Today for the first time in my natural life, I voted.
Despite the ridiculously anticlimactic nature of voting (much like terrible sex..ten minutes to figure out where everything is, another five to figure out how to operate the machinery, followed by thirty wondering what the hell just happened) I am euphoric. Now don't get me wrong, I'm not one of those people who never voted out of sloth, apathy, or time constraints. No, I was a conscious non-voter, a subscriber to a Ghandi-like philosophy of nonviolence and nonparticipation. I refused to participate in the political process as my own little 150 pounds of protest.
People have in the past asked me how I can so easily forsake my 'civic duty'. But I believe that concepts like duty, respect, honor, and truth are, for lack of a better cliche, two way streets. Duty must be reciprocated, not blindly poured into some system that has no regard for me like unrequited love. This sense of jadedness comes from chronically having watched politicians partake in politics as usual. All across the world I've had the pleasure of seeing world leaders be, well... just like one another.
I've sat and listened to Ion Iliescu of Romania be charming and witty as he pretended to not be a criminal. I've witnessed Berlusconi brazenly and unabashedly exert his control over a majority of Italy's national media. And I have even lived in a Namibia in which being black and not poor and not uneducated made myself and my family paradoxical to say the least, but problematic to put it bluntly.
And all of these situations and people and nations have one thing in common-- they were lead by individuals who, having little regard for those whom they are sworn to serve, carried out their own agendas with a bravado and absolutism reminiscent of the Divine Right of Kings.
In these set of circumstances, what foolishly optimistic human being could cast a vote with any genuine sense of hope?
But enough of that. That was the past, my formerly pessimistic self! Now I'm reveling in my post-vote euphoria! I am celebrating democracy and all of its glories! I'm getting misty eyed at the reading of the Declaration of Independence during the Superbowl! No longer am I a political atheist, I have been reformed and baptized anew!
And you know WHY?
Because, and god help me for it, I have the audacity to hope.
When I try to explain to my significant other exactly what it is about Barack that instills me with foolish hope, I fall short. I can't explain it. It is truly a strange sensation... faith in a politician, the belief that he generally wants to do good things, and given the chance, will do them. It is a belief that he deserves to be in office precisely becase he doesn't inherently want to be president, but rather desires a set of circumstances that can only be engineered with him leading the nation.
And people will invariably ask me if part of the reason I like him so much is because he's black. To which I honestly respond, no. If he was a white politician and exactly the same, I'd still be writing this. But, lest we forget, 1968 was not very long ago, and I don't believe you can fault a group of people for measuring their progress, on this day, in one man.
~Eri
Tuesday, February 5, 2008
On Voting Today, For the First Time, and Maybe the Last..?
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