Voting

I INHERITED MY ADDICTION to voting from my parents, directly. My father, an early retired attorney, said he'd be happy to vote on anything, anytime, anywhere, as if he'd like to mosey over to the polling place every day or two. My mother considered voting to be her sacred obligation to the country. She forgot to vote one time in a minor local election, and I thought she was gonna flog herself. I told her "For Chrissake, mom, you're a retired nurse, you tried to enlist after Pearl Harbor, but your family wouldn't let you, you wear red, white, and blue about half the time, and this is the first vote you've missed since World War Two, if not before. Don't ya think you owe yourself a break, some slack? We all make mistakes. She wasn't having any part of it. She had not voted, She had failed in her duty as an American. I remember how excited I was, in 1971 when I was sixteen, when they lowered the voting age to eighteen, just in time for me to take advantage of it. For presidential elections I usuallly hook up with the local Democrats, start going to meetings, and work the polls. I confess I supported Nixon when I was a high school senior in 1972, I hope by now I have absolved myself of that sin, somehow. I share my parent's fervor for voting (damned Republicans), and I feel great every time I come out of the voting place wearing one of those goofy little "I voted" stickers. What really got me into politcs at the tender age of eight was the JFK assassination, because of all the meledramatic political activity of the day. The riotous, violent Democratic National Convention of 1968 really got my attention. As a thirteen year old, I supported Nixon, probably becaus he promised to end the war in Viet Nam which even I, at the tender age or twelve, knew was nothing but a disaster for America. The assassinations of 1968 messed me even more. I was a big Bobby Kennedy fan, and his violent death sickened and gisgusted my pre teen self, and still does. I wish RFK had become president, and sinc ehe didn't, I wish Ted kennedy had. I'm not sure about both of them. A dynasty needs limits, especially in "Democratic" America. According to people like Gore Vidal America is not a democratic republic, but rather, a plutocratic oligarchy. I can see his point, and am happy to explain it to anyone has doesn't. Gore Vidal maintained tha the United States of America is a sham, a scam, and always has been. A plutocracy cleverly but thinly disguised as a true democracy, our votes having little meaning, because who we vote for and what we vote for is spoon fed to us by our corporate masters, says Vidal. I say it too, because vidal proves it. So my vote is window dressing. The one one percent who own and operate this money machine have everything neatly under their control and ownership. People like to talk about how the United States constitution guarantees freedon and liberty within and throughout the American economic and political systems. What they don't mention is that wealth purchases power, and that there is no mechanism in America to safeguard the interests of the poor masses against the predatory exploitational tendences of the wealthy corporate owners and masters. The corporate elite like to present themselves as bulwarks for capitalisim and thus freedom in our glorious democracy where everybody has what they laughably call "equal opportunity". We all start from square one, and the talented and hard working rise to the top of the economic pyramid, so goes the Darwinistic rationale. Competition is natural, and therefore, desirable. Also unmentioned is that cooperation, rather than competition between groups of people and between people within the group forms the basis of all human civilization. The establishment of a nation and of its economic system is an act of large scale cooperation, If there is anything "unnatural", it is for a group of people to set up an economic system in which competiton allow for some to survive and others to perish. rahter than one which ensures the safety and well being of all members of the group, who, after all, have something to contribute mersly by existing, like all humans. We can compete all we want in the glorious arena of the sacred capitalistic cow, but the more people whom the system excludes from even minimal prosperity, the more the system consumes and destroys itself. All you hard core right wing capitalists had better count your lucky stars that there are good, solid pillars of socialism, cooperative economics, like public schools and utilities, like Social Security and Medicare, supporting and buffering a cut throat corporate capitalistic monstrosity which, otherwise, left to its own devices, would beyond all shadow of a doubt consume itself in a frenzy of private dod eat dog economic enterprise if but given the chance to do so. Thank you, socialism, for saving the American economy, and thus, for saving America.