VOTE!
Today is the day. Vote! Otherwise, you can’t bitch when things don’t go the way you wanted.
In Oregon, we have vote-by-mail. I voted this last weekend. It should be obvious who I voted for, but that’s not really the point. The point is that I took the time to participate in the electoral process.
Let’s hope this time around we can get some real change. We need a shake up to break the lethargy that permeates our system these days. Ideally, we would destroy the entrenched special interests and corporate greed but that’s just talk. My profession requires corporates with capitol and ability to fund high-dollar software development projects. Yes, my skills and experience come at a price. That price is not affordable by most small companies.
The other side of the special interest discussion is to look at minority interests in the larger system. I am not a Christian, therefore I am a minority in this country. I still have rights and am not compelled to worship by a State religion. What about the rights of those who don’t look like the majority? They have the right to organize and fight for their ‘special interest.’ Not all special interests are big corporate lobbies. Unfortunately the big boys are the dominate form. But still… It would be nice to tear it all down and reform the Republic in a better more balanced union.
That said, I realize that destroying the system never truly works. Having studied a lot of history, I see the same pattern repeated over and over again. Unless the entire system collapses, things rarely change in a meaningful way. Let’s parse what I said to be clear. ‘Unless the entire system collapses’: Think about the fall of Rome. Chaos, anarchy, death, destruction, reset that mythical ‘forward progress’ indicator. Not good in my view. ‘things rarely change in a meaningful way’: Social systems work within a given range. From the outside, changes are small and incremental over time. The movement of Europe away from a system focused upon religion to a secular state could be viewed as a series of small changes over a given time scale. Change the time scale and things look differently. But we don’t have that option. We live in the now where time appears to be linear and fixed. So things change slowly, in small pieces. From possible slave to leader of the Free World. From fighting for women suffrage to running for the highest office in the land.
Today, we face challenges some of our own creation, others originate from outside influences. Still we move forward, making the small changes to make tomorrow better than today. Success of failure will be judged by others, using that time scale I referred to earlier.
Stand up and be counted. Hopefully, we can move things a bit farther along today and tomorrow be better than today. Vote.
