Steve Muhlberger’s blog Muhlberger’s Early History linked to this moving photo article in the Daily Kos. For decades I’ve argued with people who thought they are being clever by not voting, and who subsequently wondered why they woke up in a world controlled by religious wackos and sleazy haters of freedom. Well, it’s because they never showed up at the polls, and the haters of freedom made sure their minions did. The lame logic behind the “don’t vote, it only encourages them” notion was basically that, if your only weapon is a bow and arrow, and you are being hunted by a someone with a gun, you should throw away the bow and arrow. The Democratic Party may not be a shining bastion of reason and freedom, but at the moment, the difference between it and the Republican Party is roughly equivalent to the difference between the post-WWII democracies and the Soviet Union. Remember the nitwits who, back then, liked to talk as if the two were “morally equivalent”? History has turned them into jokes. Right now the last thing in the world a sane human being can claim is that the Democratic and Republican parties are morally equivalent. The contrast is stark and irrefutable.
Fortunately, in the United States, a younger generation seems to be shaking off their torpid paralysis, and is actually concentrating on getting out the vote, rather than thinking up new and clever ways to appear blasé. This revival of common sense comes at a desperately needed time, because, quite apart from the massive assaults on American freedom they’ve undertaken while in power, the Republican Party elite have made it perfectly plain that they will attempt to rig the election with voter suppression, electoral fraud, and any sleazy trick they can think of. The incredibly sleazy campaign tactics deployed so far are just the tip of the iceberg. Decades ago, one of the principal theorists of the Neoconservative movement blatantly proclaimed that the fewer people voted, the more power his crowd would have, and that the last thing Republicans wanted was for the American people to exercise their democratic rights.
Here in Canada, the strategic election called by the Conservatives failed to give them the majority government they craved, but left them a little more solidly in power as a minority government — thanks to the lowest voter turnout in generations. It seems that we should be looking the the U.S. for a little inspiration. For a change, they are on the ball, and we are asleep at the switch.
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