heller votes
I try very hard not to care about politics. Honestly, I do. Whenever I find myself paying attention to politics, it usually ends in pain.
The last time I got really wrapped up in following a political campaign was in 1994, when I lived in Virginia. That year, Oliver North was running against incumbent Chuck Robb for one of Virginia's seats in the U.S. Senate. Despite my best efforts, North, who was ever-present in Virginia that year, managed to get next to me. Every time he would appear on television sporting his working-man's blue flannel shirt and spouting his inane όber-conservative nonsense, I would get hopping mad. Literally I can actually remember jumping up from the couch and stomping the floor in anger while watching the guy.
Needless to say, I voted for Chuck Robb. I had just moved to Virginia and knew very little about Robb, but had the general feeling that he was something of a shyster. No matter. Anyone was better than North.
Robb won, but all I got out of it was a slight sense of relief. My experience with voting that year is consistent with most years I voted more against one candidate than for another. I cannot vote Republican. I'm constitutionally incapable of it. However, I don't consider myself a Democrat, despite the fact that I usually vote for Democratic candidates usually, there is just no alternative for me.
To a certain extent, I agree with George Carlin, who says that only people who don't vote have the right to complain. Carlin says that, by voting, people endorse the very system that puts incompetent representatives into office; the best way to voice dissent is to disassociate oneself from the whole process. That notion makes a lot of sense to me, but I still can't help being a little hesitant to swear off our whole system, since I don't have a heck of a lot of answers myself. Moreover, I want to reserve the right to do my part to make sure particularly objectionable candidates such as Ollie North don't make it into office.
Until recently, I'd taken for granted for several months that I'd be voting for Al Gore in November. While Gore never excited me a whole lot, I thought he was generally OK. I was even willing to forgive the fact that his wife, Tipper, was part of that explicit-lyrics witch-hunt back in the 80s.
And now what happens? Gore and Liebermann push the one button that is guaranteed to get me riled up free expression. Gore and Liebermann have vowed to take on the entertainment industry ans what they see as the marketing of violent material toward children. As soon as Gore started talking about giving entertainment professionals six months to "clean up their act," I got visions of 1986-era Tipper reading Mentors lyrics before Congressional hearings, and it sent chills down my spine.
I'm not against protecting children. What I am against is the attempted regulation of expression indeed, of culture itself by government. I think this sort of repression is ill-advised, even dangerous. I mentioned earlier my lingering, albeit tenuous, desire to hang onto our existing democratic system; I think one of the most sure-fire ways to compromise that system is for the government to tell its constituents it knows best in matters of expression. Furthermore, I believe that the repression of certain aspects of a culture is not going to eliminate them. Rather, those aspects are likely to show up in other, perhaps worse, ways. That is, when you start restricting people's ability to depict violence through art, you just might end up with a greater rater of actual violence.
So much for my desire to stay unconcerned with this presidential campaign. Now I'm forced to make an actual decision, and there's no foregone conclusion to it. Do I vote Republican? Um, no. Do I vote Democrat? Not this time they have finally displeased me enough so that I'm not settling for them. Do I stay home? Well, as I've said, I'm a little uncomfortable with that.
I've decided to vote for Ralph Nader. Actually, he is the candidate with whom I most agree with on most issues sort of ironic, considering that I only started to consider him as a last resort. Of course, I won't be voting for the winner of the election, but that's really not important to me. I'll be voicing my displeasure with both ridiculous major parties, and at the same time, I'll be voting for someone I believe has true integrity and character so maybe my vote will mean something after all, even if it's only to me.