Vote

"The country does need politicians." - 'Advice to Constructive Workers' (G.), Biharni Komi Agman, pp. 346-7 (from The Essential Writings of Mahatma Gandhi edited by Raghavan Iyer)

I vote.  I think it is a citizen's duty to vote.

Many in my country who voted for Barack Obama have been disappointed.  I am not one of those.  I voted for Obama and he is exactly what I expected, a politician.  I hoped he would be something different, but I did not expect it, and so I am not disappointed.

Rarely in history has voting changed anything.  And when voting has changed things, more often than not, it has been a change for the worse.

Sounds cynical, I know, and perhaps it is, but reliance on someone else to change things, rather than being the change I want to see, doesn't seem sensible.

I was familiar with civil disobedience and non-cooperation from the civil rights protests in my country in the sixties, but it was Gandhi's ideas about the Constructive Programme that struck me as truly revolutionary.  It is the part of Gandhi's vision that my country does not really know or understand, and for me it is what can make real change a reality, right here and right now.

I Voted for Richard Nixon, pt. 2

"The stench that comes from that life (politics) has appeared to some to be so suffocating that they came to the conclusion that politics were not for a god-fearing man."  Speech at Guildhouse Church, under the auspices of the Franciscan Society, The Guildhouse, 23 Sept. 1931

Not that I'm a god-fearing man (sometimes I am and sometimes I'm not), but the stench does appear to be suffocating.

Even if I ignore the creeps and crumb-bums and ignoramuses who go into politics in this country, even if I ignore present day political policies designed to ensure that tens of thousands of Americans die from automobiles, junk food, toxic air and water, etc., even if I ignore the money that has always swamped our political system and now threatens to drown us all, I can't ignore the guns and bombs.

I have a marksman's medal awarded by the U.S. government for shooting an M-16.  I loaded a live nuclear bomb on my airplane in a revetment in Germany, strapped in the pilots, taxied it out, and saluted the end of the world.

My first vote was for a crook, a criminal.  My last vote (Barack Obama) was for (sigh) just another politician.

But I have hope that things can change.