Tomorrow: Will it Really Come, and If It Does, Will I Still be American?

This is my last political post. I mean it. This is it. I've bordered on the edge of a liberal-leaning moderate making snide jokes about how Mrs. Mitt Romney (she doesn't need a name. I mean, hell, she doesn't even need the right to decide what she wants to do with her body) hasn't worked a day in her life and Mitt Romney wouldn't know a middle-class person if they came up and smacked him in the face (which I would be willing to do, repeatedly). I've openly admitted that I’m disappointed in the President that filled the country with hyperbole about change and patriotism and fairness but really failed to incite the change in the governing body of the people that elected him. I’m tired of living in a country that can’t get over the fact that our President is black, and I’m ashamed to admit that it took a very real and very blatant act of racism for me to believe it. I’m tired of middle-class white people thinking that their only hope is the tea party, when they don’t even come close to realizing what their platform means for someone that lives exactly like they do. I’m tired of a bi-partisan system being the status-quo because everyone is too stupid, too afraid or too apathetic to really care about the people that are being paid to represent us while we slave away at meaningless jobs and pay taxes that manage their pension funds and tax breaks for the one-percent of the population that can afford it. I’m ashamed that I fall into that apathetic category.  

I’m terrified that tomorrow could be the beginning of four years of what is already an insurmountable national debt being that much harder to pay off. That forty-seven percent of the population will be treated like scum:  Granddads that need Medicare or single mothers that need daycare assistance to work and go to school to better their lives. I’m terrified that the next four years will be exactly like the last that were full of snide bickering, racism and personal attacks. I’m afraid that American Conservatives are blaming American Liberals when the real blame is on the hundreds of men and women that refuse to comprise to make this country whole. Unity has no room for partisan politics, so I’m confused as why we are all so willing to put up with it?

Personally, I’m terrified that as hard as I work now, it will never be hard enough to reach a place where I can retire and to everything that I've ever wanted to do—like visit Ireland or The Cotswolds or anywhere else that I've ever wanted to go, but couldn't afford to do it. I’m terrified that at thirty, I've invested a lifetime worth of debt into an education that’s provided a lifetime worth of hassle, because I don’t know somebody that knows somebody that has, “an in.” I’m terrified that if one more person tells me that the reason that I don’t have what I want is because I don’t work hard enough, that I will stop trying completely.

Mostly, I’m afraid of voting Americans. I’m afraid that they vote without their heads. They vote for themselves and not for America as a nation. They vote thinking that they live in the greatest country in the world (in what category, I have no idea), but they vote for people that want to cut funding for Public Broadcasting and Education.  If you lived in the one-man country of “Peter Smith,” or” John Van Dyke,” or, “ Amy Schneider,”  voting for your agenda and your religion and your pocketbook would be a worthy vote, but we don’t. We are the United States of America and with that comes the great responsibility to vote for those people that are United under one flag. People that should be allowed to love and marry who they choose, should be able to make choices about their reproductive health and should be able to reach out for help when they need it, without fear of repercussion.

When you’re voting tomorrow, you’re casting a vote for yourself, but you’re also casting a vote that affects every single person that you've ever locked eyes with on the street, every person that you've ever stood next to in an elevator, every child that will be forced to live with the choices that we have made as adults in 2012. Many people talk about how this is a right as a legal American citizen (and thusly want to remove this right from those that may not have the appropriate paperwork, but contribute to this country with the same ferocity as any other citizen). Many people talk about how it is a privilege to vote. I feel tremendous burden of this vote. The importance weighs on me greatly and pushes the apathy to the breaking-point of Patriotism, of connectedness to my fellow Americans, to pride. That is probably the most terrifying feeling of all. The transformation to someone that cares. God, I hope you can feel it, too.