Why We Must Win

I turned 35 today.

Now, my birthday has nothing to do with why we have to win. It's going to take me a bit to get there, so please bear with me.

I went to work this morning fully expecting my co-workers to spring something on me, but I was totally unprepared for the outpouring I received. Several nice presents, a delicious double-chocolate birthday cake, a wonderful lunch, and decorations all around my cubicle. From the moment I arrived, my team -- my friends -- went to considerable efforts to make sure I enjoyed my day, especially with several painful changes taking place.

Unfortunately, none of us, except for our supervisor, knew just how painful one of those changes would turn out to be.

A couple of hours into the morning, we were called in to a meeting, all of us but one. We learned there that she was being laid off due to a "lack of work," as part of a mini "right-sizing" going on. No one's fault. Just business. The people upstairs felt it "had to be done."

The last time someone was laid off from our department, it was almost a blessing. She really wanted to leave. This time, though...this time, the victim was a sweet, hard-working woman who really struggled to get and keep this job. I like to think I helped her get it, but ultimately I don't know how much influence I had.

One of the others who was fired is a newlywed. Wonderful in a completely different way from my immediate co-worker, sassier but always had a smile. She wished me a happy birthday while she was literally walking out the door. Damn near broke my heart.

In spite of this very depressing period, everyone who came by was supportive and polite, and we all used the celebration to try and lift our spirits. While the day was good for me personally, melancholy and happiness switched places all day.

So, what does this have to do with November 2, 2004? Simple: our votes matter. Our choices matter. Elections matter, both in abstract terms like "chilling effects" and in the so-called real world of life in the trenches of the daily grind.

I'm not going to say that this couldn't have happened in a Democratic administration. All economies ebb and flow, and this was just a particularly odd current. Beautiful waves on the surface with a nasty undertow. Still, it was far more likely under Bush. He promotes "personal responsibility" while cutting taxes like a madman and throwing billions into corporate welfare. Exactly what "personal responsibility" does one of the hardest working women I've ever known have when she's downsized -- f*ck it, let's be honest and call it being fired -- because the company wants to run as lean and mean as possible?

Sure, if we were in serious financial trouble, I can understand the need as a last resort, but I haven't seen any indications of trouble in a while. And if our government were operating by the ideals of the Democratic party, I wouldn't be worried about her being able to pay her bills. But in Bush's world, CEOs and stockholders get a bigger bonus and people who make their livings doing the grunt work get axed. Then those same bigwigs get a tax break while the poor have less and less to scrape by with. That's the way of the modern robber barons running our country.

This is not to say that all Republicans are like that. One of the co-workers who did the most for me today is a deeply religious person who will undoubtedly be voting Republican this year for all the reasons you'd expect (though maybe not for Bush; she's made the occasional noise indicating that she sees what an incompetent fool he is). While I mourn what happened to others, I take comfort in what was given to me today, not because of the physical gifts I received but in the much more ephemeral and precious gift of friendship. There was an empathy among us today that was powerless against the grey, clanking machine of business but not in the quiet hours we were given.

Nevertheless, there is a point here. The point is, one party wants to make sure these people won't die financial deaths of a thousand cuts because of one hardship, and the other wants to give massive tax cuts to billionaires. One party will use intelligence and discretion in waging war, and the other will use invasion and death as a political tool. One party wants to protect the air we breathe, the water we drink, and the food we eat, while the other wants to protect businesses from inconvenient regulations. One party wants to give our children a future, and one party wants to mortgage it. And one party works (imperfectly but consistently) to guarantee our Constitutional rights, while the other wants to use it to light the fire that burns our democracy to the ground.

In short, one party wants to help and lift up everyone, and one party wants to turn America into a theocratic plutocracy. Empathy and balance, however flawed, are pitted against power-hungry radical greed.

Now, I'm sure that some people will protest that there are more than two political parties in this country. That is true but irrelevant at this moment in history. Only the Big Two wield any real power in this country; members of the others are either busy trying to build the strength to play in the big leagues, or busy tearing their alliances apart in idiotic purity tests that would have given a Communist the willies. Anyone who can look at the enormous, substantive differences between the Democrats' positions and the Republicans' and say there is no difference between the two is simply beyond the reach of logic and sense. It is certainly excusable to disagree on whether or not that gap is wide enough to suit we progressives, but it is inexcusable to do Rove's work in spreading the obscene lie -- yes, lie -- that there is none.

We are facing a stark choice this year. We can choose to elect the current President for the first time, allowing him to do incalculable damage to the Republic. We can choose to elect a good man, a hero twice over in our worst war -- once as a soldier and once as an activist, fighting for his country both times -- who will be at least a good president, and maybe a great one.

Or we can choose to waste our opportunity by voting for ideological purity, or worse, not voting out of personal ideological purity.

Our choices matter, our votes matter, in the lives of real people struggling to survive, in the battles real people wage to preserve liberty and justice, in the quiet hours that define the pursuit of happiness. It is easy to turn one's nose up at a choice between the "lesser of two evils." It is much harder to admit that maybe, just maybe, we use the word "evil" too lightly, that personal purity is less important than doing what's right, that one choice isn't evil at all, merely distasteful to some.

I used to be a Green. I wanted to believe that we could make a difference, that we could break in without selling out. Well, maybe I'll rejoin the Greens again, but not today. Today, my color is blue. Blue for sadness, blue for working people, blue for my party. Blue for the "vigilance, perseverance, and justice" it represents in our flag. Blue for the only color that can return us to liberty and justice for all.

I've made my choice. Will you?

(/) Roland X
"The penalty good men pay for not being interested in politics is to be governed by men worse than themselves." --Plato