Week of 11/05/2012

Vote Your Conscience!
– by David Matthews 2

This article is being published the day before Election Day 2012.

That said, I know that I probably won’t be able to influence you at this point about whom you will vote for on Election Day.  Most people have made up their minds a while ago, and some people (like myself) have even been able to vote early so they wouldn’t have to deal with the hassles of waiting in line on Election Day.

But if you haven’t early-voted yet, I have some things I want to share with you about this 2012 Election Season.  Whether it changes your mind or not is up to you, but I’m not going to hold my breath while waiting on hearing about anyone doing that.

First of all, if you’re supposedly voting for real change, then you will never get it by voting for either Mitt Romney or Barack Obama.

I know that goes against the GOP script.  I know that it also goes against the Obama script.  But that is all that it is.  It is a script.  It is fiction, fantasy, a delusion whipped up by overpaid political consultants and reinforced by propaganda mills pretending to be cable news channels.

Mitt Romney has been running for President since 2006, back when he first decided to run for the job.  Remember that?  Remember how he campaigned back then?  Since those days, he has morphed and regenerated himself and his positions more times than Doctor Who, and all without changing actors!  He has flip-flopped so many times on so many positions that he should have the word “Croc” stamped on his forehead and be kept away from escalators.

So which Mitt Romney would we end up with should he win on Election Day?  All indications are that we’d end up with the Mitt Romney that would cater to the evangelicals like Bush Junior did for eight years, and like what Obama did passively these past almost-four years.  He’d cater to Big Corporate like Bush Junior did.  Gitmo?  He’d keep it going.  PATRIOT Act?  He’d sustain it and probably even expand on it.  The TSA?  Hope you enjoy those shoeless lines while they go over your luggage and check your tats through the body-scanners.  “Too Big To Fail”?  The gravy trains there would continue.  The Great Recession?  Oh that would be declared “done and over with” right after Election Day.  “Obamacare”?  You’d be lucky if that was repealed, but, then again, this was the guy that gave Massachusetts “Romneycare”, Obama’s supposed blueprint.

We’ve seen what Barack Obama has done since he took office.  He promised change and then put in a whole bunch of career insiders that kept the status quo going.  Not exactly the kind of change the American people were looking for.

Where Obama fails, more than anything, though, is his idea that the recession was short-term.  This is an economic wreck in the same league as the iceberg-gouge of the Titanic, and he operated on the premise that our economic-ship-of-state was simply taking on “a little water”.  Add to that Big Corporate playing their parasitic games and the GOP continuing their orchestrated sabotage, and it’s safe to expect the same systematic dysfunction to continue.

Not much of a choice if that is all you believe that we have.

I know the GOP script says that this is a choice between “freedom” and “socialism”.  That, however, is a bold-faced lie, and they know that it is a lie. 

This is the party that enacted and defends to this day the PATRIOT Act.  This is the party that shoved the Transportation Safety Authority down our throats, forcing us to wait in line without shoes just to board a flight.  This is the party of perpetual war ripped right out of the pages of George Orwell’s “Nineteen Eighty-Four”.  This is the party that invented the Drug War – coined by Richard Nixon no less!  They wouldn’t know what freedom really was even if America’s Founding Fathers crawled out of their graves and bitch-slapped them.  By falsely claiming to be the party of “freedom” they are knowingly and willingly engaging in a fraud on a level that would make Bernie Madoff look like a rank amateur in comparison.

While not on par in terms of the fraud being perpetrated by the GOP, Obama’s campaign idea of “Forward” only makes sense if people really were moving forward instead of struggling just to keep from going under.  As mentioned in an earlier column, America finds itself rowing against an economic maelstrom, and the maelstrom is winning.  And rather than confronting the forces behind this man-made economic maelstrom, Obama’s subordinates broker sweetheart deals that allow criminal acts to be excused for nothing more than corporate pocket change.  His ideas have been sabotaged by a legislature that is one-half hostile and one-half incompetent, and by corporate executives that have been screaming like spoiled children in a toy store. 

All this while Americans suffer through the continuing effects of a recession that nobody wants to admit is still going on!  There’s nothing “forward” about where we are or where we’re heading.

Again, not much of a choice.  If that is all you believe that choice to be.

The problem is that for many American voters, there are other choices on that ballot.  Choices that are truly clear alternatives to the misery we’ve been going through with both the GOP and the Democrats.  But you consciously choose to ignore them… in favor of a script, no less!

It’s like some demented soap opera story where the young female character is asked to choose between two abusive suitors while ignoring her soul-mate.  And then she complains that she never finds love, when she consciously spurns those that would truly love her.

That is the kind of social sadomasochistic abuse most Americans put themselves and the rest of the nation through!  And all for a script!  A script that favors politics and corporate money over actual human beings!

So the question I want to really ask you is this: are you ready to live with that choice, no matter what it may be?

If you vote for either Obama or Romney, are you prepared to live with the screwjobs that will follow?  Are you prepared to have the powerful continue to screw over the powerless without any accountability whatsoever?  Are you prepared to be disappointed when those political promises they make do not come true?  That is what you will be facing after Election Day regardless of either Romney or Obama winning.

Let’s get brutally honest here… you pretty much forfeit any legitimate right to complain about a lack of choices if there are more than two on that ballot, especially if that other option better reflects the kind of person you want to represent you in government.  And if you say that he or she “can’t win”, then you have not only bought into the script, but you have proved you are a miserable excuse for a conscious human being.

Here’s a little nugget of reality: we vote for people who “can’t win” all of the time!  We call them “underdogs”.  We tell stories about them and make movies about their continual struggle to defy the odds.  Just look at the Cleveland Browns and the undying support their fans have no matter how bad of a football season they end up with.  You wouldn’t tell the Cleveland Browns to just not bother playing football, would you?   You wouldn’t walk into the Cleveland Browns Stadium and tell the 73,000 or so fans in attendance to just go home, would you?

And yet that is precisely what the script demands you to do when it comes to politics.

What I’m ultimately asking you to do is really very simple: I’m asking you to vote according to your conscience.

If you feel that someone else’s script is more important than your own values and your own expectations of how your chosen candidate should represent his or her constituents, then so be it.  I just want to know if you’re ready to live with the consequences of that choice.

You will not be any freer with either Romney or Obama.  They have proven this in both words and deeds.  Guantanamo Bay would still be there.  So would the PATRIOT Act and the TSA.  The economy will not just miraculously “heal” because of who wins or loses.  All of the hype generated from overpaid consultants will not change any of that.  If you are suffering now because of the recession, you will continue to suffer after the election, regardless of the outcome.

Are you ready to live with that? 

Are you ready to live with disappointment?  Are you ready to have promises broken?  That is precisely what you will be facing. 

If you’ve decided to prostitute your values for a party script, you’re going to find that you’re easier than a Craigslist whore in that regard.  You’ll find that you’re getting nothing out of something that is so precious for just one moment in one day that the political parties will spend billions to influence it.

Think about it.  Billions of dollars have been spent this year to own your vote.  Billions on consultants and ads and debates, billions on cable news programs to control what you think, billions on the messages you freely regurgitate on Facebook.  Billions of dollars that could have turned the recession around three times over…

And you don’t get one single penny of it.

Cheapest whores ever!

I’m just asking if you can live with that reality and the consequences of your actions.

The magical thing about voting is this: it is the one time, the only time, when politicians ever care about the masses, because it is the only time the masses have the power outside of a revolt.  All of the special interest groups, all of the overpaid political consultants, all of the ego-driven cable news personalities that pretend to be journalists, all of the forces that would otherwise influence government on a daily basis have no power once you enter that ballot box to cast your vote. 

If they chase you away from voting, then they have won.  If they convince you to sacrifice what you believe in so their candidate can get elected or re-elected, then they have won.  The only change they will accept is the one through their chosen candidate.  If you want real change, then you have to vote for the candidates that would actually provide it instead of what the script says. 

By the way, here’s the other magical thing about voting: if you vote for true change, even if your choice doesn’t win, you still have an effect on the outcome.  If enough people vote according to their conscience instead of what the script demands, then the powers-that-be start to pay attention and start supporting that actual change.  We saw this in 1992.  Remember the Reform Party?  We can see it again, but we each have to vote according to our conscience instead of a script.

It’s up to you now.  Choose wisely, and be ready to deal with the consequences either way.