deeples

October 27, 2008

Don’t mock the vote.

*WARNING – If you are a McCain/Palin supporter, you won’t care much for this post. Skip it. Print and burn it. Spit on your computer screen. Leave a comment.  Do what you gotta do. *

So, I had this dream last night that I was trapped in a Sarah Palin theme park.  Her picture was everywhere. The games and rides were all basic things like throwing a basketball or riding a merry-go-round except they all had theme park names like Palinball and Sarah-Go-Round!  She, personally, played each game with me and rode each ride with me… but there were no rules, no stopping, no way to win.  You didn’t win prizes, you just kept playing.  There was no pinnacle to each ride, because you just kept spinning.

Through it all, she would laugh and laugh. I kept saying, “But how do I win?”  “How do I make it stop?” “How do I leave?”

And she would laugh…. and shake her head.   “YOU CAN’T!!!“, she’d scream!  “YOU CAN’T!!”  Laugh..laugh.. cackle… cackle…  and I would just stay and throw more Palinballs and go around the Sarah-Go-Round again.. and again…. and again.

Talk about goddamn nightmares.

Part of me can hardly believe that this election is just weeks away and part of me can’t wait for November 5th, because this election is really giving me a case of the screaming willies…the heebie- jeebersons… the full-blown, freak out, akimbo zim-zams.    Considering even the possibility that McCain and Palin may possibly win… it causes me actual, physical discomfort.

It’s like trying to drive when the sun is glaring in your eyes. You can’t look away and it hurts more every second you endure it. You try to bob and weave and find some contorted way to hold your head where it can’t pierce your brain, but in the end you just grit your teeth, squint and pray it’s over soon.

I used to try very hard to feel like “live and let live” about party lines. You believe your thing, I’ll believe mine. To each his or her own. Blah, blah.   But this time it feels more like civil war.

This isn’t to each his own.

Your vote for McCain…. that vote… HARMS me.

It divides us.

A civil war in which some people I love are on one side, and some on the other… but unlike the North versus the South, people CHOOSE which side they are onLove them, yes. But also, I count them in my head. The votes that harm me.  The votes that I tally and try to come up with someone in my column that will cancel out their vote.

It’s absurd…. and I hate it. I hate it, but I can’t stop the tally that I keep in my head. I run down the list in my head every day.  One for him.  Two for us.  Two more for him.  One more for us.

It’s … it’s….epic.

This weekend, I was surrounded by Repubs.  And they were spouting intelligent things like:

Obama is a terrorist! He’s a Muslim

You KNOW his middle name is “Hussein”, right? You know what THAT means.”

and my personal favorite,

The only difference between OBAMA and OSAMA is the BS

And these are young people…  19-25 years old.  These are young adults that have been force-fed this kind of bigotry and back-woods propaganda by their parents and their friends their whole lives.

They are brain-washed.

I’m trying my best, Repubs, to live and let live.   Probably, you are trying, too.  I know you, too, are terrified of change, of what you don’t know.  I know.

But if you don’t know the policy… if you don’t know the issues…. if you just want to sound tough and repeat the soundbites of weak-minded, prejudiced people… please, find a soapbox at an Applebees bar and knock your socks off.

But don’t vote, ok?

Just don’t bother.

I’m not saying vote for Obama, if you don’t believe in him.

But don’t vote McCain just because your parents and your grandparents and their parents all voted Republican.  If you don’t know the facts, if you haven’t read anything about their policies and their records and watched CNN and the debates… just skip it, please. I beg you.

I know… I know… I shouldn’t encourage young people to not vote.   I know.

But this one?

Well, I need this one.

I’d rather tell a generation of politically uneducated youth to not rock their vote than ride that Sarah-Go-Round.

Bygones.

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