It’s easy to decide that we can’t be bothered with politics.  We have our own lives.  We must make dinner, we have to get to bed on time so we can get up in the morning and go to work, and we have relationships that are more important to us than which politician said what.  Whether your boyfriend texts you back promptly is infinitely more interesting than what The Supreme Court decided about whether you can get an abortion, or religion in schools, or who can marry whom.  Regulating Health Care, whether Medicare can negotiate for better prescription prices, and who will pay for hospital stays are abstract ideas that don’t seem to matter in our practical world.  I get that.

But here’s the problem.  If we see no farther than our own backyard, we are likely to find the landscape outside of it, in which we all have to function, will be changing significantly, but slowly, so we don’t really notice it.  And sooner than you think, what’s happening outside your backyard will make its way into your home, your life, and your soul.  If we don’t think about more than 24 hours in the future, by the time we notice what’s happening, it’s likely to be too late.  When we can’t vote anymore, we will have lost the little power we have to change things, and we will watch our rights being stripped away more and more quickly.  Fascism flourishes in apathy.

I’m not saying you need to quit your job, give up your life, and go work for some political campaign.  I would like you to be aware of what’s happening so you can do what little you can to change it.  

Okay, Edmund Burke never said, “The only thing necessary for the triumph of evil is for good men to do nothing,” and I don’t know who first did.  I also don’t care.  It’s true regardless of the source.  I would, because I live in 2022, amend it to change “men” to “people,” but otherwise, I stand by those words.  Evil persists.  The effort to take our freedom of thought, of speech, of opinion, and, perhaps more importantly, our freedom to choose for ourselves is constant and ongoing.  Will someone else stop it?  I certainly hope so.  I can’t stop it.  What I can do is vote for those I believe are most likely to slow its course a bit. 

What would I like you to consider when you go to the ballot box?  I would begin with January 6, 2021, and the effort to keep power from being transferred peacefully from one President to the next.

I would pay attention to the efforts to restrict voting rights.  I would look at how many legislatures are trying to pass measures to invalidate the vote entirely if those in charge don’t like the results.   It’s happening here in Arizona already.  I’m including a link, and I hope you’ll take a few minutes to understand that this matters.

https://tucson.com/news/state-and-regional/proposed-law-would-allow-arizona-legislature-to-overturn-presidential-election-results/article_c2a70681-59c0-512f-ba86-2bf23128f9ee.html

I would also pay attention to Supreme Court decisions.  They have already stripped bodily autonomy from half the population.  They are going to revisit the idea that we should be allowed to marry whomever we love.  They are going to consider the possibility of banning contraception.  In short, if a woman has sex, she is required to give birth to the child, regardless of the circumstances.  I’ll remind you that a 10-year-old girl in Ohio was forced to travel to Indiana to terminate her pregnancy because after The Supreme Court repealed Roe v Wade, Ohio banned all abortions.  It’s doubtful a 10-year-old would even survive giving birth.  I won’t bother to give you links to this story.  It’s easily Googled.

This is enough to help you understand that what’s happening in America today is as important as how long it takes your boyfriend to reply to your text.  The time to stop the transformation into an authoritarian dictatorship is running out.  The least you could do is vote for those who have the best chance of stopping it. 

The Republican Party was, in my lifetime, composed of decent honorable people with whom I often disagreed.  There are still a few such Republicans.  Liz Cheney is one.  John McCain was another. 

What is called the MAGA Republican Party has none of these, or if they do, I haven’t seen them.  And that’s the party that is taking power.  If you don’t know who Lauren Boebert or Marjorie Taylor Greene are, that’s okay.  If you don’t know who Matt Gaetz is, life will go on.  But, these are the people who are elected not only to represent us, but to make laws that will have direct effects on you.   You don’t need to spend an hour a night watching the news, but you should at least know the basics.   This will allow you to be aware of the threats, and it will help you meet them.  If you just want a basic nightly rundown in five or ten minutes, read Heather Cox Richardson’s Facebook page or subscribe to her newsletter. 

When people are threatened by and refuse to engage ideas that differ from their own, they become dangerous because they can’t be swayed by conversation.  When words become worthless, all that’s left is violence.  Nothing good will come of that. 

An authoritarian dictatorship is on its way.  Many people are already coming up with contingency plans to escape America if the fascists are successful. 

It seems to me the only tool we have to fight this is our ballots. I advocate using this tool because once violence begins, it almost invariably gets out of control, and does so with alarming speed. It means, at the absolute minimum, someone will be hurt. It usually means someone dies. Whatever Good we believe we bring about with our violence is denied to The Dead. We have absolutely failed them.

Many, if not most, of us have no means of leaving America. Should it become the authoritarian dictatorship the MAGA Republicans are trying to create, we will be trapped here. We will suffer. Many of us will die.  You may be certain they won’t tolerate dissenting opinions such as mine.  Fortunately, I’m very small.  I won’t be at the top of the list of people who need to disappear in the dead of night never to be heard from again.  This is what happens in dictatorships.  It will, in fact, happen here if we allow it.  The biggest voices will be the first to go.  Sadly, I can’t afford to move out of my place at all.  Getting to another country would be impossible for me.  I would be forced to wait until they come for me.

For this one moment, we still have the power of the vote. I recognize it seems unimaginably small. But enough people doing a little thing makes a massive difference. And that power is one denied to millions around the world. It is one that was once denied to millions of Americans.

People have fought and died for that right. They have been lynched, tortured, and they have endured unimaginable atrocities for the right of all of us to go the ballot box. Failing to make use of that most fundamental right is more than a slap in the face to those who struggled so long and hard to win it for us. It is essentially pissing on their graves as we passively watch ourselves collapse into a dystopian nightmare from which, for far too many of us, there can be no escape.

Of course I’ll be voting. I couldn’t mail it in because I was in the hospital. Where I live in Mesa, there have been reports of armed people watching early voting ballot boxes. They may watch me drop my ballot in one of those boxes and shove their metal substitute penises straight up their asses. I don’t really believe they’ll shoot me. If they do, it will do more for the cause of freedom than my single vote ever would. I can think of many worse ways to die. And I would prefer being dead to living in the Hell to which they would like to condemn me.

The Road to Fascism is paved with claims that what’s happening is no big deal.  For example:

January 6 wasn’t a big deal.  Very few people died.  Everyone was fine. 

That sort of attitude normalizes the hatred, fascism, and violence that were on display that day and are swelling in America and throughout the world. 

I recognize how difficult it is to find Truth.  The Media that tells us what is happening is filled with agendas.  CNN, MSNBC, and Fox all rely on Confirmation Bias, or the idea that we tend to believe those things that best fit our ideology, and we reject those that don’t.  They make money by feeding us what we want to hear.  That’s respectable in Art.  It’s worse than worthless in Journalism.  We can all choose our own media outlets, but most of the time we must separate the Spin from the Truth. 

Since we’re not there to see what’s happening in the places where laws are being made, we are forced to rely on the Media to tell us.  You have your sources.  I have mine.  Neither of us can be entirely sure that we understand all of it. 

One of the rare exceptions is the January 6 Committee Hearings.  We could see every minute live.  Complete videos are still easily accessible on YouTube.  You don’t need to listen to media spin.  You can just watch for yourself if you want to invest that much time in understanding what happened.  Most of the participants were Republicans.  To say that it’s partisan is simply untrue.  Both sides of the aisle came together in a search for the Truth.  They’ve invited the former President to come and tell the truth.  In fact, they have subpoenaed him.  If he complies, I promise it will be worth your time to watch and listen, without Spin.

I sympathize with the idea that you don’t want to put 18 hours or so into that pursuit.  You have a much busier life than I have.  I work when I’m feeling well enough to sit at this keyboard.  You probably spend 40 hours or more at work every week.  I don’t leave the house.  You have a social life.  I get that.  I honestly do.  The best I can recommend to you is to find someone you trust to give you the basic facts.  If you don’t trust me, find someone you do trust, and try to look beyond your Confirmation Bias.  Give them more than 5 minutes to explain.  At least once.  Then… go do your most important civic duty.  Go and vote.  Do it while you still can.  You may never get another chance.  You owe it to those who fought and died for that right.  You owe it to all of us.  It is a moral responsibility. 

https://open.spotify.com/episode/2lGBQHL8t1a8hld5PSmEqC?si=e8939fb4d3f54b53