, that’s what I wanted to do” or “No, let me change that one” and then when you say you’re done it prints out the ballot with your choices on it. You fold that in half, stick it in the envelope, and then give it to the volunteers at the next table. You have to sign it in front of them, but then you can go.
They did give me the traditional sticker, which I appreciated.
I have cast my ballot in this most critical of elections – the most recent of them, anyway. It is easy to get jaded by all of the “most critical elections” that we’ve been having recently, but the sad fact is that whenever an outright Fascist has a chance to win it really is critical that he be destroyed at the ballot box so that we don’t need to do that in the inevitable violence that will result if he wins. Fascists do not tolerate dissent well, and they like the Big Shiny of jackbooted thugs enforcing their whims. We’ve seen this movie before. It didn’t end well. It needs to be cut off before it starts.
Do not be jaded, because it really is that important. Do not be discouraged by the prophets of doom who see no hope, because while there is life there is hope and if they want me they can goddamn well take me themselves because I’m not turning myself in. Do not be misled by the propagandists who tell you that your vote doesn’t matter, because they wouldn’t be trying so hard to stop you from voting if that were true.
Do not go gently into the long dark night of Fascism, but rage against the dying of the light until the fading stops and the light returns.
I left work a bit early today, as it is a Friday and for long and frankly rather aggravating reasons that I will not go into here there are vanishingly few classes taught at Home Campus on Fridays and therefore equally few students who want to make appointments with their advisor on that day, and I headed over to City Hall. Here in Wisconsin we’ve been able to do early in-person voting since the beginning of the week and I have to say that this is an idea that has definitely found its audience.
I got there at 3:30 or so on a Friday afternoon, about an hour before the place closes, and there was quite a line in front of me.
It took me over an hour to get to the voting machine.
It has to be said that the line moved pretty briskly. It wasn’t stagnant – it was just that long. If nothing else, this gives me some hope for the survival of American democracy.
They’ve redone the process since the last election where I voted early. You used to get a big paper ballot and you’d fill in the bubbles by hand with a marker and then you’d fold it three or four times to get it into the envelope and turn it back in to the clerk. Now you get a thin blank ballot – maybe 4 inches by 11 inches or so – and you take it to a touchscreen computer. You feed it into the slot, then vote on the computer and when you’re done it gives you a chance to say “Yes, that’s what I wanted to do” or “No, let me change that one” and then when you say you’re done it prints out the ballot with your choices on it. You fold that in half, stick it in the envelope, and then give it to the volunteers at the next table. You have to sign it in front of them, but then you can go.
They did give me the traditional sticker, which I appreciated.
We are facing a future where an outright Fascist, a 34-time convicted felon facing more than four dozen other criminal indictments, a self-declared sexual predator, a coddler of dictators and spiraling dementia patient whose previous term in office was marked by blistering incompetence, overt bigotry (not surprising, given the endorsements he received from every major neo-Nazi and white supremacist group in America), a response to a global pandemic so deliberately botched that peer-reviewed scientific papers attribute the unnecessary deaths of over a quarter million Americans directly to his leadership, a recession that started even before that, an unprecedented two impeachments, and a treasonous insurrection, somehow has an even money chance to be reinstalled into power.
This cannot happen if the American republic is to survive.
I have done my bit.
If you value the republic, you will do the same.
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