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Philosophy & Action Essays
Volume IX - Essay #81: September 2008

"Your Vote Is A Gift"

        The Founders of the United States of America established in the Constitution that each and every citizen has the Right and the Duty to exercise their will in the act of voting. {While the Founders believed in the principle of We The People, the unenlightened times reserved voting for only white male landowners, or about 3% of the population. We The People have since extended the reach of that concept.)
        Voting is a right and a privilege and a gift and a duty. If you do not vote (and you are eligible) then you demean the U.S. Constitution.

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        The act of voting is so important that the Corporatist-Fascist machine (i.e. the Republican Party) is removing voters from the rolls. The Secretary of State of Colorado (Republican, of course) removed 20% of registered voters statewide – without notifying those voters. This brings intentional hassle to every disenfranchised Colorado voter, and a serious problem for voters who take no action and show up to vote in November at their polling place and are turned away. (Provisional ballots are worthless.)

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        How you have Power is you give it away; how you have Love is you give it away; how you have Freedom is you give it away.
        Your vote exists only when you cast it – at the ballot box and elsewhere. Your vote is a gift that you must give, to yourself and in behalf of your loved ones. And to your enemies.

        Many sheeple say that they don’t vote in elections because their vote doesn’t count, doesn’t matter, is wasted effort.
        All that proves is that they bought into the propaganda.
        What is true is that each of these non-voting sheeple has decided that he/she doesn’t matter. They each surrendered (at best) and are often-times soon semi-innocent tools of the vast Corporatist-Fascist Oligarchy. They blindly obey orders and trudge unhappily toward a meaningless death.
        Each and every citizen matters when they vote. When they vote they have done something that matters – therefore ...

        Each vote is registered in the Universe as an event, as an overt act. Many other overt acts also constitute a kind of voting, such as each and every monetary act – where you buy your groceries or your fuel or your clothing ultimately matters.
        Which is why advertising exists, to manipulate the masses of sheeple into trading with the Oligarchy. The reverse is a very powerful form of protest: Keep your dollars away from the Oligarchy – Wal-Mart, Big Banking, Big Oil, Big Pharma, the Agribiz monopoly, Big Media - and they will starve.

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        Who says that you cannot fight/beat City Hall? City Hall, of course. The entrenched bureaucracy wants no opposition.
        Who says not to discuss politics or religion? The same entrenched regressive folks who use religion and politics as their excuse for dastardly deeds. They use religion and politics as their stealth weapon, and don’t you dare use open discussion of religion or politics back on them. Don’t you dare discuss religion or politics as if they are not closed issues, cast in stone in the dogmatic form that the regressives want enforced.
        (Knowledge gives light. Only bugs under rocks fear the light.)

        You vote when you attend religious services. You vote if you keep a promise. You vote when you smile at a stranger – or smile at a loved one.
        You vote when you drink a six-pack. You vote when you go to bed early. You vote when you obey the speed limit. You vote when you litter – or when you recycle.
        Every overt act performed by all citizens, even the sheeple, is a vote for or against some Value, some program, some political intention. Likewise, avoiding taking any action is still a vote, albeit a vote against the result of such an action.
        Vegging out in front of the tube is an action and a vote. Mindless chitchat or texting for endless hours on your cell-pod-P.D.A. unit is an action and a vote (for vapidity). Hours spent absorbing actual information at the library or on some wiki is an action and a vote. Visiting bed-bound old folks is an action and a vote – for connection and for service and for unlimited & unexpected experience.

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        And another big vote is participating in the General Strike on Thursday September 11th. A major vote. And asking all your friends and family to participate in the General Strike is a vote in itself. The plan: Stay home, buy nothing, make no phone calls, skip the TV and radio for just one day.
        An army of aware, progressive activists in Manhattan are planning to spend Strike Day out¬doors and in the streets, joining with their neighbors in demon¬strating Solidarity, showing that the People have the Power, that the Power is indeed inherent in the Individual.
        You can also do this wherever you live. The official website is www.VoteStrike.org.
        Voting is not about winning. The win is in the act of voting itself. By each act of voting we each protect the Right to Vote, the Privilege that there is in voting, we both give and receive the gift of voting.

        Anyone who is not living their Life AS a series of votes is missing out on the Gift given to the world by the Framers of the U.S. Constitution. Your vote, the series of votes made by your actions in your Life, determines whether Freedom exists for the next generation and forward in History.

[copyright 2008 by Gary Edward Nordell, all rights reserved]


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