And so we enter… end game.
November 4, 2008, 12:01 AM
The day that I’ve been anticipating for a long time is finally here. Election day! Oh, how I am so tired of this campaign. After all, we’ve been dealing with this race almost as soon as the 2006 midterm elections ended. And now it all comes down to this. Now it’s time for everyone to do their thing and vote. After all, umpteen polls by various organizations are in the end, meaningless. It’s the vote that counts.
And now, hopefully in less than 24 hours, we’ll know who George W. Bush’s successor will be. I’m hoping it’s Barack Obama, but we’ll see. If it is John McCain, though, then we’ve got problems. After all, the man has admitted he doesn’t know much about economics, and we’re in the midst of a big economic crisis. Perhaps if he gets elected, we could all mail him various macroeconomics texts to bring him up to speed. But hopefully, that’s going to be a moot point.
Meanwhile, I took the opportunity to look at the Web sites for the two newspapers that serve Stuarts Draft – The News Leader in Staunton, and The News Virginian in Waynesboro – to see what the endorsements were. After all, I may live in the Washington DC area now, but the two newspapers that I did a lot of growing up with still hold a place near and dear to me. The Staunton paper endorsed Barack Obama for president, and Mark Warner for the Senate. Meanwhile, Waynesboro endorsed John McCain for president, and Jim Gilmore for the Senate. Thus between the two, it’s a wash. Many in Augusta County get both papers, and so it’s kind of a toss-up down that way, I suppose. Still, it’s interesting to see what people are thinking.
Then according to Mom, the eighth graders participated in a mock election in her school, and not surprisingly, it was a landslide for John McCain and Jim Gilmore for their respective races. Stuarts Draft is very much Republican territory, and so it’s not a surprise that the results came out that way. I remember when I was in sixth grade at the same school back in 1992, George H.W. Bush won by a landslide over Bill Clinton in a similar eighth-grade mock election. And of course, we all know how that election turned out. I remember a few of my classmates deliberately wore all black on Inauguration Day as a small protest of Bill Clinton’s inauguration.
So now that election day is upon us, though, it’s time to go vote. And then after you vote, stay active. CrimethInc put it best when they ran their campaign called Don’t Just Vote, Get Active back in 2004. Organize. Protest. Take direct action if necessary. The idea is to make sure that your voice is heard more often than just on the Tuesday after the first Monday in November.
After all, one of the more interesting events that led up to the American Revolution… was a black bloc. Yes, a black bloc. In 1773. I’m talking about the Boston Tea Party. After all, in the Boston Tea Party, colonists concealed their identities by dressing up as native Americans, and took direct action against the British East India Company, a corporation that many viewed as having unjust and undue influence, by engaging in destruction of corporate property – countless crates full of tea – by dumping it into the harbor. And that was one of many events that ultimately led to some big changes in America. And I’d say that now, in 2008, after nearly eight years of George Bush, we need a big change again.
So once the election is over, don’t rest on your laurels or sit somewhere and pout, depending on how your guy did. Keep the momentum going, and make sure that whoever gets elected knows that we’re watching.
And on January 20, regardless of who’s elected, I hope to see you in the streets of Washington DC. After all, there are wars that still need to be ended, and the next administration needs to be reminded of that – loud and clear.
Song: "Pain" by Stereomud. Many might recognize the tune from a certain progressive talk show on Nova M Radio...
Quote: "And so we enter... end game." - Seymour Skinner from The Simpsons
Categories: National politics