I don’t have a transcript but remember what was said on the program. It was one of those moments when someone say something that crystalizes an idea that had been only vaguely thought before. In a discussion of five members of the Boston media on Emily Rooney’s program on WGBH TV the subject was the handful of reporters and journalists who don’t vote out of principle. The idea being that reporters are supposed to be objective and unbiased so they shouldn’t vote. Callie Crossley, the accomplished and erudite journalist, producer, you name it in media, she’s done it... said that with the people who had sacrificed their lives to allow her, a black woman, to vote, there was no way she was going to give up her vote. Which was the most sensible thing I’ve ever heard a journalist say on that subject.
Voting, participating fully in politics, is the birth right of every single person. It is a right as much as any other, including the right to own your body, politics is what produces the limits under which we will be allowed to exercise our inherent rights. Anyone impeding someone from voting is assaulting all of their rights from the most vital to the least, they are telling, asking or encouraging people to give up their rights. That is just as immoral now as it was during Jim Crow when black people were passively discouraged as well as violently prevented from voting at all, never mind exercising the luxury we, we with the leisure to read blogs are being encouraged to give up, voting in their best interests. Women should certainly understand this issue, since their participation has been discouraged on the basis of their gender as well.
I’d go farther than that for the purpose of blogging. Those on the blog threads who are discouraging people from vigorously opposing and voting against the Republicans, in the only way that will affect reality in January, are acting as Republican agents provocateurs. I know that they will have some idealistic sounding reason for it, they will have some line, but reality is real*, that is the real life effect of what they are saying.
There is no rational reason for someone who doesn’t want the Bush-Cheney nightmare to continue under a new name to discourage people from voting for the Democratic nominee. There is either an irrational reason for them doing it or they are actually working to continue the policies of the Bush-Cheney nightmare. The six months before November will be too busy trying to prevent disaster to try to sort out the moles from the dupes. Until after the election, I’m considering them all Republican operatives, because they’ll be doing the same thing.
* Anticipating the usual eloquent appeals for “the future”, well, January 2009 is as much “the future” as their age of their glorious millennium. I am pretty sure January will come next year, I haven’t seen any evidence that their fantasy future will get here. And since time goes all in one direction and only on one road, the road to whatever future there is will have to go through next year. That’s the reality of it. People are going to have to eat next year, have health problems next year, need an environment that will grow them food and sustain their lives next year, keep from getting involved with McCain’s war on Iran next year. We need a good next year to have a future beyond it. Next year could get us all killed.