Voting

Tomorrow is, officially, election day.

It feels like every day is election day.  With at least ten incoming emails a day from my party of choice,  I'm experiencing election fatigue.  The day after every election, we start up on another.

I'm going to vote tomorrow for my party, but not with the passion and hope I felt in the last two elections. I'm not sending twenty dollars for a chance to meet the president. I'm not signing petitions or liking anyone on Facebook. I'm not putting a bumper sticker on my car.

I've lost interest in the whole national football game (and I borrow that analogy from a friend--it's perfect!)  No more pom poms, no more cheerleading, just one quiet vote, for whatever it's worth.

Someone on NPR said that many young people are "political agnostics."  I guess that's true for a lot of us older people too.  I prefer one party over the other, but not with the zeal of a true believer anymore.  The money machine, the morals machine, the fighting and attack ads--it all adds up to something too big, too unwieldy, too mean-spirited to know how to get into the conversation.

Every time I turn on the news, I hear more political fighting.  I'm bored with it all.  I'm thinking of changing my email address so that I can get off everybody's lists.

In the fifties, as I remember it, elections were dignified and private and patriotic.  I doubt that my parents even knew how their friends voted.  When President Kennedy was assassinated, the whole nation grieved--not just the Democrats.  We were, back then, all Americans.

I wish we could return to being Americans who vote for our choice, then move on to something else, let the winner do his or her best.

As I was writing this, I got an email from Team Wendy.  I'll vote for her, but not with a megaphone or money, just with a quiet little check mark beside her name.  The players may think Team Politics is the only game in town, but the voters have a lot more to do to make the world better than to attend, 24/7, to the outcome of popularity polls and the personal failings of the players.