~a column by Colleen O’Brien
Who’s going to win the upcoming general election is an even fight right now, and even that info depends on who’s telling us the news. Both sides are polling closely, claiming bigger crowd size than the other (one side truthfully, the other habitually not, since 2016) name-calling on both sides, one a little more practiced than the other.
The exuberance, talent, creativity and performance of the Democratic National Convention giving a lot of joy and positiveness to life in America was thought to portend the Gen Xers campaigning right to the ballot box.
That compares to the grayness of the other convention talking about the “failure” of America … a downer every time I hear the word. And it does not relate. As I drive around, living my life – mostly preoccupied – when I pay attention, I see that we are a busy country of hard work and innate industry at all times, city or country. We are always getting things done. New roads, old roads fixed; acres being seeded and harvested; new buildings, old ones torn down; kids on bikes, old people on bikes. Summer ballgames occupying every available field. Failing? We certainly look like we enjoy it.
But a story I just heard disheartens me:
A young man – Generation Y – 28 or 29 years old – son of a friend, told his mother that he wasn’t going to vote.
“I started crying,” she said. “I’ve talked politics to him since he was in grade school. He used to go with me to vote. We made a big deal of the first time he got to vote, and he’s always voted, even getting his pothead friends to vote.” (I had to laugh at that. So did she.) “He knows we’re a Democratic Party family going way back. He even knows the story of his great aunt who called herself a “yellow-dog democrat.” [This is a Democratic Party member slam, and it means the person will vote for a yellow dog before voting for a Republican].
As she wept her story to me, she couldn’t really explain his disinterest in voting because he couldn’t articulate his feelings other than to say, “If you’re a politician, you lie.”
My friend and I, making the wry face: yes, we knew that politicians lied. But not all of them all the time.
“Yeah,” she said, nodding regretfully at our cynicism. “But this year presents itself as a life or death situation.” She looked up, having allowed the tears to flow and drip off her chin. “Don’t you think so?”
I do, for many reasons. First of all, the Republican nominee and his running mate’s tact of direct opposition to my candidate’s laugh, her happiness, her Communism (lie), her having no children (true but so what?); second, Project 2025, a mandate of 900+ pages from which the opposition will remove how our Constitution was relegated as a government of, by and for the people to an autocracy which is for only those chosen by the autocrat; third, do people who vote for a guy who says, “Now if I don’t get elected, it’s going to be a bloodbath for the whole — that’s gonna be the least of it,” he added. “It’s going to be a bloodbath for the country.” (NBC News 3-26-24, Vandalia, OH)
People vote for a candidate who states that there’ll be a bloodbath if he doesn’t win? They rejoice in that kind of campaigning? Have they ever looked into the cruelty of an autocracy? It should scare any free person right under her bed.
The long-lasting appeal of our country is our Constitution that was written for the freedom of people – which is why we’ve had so many immigrants for more than 250 years – heck, the people who wrote the Constitution were immigrants.
The Constitution did not by any means cover all people at first, but the document allowed itself to be amended over the decades as a living breathing piece of work. Some of these amendments – to prohibit slavery; to give the vote to anyone despite race, color or previous condition of servitude; to give the right to vote to females and eventually to Native Americans; freedom of assembly, of choosing for ourselves our own religion; or no religion.
We do have the voice to change it, we do have the right to vote, we do have the obligation of freedom of speech, making it the living, breathing piece of work they knew the American people would need. Speaking up against the tyranny of a tyrant, for one – that’s what the Founding Fathers were doing in the first place; of freedom of assembly, of choosing for ourselves our own religion; or no religion.
We are supposed to be a country of law, and somehow, this man who is running for office is a charged felon not yet sent to prison, a self-admitted harasser of women, a chain-liar (according to the record-keeping Washington Post newspaper, 30,573 lies told by him during the four years of his administration); and most importantly, he is an insurrectionist.
(U.S. Constitution, Amendment 14, Section 3: No person shall be a Senator or Representative in Congress, or elector of President and Vice-President, or hold any office, civil or military, under the United States, or under any State, who, having previously taken an oath, as a member of Congress, or as an officer of the United States, or as a member of any State legislature, or as an executive or judicial officer of any State, to support the Constitution of the United States, shall have engaged in insurrection or rebellion against the same or given aid or comfort to the enemies thereof. But Congress may by a vote of two-thirds of each House, remove such [a] disability.)
I figure that my friend will be working on her son, reading to him from the above, convincing him that to vote is what you GET to do when you live in the U.S.; to live in the U.S. means you better vote or you’re going to wind up with a despot.
The reason our democratic republic falls for felons and tyrants is that we forget we have to take care of our country. We work along, minding our business, presuming the leaders of the country are doing the same. But sometimes the creeps creep in. We are the ones who have to keep our government honest. We have to keep track of what our government is doing. This part of our lives in America belongs to us and to our friends in the Press who are charged in the very first Amendment to help us, to ferret out the ferrets, publish their sideways deals, keep us informed of their greedy, power-hungry ways while we’re working at jobs that are not the Press.
Why does a convicted felon get to run for the most powerful position in the free world?
My friend and I have so much to talk about.
