PSA: Vote, but not for your own sake
This is a public service announcement. Sorry to utilize the bullys pulpit and I promise not to do it too often. Please feel free to comment, forward or disparage me for the article below. I welcome your feedback and thoughts. But most of all, please believe me when I say that the following is sincere and well-meant.
Thank you.
_____________________________
Pss, hey you. Yeah you over there with the one eye on the tube and the other on the computer. I need you to stop for a second and do me a favor.
Go vote.
I mean, obviously not all of you, but those of you who are over 18, not convicted felons and are US citizens. Don’t do it for yourself, schmuck. Do it for those around you, the people you love.
Why, you ask? What is my vote going to do for them? Well, where to start…this election has the most significant ramifications of any in our generation. Our country is in dire straits and the only way out is up.
We have a financial crisis so deep that even the car companies cant give away cars with 0% interest. Investments have fallen by 60% in less than 8 weeks. Do you want to work until you’re 75? Do you want your parents working that long? Does wearing a blue vest and pushing grocery carts hold a certain appeal to you? Do you have over a million dollars in your 401k? Have you checked lately? You should, but take a kleenex along.
We are fighting two wars – one necessary to win, another necessary to retain our pride in the face of a mistake. But soon enough we will be facing yet another war in Pakistan, the homebase of the one man that has terrified us long past the sounds of jets screaming into concrete and steel. When we enter Pakistan, with or without permission, we’re going in for a just cause and we will need to stand strong and sacrifice and most of all declare victory for a just cause, this time.
We are struggling with the educations of our children. Children who are so much more technically advanced than we were at their ages. Children who use Facebook and Myspace in elementary school – who program games and iPhone apps as preteens and hack together companies known globally by the time they finish puberty. They’ve seen more skin than many of us did until we were in college or married – their innocence is packed away on a disc drive somewhere.
These kids need a proper education – they need to read and write and add and subtract. They need to love and hurt and discover that the people around them are just like them. They must discover that they are not alone – that there are others like them, even if they are 3 color shades away or missing a body part they themselves may possess. We need to teach them respect and manners and how to use common sense when it comes to dollars and cents. We need to teach them how to use what they’ve learned online, outside.
We have rifts to heal. We have people working hard, 50,60,80 hour per week and making in a month the same salary an investment banker brings home in a day. Bankers, just rescued from a federal bailout, are getting $3 million dollar Christmas bonuses…we’re getting used iPods and DVDs and pink slips.
We have people who can’t work because they have kidney disease – they can’t stand too long, or sit too long. They have to take a dozen medications a day – half of which dont have generic equivalents, meaning they cost around $80-200 per bottle. These people have health insurance maybe, but even after paying their 20%, they are stuck with thousands and thousands of debt from one simple doctor visit or ER trip.
We have children going undiagnosed with illnesses because their parents can’t afford to take them to the doctor, and the free clinic simply can’t diagnose the issue properly.
We have racial rifts that aren’t healed. We have whites refusing to vote for ‘the nigger’, and blacks who think that he isn’t ‘black enough’. It’s no longer a matter of who is qualified or who is vetted – it’s now down to who is best able to bridge the gap and make people realize that we are Americans, not black, not white. We share common blood, through love, through war, through the air we breathe.
We have people in love – in love despite the horrors their lives sometimes are because they are deemed different. Their lifestyle is ridiculed, their movements nomenclature has become a slur. And yet they are denied their rights simply because they do not conform to what a book thousands of years old says…forget that the sequel to that book teaches love and forgiveness and encourages others to honor their neighbors. The dark stuff is more exciting and feeds the hate, so it persists. Somehow it is argued that their marriage makes yours less true.
We have a religious movement that demands respect – their God is the most powerful God in the world and they are willing to go to war and kill to prove it. They will do whatever it takes to prove their God is the best and most perfect and they will kill and maim and demagogue that fact ad nauseam, raising a world war to prove their loyalty.
Guess which religion that paragraph was about. Could be any of them, right? Christians, Muslims, Scientologists? See, we as a global people are very much the same – we all have ideals and in order to keep the ideals in the air and open to debate, we must confront them head on and work out the differences. We shouldn’t shoot missiles at the other side simply because they condemn an action performed by the other sides culture. Every major religion has an ideology that reflects the adage ‘live and let live’…yet they simply can’t elevate that idiom to the same level as ‘my god is an awesome god’.
So, looking back – the election today is important. The way our leaders react to these crisis are vital. They have to be concerned with the feelings and thoughts of others while still being wary of them.
They must protect the elderly and insure that they have sustained, good life styles.
They must teach the children to become the men and women who will run the country after them.
They have to teach the world that America is a wonderful place, full of hope, opportunity and dreams. A land that offers a kid who grew up in the projects the same choices given to the kid who grew up in private schools with a nanny and a trust fund.
A land where merit and brains can get you further than sycophancy and connections.
They must carefully protect the rights of all their denizens – protecting their bodies and their rights and their beliefs and the freedom to express those beliefs.
They must be able to convince their citizens that it is in their better interest to become the better angels. To give back to the communities they live in – coach a team, teach a class, start a blog for cancer patients, walk a dog for a neighbor, feed the poor. So many small things that can change the world, one person at a time.
And that’s what this election is all about – changing the world, one person at a time. Except the person is your mother,your father, a sister or a brother. A sick uncle or a pregnant daughter. A son with a broken arm, or a wife with a renewed lust for life.
Do it for them, do it for all of them. Give them the best that you can by giving them the gift of freedom, of liberty, of America.
Please, go vote – it doesn’t matter who for – just do it for yourself, your families and friends, and for America.
Sincerely yours,
Scott McDaniel
Son, Husband, Father of three, Friend
BabyGotMac.com
scottmcdaniel.org