I went to bed last night without having turned the TV on once. This wasnt deliberate, or even conscious. I had a small list of household chores to accomplish, and as mundane as they all were, I didnt realize until I woke up this morning that every last one of those chores eclipsed any desire I might have had to know who took/maintained control of the senate or which incumbent seats were replenished with fresh blood. Im looking around at various peoples Facebook pages, and its interesting to see the intensity of the feelings. There was one person who remarked that the country wouldnt have been able to withstand another term with Harry Reid in control of the senate. I dont know. When I think of all the forces in the universe that have the potential to bring western civilization to its knees, I just cant manage to conjure up the figure of a diminutive white guy in a suit from Nevada. And theres no one on the right from whom I expect the downfall of America, either. And so right here and right now, for the whole world to see, Im going to put every ounce of credibility I might have and make a prediction that will blow your mind: In two years, either a Democrat or a Republican is going to be elected President. AND — this is the really bold one — *either* the Democratic or Republican Party will be in control of the House and/or Senate. This is hard to envision right now, I know. Just remember that you heard it here first. Now that the odds-defying drama of those predictions are out of the way, here are five (of several) that you can count on in the same way that you assume the sun will rise in the East every day, and that the Tigers will never make it past the ALCS: 1. Your wages, in real terms, will have less purchasing power in two years than they do right now, and your employment will be more demanding and less secure than it is now. If you have a job, that is. 2. Our military budget will still eclipse that of several dozen other countries combined, and we will still be at war with someone, somewhere (except we wont actually call it a war, and well still leave the fighting and dying to a minuscule percentage of the citizenry while the rest of us make no sacrifice whatsoever). 3. Our congressional districts will still be utterly rigged, which will guarantee that the chances of anyone unseating an incumbent in the House will be in the single digits. And words like change will be as meaningless then as they are now and as they were two years ago. 4. Poverty and hunger will be worse than it is right now, and no one in Washington will do anything about it other than pay lip service, if that. 5. Student loan debt and higher education costs will be putting even more downward pressure on mobility, and we will continue along a trajectory toward making post-secondary education unattainable for all but a select percentage of the population. So yeah, I voted last night. But I had to overcome a serious lack of motivation in order to drag myself to the booth. In the end, I realized that the only thing still compelling me to vote anymore is a sense of respect for what those before me had to sacrifice in order to make voting a possibility for more than just rich white guys with property. That sense of respect will probably compel me to vote again in two years. But knowing what people have endured, historically, and knowing also the depths of utter corruption and malfeasance to which our political system has sunk, you have to ask yourself: at what point does voting in such a blatantly meaningless and rigged system become the very sign of disrespect that were trying to avoid?
Posted on: Wed, 05 Nov 2014 12:38:16 +0000
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