6/26/2022

VOTERS CAN SAVE DEMOCRACY.
SO, WHY DON'T WE?

NOW,  IT’S UP TO US.
   We can rescue the USA.
   There are no excuses.
   On November 8, we can vote.
   We can vote for freedom.
   We can vote for reproductive choice.
   We can vote for fair elections.
   We can vote for safe gun rules.
   We can vote to preserve our planet.
   We can vote to save democracy.

THIS WON’T BE EASY. Americans don’t like to vote. And in an “off-year” election like 2022 – when there’s no presidential race – interest falls even more.
   Worse, the voters who do show up in the off-years are the cranky kind, who want to stick it to whomever happens to be in power. This year, that would be the Democrats, who barely control Congress,  and their president, Joe Biden, who is not up for election, but whom the cranks think deserves a thrashing.
   Joe Biden’s too old. He promised; he didn’t deliver.
   Gas prices are so high.
   Most of us can’t afford to buy a house. Or rent an apartment.
   Food is out of sight.
   We’re sick with and of Covid..
   Progressives are so woke.
   We’ve had it with the noise, the arguments, the bickering, the squabbling. Why can’t we all get along?
   When does football start?
   The couch is so comfortable.

 CAN ENOUGH VOTERS be persuaded to do  two simple, but important, things that are asked of grownups in a democracy?
    Thing One: We need to pay some attention to the news, not so much that people become obsessive news junkies like me, but just enough to get a sense of all the terrible things that are going on.
    This is not a chore; and it’s not expensive. For example, you can get a year’s subscription to the Washington Post for $40 or $50 a year (you may have to call the paper to get a bargain price). The Associated Press website  is free. Both are state-of-the-art news services you can follow on a phone or computer. Both are breathtaking in their scope, excellence and authoritative reporting and story telling.
   Thing Two: We have to persuade potential voters to become actual voters.
   I have no idea on how to do this.
   In fact, I get furious when I think about how seemingly hard this is to do.
   The stakes are so high – the future of life in the United States. And voting is, in most places, relatively effortless, especially with a little preparation – a phone call to a board of canvassers or a computer search on how to get a mail ballot.
   Compare this to what people in other countries face when trying to maintain their way of life or bring about change.
   Imagine that we’re Ukrainians. Instead of voting, we have to drop everything and become citizen soldiers;  we have to abandon our homes and flee with our children and pets to other countries; we have watch as Russian missiles, bombs and artillary turn cities into rubble; and in increasing numbers, we will die.
   Or imagine we live in a dictatorship, something no longer out of the question.
   Russia, for example, is expert at old-fashioned, heavy-handed dissent smothering; police goons break up public protests; Vladimir Putin & Co. order the  murder of journalists and shutter news outlets; they jail and assassinate would-be opponents.
   China is perfecting the high-tech surveillance state, while not ignoring the traditional stomp 'em, lock ‘em up, beat ‘em up methods. The New York Times today documents how the Chinese government watches its citizens with thousands of cameras and develops ever more sophisticated computer technology to predict and punish dissent.
   Whereas in the United States, all we have to do to is vote.

  WHAT'S THE PROBLEM? ARE OUR POLITICS SO BORING?
   Compared to what?
   Sports?  Cleaning the bathroom? Going to the beach? Hosting a backyard barbecue? Watching TV?
   I was thinking the other day about how I waste my own time.
   I’m a mystery addict: I read Agatha Christie books; listen to detective podcasts; watch Good Police vs. Evil Criminals series on streaming services; and I look forward to catching up on  “Perry Mason” reruns.
   But lately, I find none of these escapist diversions come close to what’s happening on our national reality show.
   No writer has ever dreamed up a villain so brazen so devilish, evil, destructive and indestructible as Donald J. Trump.
   What thriller writer would imagine a plot in which – not the head of the CIA, not the Speaker of the House, not the First Lady – but the actual top guy himself, the Commander In Chief, leads the charge to create national chaos, encourage racism, collaborate with the enemy, marginalize hallowed institutions and promotes a vast conspiracy to undermine democracy?
    Could a writer of disease epics imagine that a president would, by way of his ineptness, shriveled attention span and deliberate malevolence, allow hundreds of thousands of citizens to die just because he bungled the national response to a pandemic? Or increase the levels man-made gasses that are cooking the planet to death,  unleashing floods and hurricanes, drying up  reservoirs, igniting massive wildfires and triggering homicidal heat waves?
   No second-rate author of the It-Could-Happen-Here! genre would think up a plot in which a pathological liar convinces half the country to believe his fables, conspiracies, evasions, insisting that night is day, that hot is cold and that if you are truly loyal, you should fall for the greatest knee-slapper in history, that a president who actually lost an election actually won an election?
    Would a book publisher, a TV studio entertain fantastical plots in which the actual president tries to overthrow the government by browbeating his vice president into monkey-wrenching an election? By attempting to install a sycophant as  head the justice department and declare the election stolen? By demanding  that a state election official “find” just enough extra votes? And by egging on and  orchestrating an attack on the nation’s Capitol by a mob lead by armed racists?  And not particularly caring that while they’re at it, maybe that mob could knock off some police, hang a vice president and murder a speaker of the House? 

What warped writing team would have concocted a story line in which a maniacal demagogue converts an ordinary political party into a destructive, mindless cult?
   Or dream up a TV “news” network that could hypnotize half the country into believing The Leader’s lies?
   In what science-fiction romp would six Supreme Court justices snatch away a 50-year right like abortion and turn women into breeders?
   Or, just weeks after teenage gunmen slaughtered shoppers at a supermarket or massacred  fourth graders near their last day of school,  would have those same justices make it easier for other angry teenagers to get guns and turn them on the rest of us?  

 RIGHT NOW, TRUMP-CRAZED REPUBLICANS are on course to take over Congress.
   The Real Clear Politics website projects Republican will end up with at least 220 seats in the House of Representatives – more than half the chamber’s 435 seats. As to the Senate, the site predicts Democrats will probably keep  46 seats, compared to 47 for Republicans – with seven races judged a toss up.
    A Republican sweep does not have to happen.
   There are plenty of Democrats, enough Republicans of good will and lots of sensible Independents who can make a difference on Nov. 8.
   So what keeps so many of us on the fence, at home, on the couch?
   Why won’t voters –  enough voters –  take  a moment or two to make a difference?
   Why is there so much indifference to something so vital?
   How can you and I be convinced to play the hero, come to the rescue of our country and preserve a way of life that can flourish only a democracy?
   Voting is so easy.
   And so hard.