Voting

To vote or not to vote, for whom to vote, all sort of begs the question in a government by the people and for the people. This is especially true when it comes to moral issues and the tendency to politicize life for the purpose of purchasing political capital.

On the one side it isn't too far a reach to suggest we have a campaigner who thirsts for war and whose interests lay largely with corporate entities, not with the majority working class or the marginalized.

On the other side, we have a campaigner who is stridently opposed to the pro-life movement, and has strongly suggested that women are "punished" if prevented from aborting their offspring.

What choice does one have who is opposed both to the oppression of the poor, as well as to the marginalization and murder of the unborn?

One may cast a vote over a single issue, such as abortion or war or the economy or gay marriage, or cast a vote for an ethic such as egalitarianism or a consistent ethic of life, or for an ideology like that which is promulgated via the neo-conservative movement. What is missing is the substance that lay behind the vote, especially if one fosters the attitude that personal responsibility ends there -- an idea the power-brokers and cultural elite would happily have the public embrace.

Voting should not be a mere nod towards those with whom we agree and would like to have in power, as if we think the power they possess has the efficacy to truly engender permanent and progressive change (for the better). Casting a vote is reduced to casting a hook and line into a dark and troubled lake; one tends to catch whatever fate brings. A true democratic vote should not be viewed as the instigation of change, enacted once every two or four years as the penultimate motion of personal duty, nor should it foster connotatively within its own action the sum and purpose of citizenship. Rather, voting should be the denouement, the fulfillment, the acknowledgement of an entire lifestyle that is responsible, that is socially aware, and that in day to day experience effects real and lasting change.

When one votes morally, on the issues, and ideologically with the substance of his life and actions, it is far easier to see the distinctions between life as it is, and the bifurcating polarities that reduce existence to the left and to the right when it is falsely politicized.