The View from Here: Voting

Among the scads of poll reports I have heard recently one especially confounded me.  The question was “Are you going to vote in the coming election?” and according to the poll a large number of respondents said “No” Next Question. “If you did vote who would you vote for?”  Answer. “Probably Obama.”
What has happened to us that we can be so apathetic regarding our privileged right to vote? Do we even think about the ancestors who fought and died to give us this right? Do we listen to the news or even relate to people in other parts of the world who are fighting and dying every day for the freedom to vote and choose their leaders?
If I sound a bit testy it is only because I am mad at a lot of people I don’t even know. And I am frustrated because I feel helpless to get their attention. I want them to wake up and smell the corruption before it is too late and they have lost their right to vote.
Sixteen states have passed voter identification laws that make it extremely difficult or nearly impossible for many people to have the required identification to vote. Some states are requiring birth certificates and special pictures taken by the state before they will issue the registration card, all of which involve expense and time that many poor people do not have. This has been funded by organizations like the Koch brothers and Super Pacs as another way of controlling the election. If you think I am crying “Wolf” perhaps I am, but remember a novel written years ago, “It Can’t Happen Here”, I believe by Upton Sinclair.  For you non-believers a re-read might be in order.
Did you watch the nominating acceptance speeches this past week? I caught three of the biggies. Mrs. Romney was a crowd pleaser without a doubt. Christi as one political analyst put it “seemed to be running for president of New Jersey for 17 minutes, then he remembered to mention Mitt Romney.” But it was Paul Ryan’s speech I focused on. The vice-president nominee was smooth and masterful if you were seeing him for the first time. He avoided all of the things which would turn women against him, appealed to the poor and out of work, the elderly, and the middle class and never once mentioned the fact that by his own admission he is a believer and follower of Ayn Rand’s philosophy so well expressed in her non-fiction book, “The Virtue of Selfishness.” This book makes it clear that Rand believed the rich should not pay taxes; the poor should not be subsided in any manner what so ever by government, government’s main function was to protect the wealthy. Moral and ethical concerns for the middle class were never mentioned. Ayn Rand was only concerned with the rich until she got cancer then she signed up for Medicare and Social Security.
Ryan lashed out at Obamacare, by saying, “It comes out to more than two thousand pages of rules, mandates, taxes, fees, and fines that have no place in a free country.” By the time he got around to praising Mitt Romney’s record as Governor of Massachusetts he conveniently forgot to mention that Governor Romney was the instigator of their compulsory health insurance law. (Massachusetts isn’t part of this free country?)
I had fun re-reading his speech and thinking that what we all need is for Chris O’Sullivan to teach a course “101 in How to Dissect Political Speeches.”
Lucie Jensen is a Healdsburg resident.