I last cast my presidential ballet 20 years ago! American Beauty won best picture, People Magazine named Brad Pitt "Sexiest Man Alive!", Christina Aguilera's What a Girl Wants topped the music charts, and I might have sported cargo pants and blond highlights. Oh yeah...I voted straight Republican. I thought it the moral thing to do, the right thing, maybe even the Christian thing.
Since I last enacted my civil responsibility, I've claimed political asylum under the guise of my theology: "I'm to build the Kingdom of God, not the Kingdom of America. The current face of power matters little to my life-mission!" While I still find the human myth of "Borders" one of the most destructive stories our species tells, I've had to step out from the protective walls of my former faith into the turbulent political milieu of 2020.
This November, I vote!
A vote against.
"Yes!" my liberal compatriots exclaim, "Me too!" For one, my Life-philosophy leans heavy to the Left, but even more so, I cannot rationally, in any way, see a logical reason to vote for Donald Trump. Policy aside, I really can't land that plane. Hell, I can't even see the runway! (Note: I in no way consider myself an exemplar of moral virtue. I've had too many failures and too much feedback to think of myself that way. I'm also not running for President of the United States of America).
But wait!
I'm unable to place a check next to Joe Biden as well. He's simply a piece in the political game of chess, the Dems strategically placing him as the most likely pawn to checkmate the Comb-over King. And this is the problem...it's a game, a power game with the primary objective to win, to fly your party's flag above the American flag.
So, this November I vote 3rd party (no write-in vote in New Mexico) and I don't yet know who.
"No!" you say, "That renders your vote futile! A waste!"
Exactly! My vote won't matter. Voting my conscious means voting for Futility, and by casting my vote into the black hole of pointlessness I'm able to voice what I'm actually voting for: something/someone to actually vote FOR - not against.
The two-party system rigs the machine toward polarization and division...a pendulum, back and forth, plowing conversation, cooperation and nuance into oblivion as it moves side to side. Social media lubricates the juggernaut, fundamentalizing political ideology and spitting out crazed crusaders, self-righteously shooting anyone wearing the wrong color. It triggers our ancient tribal instinct, to draw lines, to categorize the other beating heart with pulsing blood as something grotesquely different than ourselves. Most people I know read like a Tolstoy novel not a regurgitated meme, but the machine has no patience for narrative. "Pick a side!" it demands. It's a game; a silly game with destructive consequences.
I'm not worried about this planet. It will reboot. But, if the human species desires to enjoy existence, long-long term existence, we will need to reframe our boundaries: to think beyond the Political-Conservative Tribes to the American Tribe of 320+ million, to beyond the American Tribe to a Human tribe of 7+ billion, to beyond the Human Tribe to the Planetary Tribe.
So I vote...
For Futility...
For Nuance...
For Conversation...
For Cooperation...
For Something Bigger.
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