I get it, the two party system is outdated. But what do you expect, when every Libertarian Independent and Green Party candidate gives up on themselves, cries like a little girl on Twitter, and turns out to be a Tea Partier in disguise?
"I'm gonna beat the system and create change. Wait... I have to worry about Libya, Iran, Iraq and Terrorists?? All the US jobs are in China and there are old farts calling the unemployed losers because they can't get the job that's now in Beijing? There are Gays and Women being treated like animals and people are trying to revoke their rights because they believe in false profits who wear ugly robes instead of actually believing in science and the notion that God made us to evolve? The economy is in the toilet? Oh no. No I'm not ready for this. Heeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeve heeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeve OOOOOOoooo *waives hands* OMG OMG OMG Um um... vote for the other guy!! *cries* Mommy??"
Give me a Ross Perot over any of those "kind-of-pendants" PLEASE.
I don't know. Maybe it's because I watched the dubbed version of the second Pokemon film, where they drive the point home that it really "only takes one person" but I feel that every voice matters, even in a cracked system where the electoral college (secluded from reality, living in a basement somewhere in Washington DC with the A/C turned off 100% of the time) decides most of the nation's future for us, one vote can still mean the difference between "eh, could be better" and "JESUS MARY AND JOSEPH they brought us back to 1865!!"
And I'm sick of the morons who pick candidates based on religion. Am I the only person left alive, who read the passage in the Bible, where Jesus turned over the change tables and protested against the church?? REALLY?? New Testament people, thumb through it once in a while. If you really believe there is a God somewhere, then don't you think he'd want us to EVOLVE??
Oh, and you want to cancel out my rights to my own body as a woman, because you think my having a choice is a "sin". So you DON'T believe that all sins are absolved through Jesus? Then you must not believe in Jesus at all if you're trying to kill my rights, and the rights of the Gay friends I have. Some Christian you turned out to be.
But enough about that, we have separation of church and state anyway. It's what stops us from being like the Taliban. Bunch of freaks, the lot of them.
But anyway, let's go back to the story of why not only am I voting, but I've encouraged other people to vote as well.
In my family, voting is considered a high priority. Reason being? We've only had it for a few generations.
On my mother's father's side, I can trace his roots to a plantation out in Alabama. While I can't go too far for his father's side (more on him in a bit) I can go back to my Great Grandmother's Great Grandma, Mandy.
Great-Gran-Mandy was what they called "High Yellow" or "High Yella". That means she was pale enough to pass for White, and pass she could. She had light hair, light eyes and freckles. If she walked, nobody would have known that she was part Black. She was either the daughter or granddaughter of the man who owned the plantation, a man named William Craig. When he died, he left her a trunk of dresses and pretty things. Things a slave would not ordinarily have, but a descendant would.
The next owner of the plantation mated her off to the darkest man he could find, so she's have a child (Johanna) and feel forced to stay on the plantation, rather than to pick up and leave. During the course of the next few years, she had to watch has family and friends were bought and sold off, like used sneakers on eBay.
Even after slavery ended in 1865, my family did not have the right to vote. Mandy and Johanna never had the freedoms we take for granted today.
The right for a man of color to vote, was not ratified as the 15th amendment until February 3, 1870. But even back then, if you went to a voting place that was largely segregated, you would have to endure taunts, teasing, and sadly, deadly lynchings, before you'd reach the poll. People would curse you, call you names, and plenty of places would turn away Colored voters.
As for women? HA! The right for a woman to vote wasn't ratified until August 18, 1920. That is 50 years, six months and 15 days after the right for Colored people to vote was made legal.
It wasn't an easy fight either. Women before the right was ratified were often times jailed, beaten, sent to mental wards and even sterilized. Oh yeah. Our country 'tis of thee was into Eugenics long before Hitler. And that's a sick, disgusting and frightening concept. I'm actually more frightened by US History than I am the standard horror flick!
And you would think it ends there on that sunny day in 1920. NOPE!
My ancestors had to fight even after that, as voting polls were tight under the Jim Crow watch. If you were a Black woman trying to vote as recently as the 1950's, catcalls and slurs would be your BEST hope.
And I knew a man in my own family who was no stranger to catcalls:
This is my Great Grandpa. And I'm lucky to say I got to know him before it was too late.
When he was growing up, he didn't have the chance to go to an integrated school. He went to a school designated for Black kids. His books were hand-me-downs, often with pages missing or messed up with snack food grease.
So what he would do, is he'd drag his little brother and little sister over to the White schools. They'd sit by the window and learn from there. And always, they'd have people ~ starting with adults ~ catcalling them, throwing rocks at them, all because they wanted an education.
When his parents died young, he left the 8th grade and went straight to work, to support his brother and sister. He was a smart man too, I'm sorry I didn't get all of my math genes from him. He saved his money and spent wisely. Despite the odds, he did live the American Dream for the most part. Bought his own land, built a house on it, put his siblings through school, his son, and plenty of other people. Even saved enough to fully pay off his own funeral and resting place a decade in advance, and go on one annual vacation and change out the car when he felt the need to.
But the struggle didn't cease. He knew that he still didn't have the freedom to walk down his own street if a White man did. He knew that he couldn't shop or eat at the same places as everyone else.
And most of all, his son had just had a daughter with a White woman, but they weren't allowed to get married anyplace near the army base where they met, without his son going to prison.
Ah... something had to change.
He marched in Alabama with Dr. King. (Yes, THAT one.) He survived race riots, and just like any other red blooded American, he voted.
I said he voted.
He voted, and let his voice be heard.
He got his family and his friends to vote. It was like second nature to them.
He was told that it wouldn't matter. That everyone sucks so why bother? He was told that he was just playing into a "corporate fantasy" and that nobody could change the future. Voting doesn't matter. Nothing changes. Nobody cares if you vote. Don't vote, don't do it, voting means nothing. He was told all of this.
...He also sat front row, when his Black son married a White woman.
HA HA.
We don't know what vote was the deciding factor in deciding who would take office in each of the states where officials signed off on the notion of it being legal to marry outside of your race. We don't know which civilian exactly, sent in the final card that broke down a Jim Crow rule here or there. But nobody in my family cared. They voted anyways.
Every vote, no matter how weak or feeble does count. It counts somewhere, and in the history books, it's always noted when someone has tampered with the machines to erase the American peoples' choice, to fatten the wallets of already rich morons. Even there, those votes count.
So tomorrow morning, I'm voting. I have alot on the line here.
I have not only my rights as a woman to vote for, but the rights of every woman. My cousins, my second cousins, any female prodigy I might have. That's alot of ovaries to think about!
I have to pick between a moron who used Bain Capital to send MY US jobs overseas, and a dude who's picked on because he's not God, and people think that "Hawaii born Christian" is spelled M-U-S-L-I-M.
I have to vote between someone trying to rebuild my economy, and a dog-hating fat cat who wants to kill the last of my generation in another fake war.
I have to vote between some guy trying to get congress to stop vetoing every job creating bill he signs off on, and someone who just sent my last job to China, in exchange for lead paint goods and combustible laptops filled with BPA's.
I have alot riding on this vote.
I can't chicken out now.
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