Antidote for Despair

I am 70 years old and have been in the voting booth at least 25 times in my life.  I never fail to vote every two years when we hold national elections.  I am not so diligent when it comes to primaries, but that is going to change this year.

If there is anything that the last two years have taught us it is that the sacred right that we as citizens have to vote winds up being the last resort we have as citizens to direct the path of our government.

America has become a place where politics has been corrupted by money.  With the arrival of the Citizens United decision of the Supreme Court, the decay set in with a vengeance.  Suddenly the power of corporate greed was given primacy over rational thought.  The motive to make money above all other moral dilemmas became the driving force in American politics.  It has corrupted our Congress and Executive branches of government.  The result is that vested interests pour money into election campaigns that distort rational thought.  The NRA contributes millions to campaigns all over the country and those recipients don’t want to jeopardize their re-election chances by taking positions that might stop that money flow.

Just look at the Republican party positions on guns, climate change, pollution, energy development, education, health care, immigration.  All their positions are tied to moneyed interests pushing them to take positions that make those corporate interests make more money.  Democrats are not completey without blame either.  They have their share of legislators who worship the same money God.  Do you really think that the NRA is truly behind “preserving the 2^nd Amendment rights”?  No, what they are mostly interested in is preserving the ability of gun manufacturers to make gobs of money.  These people and the recipients of their campaign money are more interested in preserving the funding flow than stopping the slaughter of our children.

I have increasingly come to believe that if we citizens are going to prevail in making rational decisions about the path of our future as a society, we must take care to actually analyze the positions of the people who are running for office.

How many times have you gone into the voting booth and not recognized the names on the ballot, much less understood what they stand for?  If they have a D or an R in front of their name, in many cases we just pushed the button because our parents were Democrats or Republicans.  That time is over.

We must take responsibility for our ‘voice’ in ways that we have not been impelled to do before this period of corruption and legislative paralysis enveloped us.  It matters who we send to Congress to make our laws.  Could that be any more apparent after seeing the hypocrisy of people like Grassley, Ryan, Sessions, and McConnell?  Republicans are ignoring what large majorities of the American people want.  While they are in power we are held hostage to greed and hypocrisy.

That is why the elections in November are so critically important.  Unless we get rid of the people who ignore the will of the people, we are doomed to be prisoners in our own country.

Please learn about the candidates.  Support and encourage our youngsters to take initiative and power.  Teach them that the vote is their most precious possession as citizens.  And then go out there, starting with the primaries and make intelligent decisions about who will guide our society going forward into the future.  Our children’s lives depend on it.

And now just a word about this abomination in Parkland, Florida.  To all of you who think we can’t do anything about this horror, my anger and disgust for you knows no bounds.  Spend some time listening to the voices of parents and classmates of those killed this week, and then tell me we can’t do anything to change this barbaric ritual that makes us all sick.  Rational people---we can stop this carnage….Make gun control a litmus test for the midterm elections.  We must have different people in Congress to save our souls.