Why Should I Vote? It Won't Make any Difference.

Okay, fair question:  why vote when you have good reason to believe that it's all crooked and rigged anyway?  What difference is it going to make?

Answer:  You should vote because this is our last chance to slow down and maybe even halt the advance of an autocratic state......yes, a DICTATORSHIP.  If you cannot see by now that this is what the Orange Idiot wants to create, then you must be blind, deaf and dumb. China and Russia now have dictators for life, and you betcha it has occurred to the Big Fool that he should have that role to play here.  After all, he's the smartest, cleverest, most deserving, and the most stable genius the world has ever seen................................................right?

Let's take a trip to Crazytown

If you stay home--as over 100 million Americans did in 2016--the GOP will retain control of all three branches of government.  It will be a sick joke at that point to even mutter phrases like,"....government of the people, by the people and for the people".

It will be a government bought and paid for, and completely at the command of the uber-rich. They have been working assiduously toward this moment in history for over fifty years (arguably for much longer than that....all the way back to the beginnings of human history), and their moment of triumph is nigh.  Once it is all sewed-up and they can do just about any and all the things that will continue to enhance their power and wealth....there will be a very small chance that it can be undone.

All the mechanisms of power and control are in place. If they continue to be so, even the constitution will be morphed into something the Founding Fathers would not recognize.  But, they WOULD recognize the instruments of tyranny in it and know that this augured dire times ahead for the republic.

More than half the states, 34 was the last number I heard, have already approved the idea of a new constitutional convention.  This would be an occasion wherein they would wield their now unencumbered power to disembowel the original constitution of the protections and safeguards that protect the individual citizen from an over-reaching and oppressive government.  Anything resembling a 'safety net' or a handout would be gone.  The 'little people'--as many rich people refer to the working class.(I have heard it myself, so don't bother trying to tell me they don't) would be left twisting in the wind.  Period...for real.

The Founding Fathers were well aware that all citizens were in need of protection and that governments are subject to being over-taken, warped into something evil, and used to suppress and subjugate the very people they were meant to serve.

Because of this awareness, they attempted to install a series of safe-guards that couldn't be easily set aside....unless all three branches of the government agreed that it was permissible, of course.  Under the guise of 'updating' the Constitution, a convention would render it an instrument of oppression.  They would dump anything that stood to impede their continued assault on individual rights, and the ongoing and accelerating campaign to amass such wealth as to render its holders untouchable in perpetuity......until the dam breaks.

When there is no longer a web of laws and controls to keep them from abuse and even starvation, people change dramatically.  When a sinking feeling of hopelessness seeps in around the edges and then really takes hold....at that point, people are willing to fight and even to die for what they must have to survive.

Most Americans are still quite content with the circumstances of their lives. As I travel around this part of New England, I see lots of almost new pick-ups, SUVs, and sleek German wheels. They still have all the addictive amusements of this material society to distract themselves from the ugly reality of what we're doing to the planet and to each other. Most people are marinating in a fast flowing river of opulent advertising and social media.....all of it designed to keep us feeling as if we are among the 'haves' and obstruct any sense that we're being used and abused by the tiny clique of the exotically rich who have about 80% of the wealth.

Of course, if you go to various quarters around the country where police shootings and gang shoot-outs are a daily occurrence, then you will understand that a large number of people are already in that place of burgeoning hopelessness.  There is no path open for them, educationally, professionally, emotionally, or in terms of just a decent and survivable daily life...or even to a situation where merely sufficient food is available.  Hunger and hopelessness go hand-in-hand to create the conditions for a violent revolution.  The aristocracy in Europe in the mid-nineteenth century found this out the hard way.

So, if you somehow justify staying home and not voting....you will...just like the 100 million who thought the same way in 2016.....be responsible for your roll in helping to sustain and promote the nightmare that Donald J. Trump is intent on inflicting on all of us.

 And, THAT, dear friends, is why you really, really should get out to the polls on November 6th.