Thursday, May 23, 2024

Reminder

 I am a Democrat. I have voted the party line in most every election local, state and national since I started back in a previous century. Full disclosure: I have related here before that I spent the first few opportunities I had after I turned eighteen on the bench. I used to spout indifference like "It doesn't matter. Some old guy with a red tie is going to win no matter what I do." 

That's about the time a friend of mine jiggled my handle when she said, "You know, all this time you spend fretting about Amnesty International? There are people across the globe who are fighting and dying for the chance that you have. All you have to do is stop pontificating and get off your couch once or twice a year." 

And she was right. Since then, I have made it my mission to participate in the Democratic Process actively. My initial foray into the big show was to support Michael Dukakis. Who lost ignominiously to George Herbert Walker Bush, Sire of Pinhead. I stayed in the game, in spite of the which was the aftertaste of that one. Eight years of William Jefferson Pinhead, the Impeached allowed me a couple of victory laps. 

Then things went dark. A couple terms of Pinhead washed away the memories I had of Bill and Al inventing the Internet and Fleetwood Mac playing at their inauguration. I really felt that the inventor of the Internet would have made a good president, what with his love of climate and trees and so forth. Instead we were treated to nearly a decade of gas and oil and a war that outlasted their administration and into two more. 

Hope and Change came, and this one felt fresh and new. I voted with my head high and my eyes clear. I could see a future that would bring something new. Something different. 

How was I to know that the something different would be the complete antithesis of Barack Obama? The creeping mound of orange flesh that took over was something we all had to live through, and in the middle of a global pandemic, Joseph R. Biden felt like a really valid if not vital choice. 

As I mentioned earlier, I am a Democrat. I will be voting for Joe Biden again in this election, succumbing just a bit to that old sentiment about old guys in red ties. My inbox is flooded each day begging me for support in the form of whatever I can give. Not just once or twice, but dozens of requests are made for my attention and spare dollars. 

What I can't get over is that this is a close race. And every vote will count. 

You can stop emailing. You've got mine.  

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