Room for a View

Editorial

Rejecting the Politics of Fear
By now, you’re sick of anything having to do with this stupid election. Bush repulses you, Gore disappoints you and so far nobody’s succeeded in getting a “none of the above” choice on the ballot that would force the parties to put up better candidates for a second vote. You’ve been wooed, pandered to, scared and manipulated by the Democrats and the Republicans and you’re just about convinced that a vote for anyone other than Bush or Gore is a vote for Bush or Gore. Right?
Don’t buy it. That’s just Orwellian doublspeak. If the majority of eligible voters in this country, who traditionally sit on their keisters Election Day, actually went to the polls and voted, nobody could predict the outcome. Nader could win. Buchanan could win. Hell, Mickey Mouse could win. Don’t forget, even the fabled “Reagan Landslide” represented a small fraction of the total electorate. If we weren’t all so jaded, so cynical, so disgusted and so depressed, we could elect anyone we wanted. Anyone.
Personally, I’d vote for a potted plant if I thought doing so would stick it to the Dems and Reps who think they’ve got us under their money-fatted thumbs. Fortunately, there’s a more qualified candidate. This November 7, my vote goes to Ralph Nader.
Do I really think he’ll win? No. Does it matter? No. If I’m going to vote for someone I don’t like out of fear that someone I like even less might win, there’s no point in voting at all. And that’s what the majority of Americans have been doing—not voting at all. By voting for Nader, I vote my conscience and reject the politics of fear. I also help the Green Party qualify for federal matching funds in the next election cycle. Without money, the Greens will never be able to get their message out. Even if Nader doesn’t win—and even if a Green Party candidate doesn’t win four years from now—a good showing for Nader will force the Dems and Reps to adopt Green ideas in order to try to get my vote next time.
So this year, my vote might actually make a difference. What about yours?
—Todd Paul

Voting Rights, Voting Responsibilities
I can’t wait for election day, if only to be relieved from the constant chatter of freinds, foes and political pundits debating the big question of who to vote for and why.
There is no relief in sight as friends, foes and political pundits, debate the big question of who to vote for and why. There was a time I would vote based on an admitted surface knowledge learned in a variety of college classes and skimmed from the crap fed to me by the media.
Now I am the media. Surface knowledge has been replaced by unending minutia of too many harrowing facts. Texas is a mess. Dead bodies fly out of a prison system that has executed more prisoners than any other state in the US has in the past two decades. Breeding a class of working poor people, poverty is strewn from one end of the state to the other with 12.9 percent of the households not having enough food to meet basic needs.
In terms of poverty, Tennessee does only a bit better. Among its rolling hills, only 10.9 percent of its households go to bed on less than a full stomach. A recent George article reported on a 57-year-old worker who lacked health insurance when he had a heart attack following a series of strokes. He sold everything he owned in order to become Medicaid-eligible. His last job? Working 80 to 100 hours per week on the Gore family farm for five dollars per hour.
Historically non-enrolled, last time around I registered as a Democrat to help Clinton become President. I now fully regret that choice. This time around I get to choose between two corporate-birthed Bobsy-twins and someone who nobody believes has a chance of being elected.
So what do we do? I’m not going there. But I’ll tell you what not to do. Don’t sit home on the couch like yesterday’s news and leave the voting up to others. Don’t you dare. The freedom to vote in this country was hard fought for. Not by those white-faced founding fathers of ours who neatly arranged that they only should have the vote. It was fought for later, after the Civil War, when agitation by women fighting for the right to vote joined with the voices of black men and women and demanded that the basic rights of citizenship be extended to all.
In 1868, the 14th Amendment defined citizenship, among other things, as a male condition. In 1870, the 15th Amendment stated the right to vote could not be denied on account of “race, color, or previous condition of servitude.” This allowed all males, including blacks, to vote. Yet it wasn’t until 1920 that women, black and white, were allowed to vote in the US. And now that we all have this right to vote, I would bet that it is the least used right of all.
They say if you don’t use it you lose it. I don’t care who you vote for.
Just get out there and vote.
—Lorna Tychostup