The Nobility of the Vote: a guided meditation on election day

The phone is ringing. The newspaper is still in its plastic bag on the driveway. Nobody is home - you woke up late. The world has started without you, voting without you. You'll still get to work on time, but the most important decision of the day will wait 10 hours until you can get to 38 Pepperdock Lane tonight.

It feels good not to care as you floss at a stop light in your car: like a chemical release erasing the memory of the ads and stories wasting the mental space that could be used on self-tailored entertainment. I can't miss my twitter, my facebook, my sweet YouTube. Not for you, Laura Demlady, Joseph A. Reformingman! Green light.

What will happen if I don't vote? I'm not informed adequately anyway. It's just a sedative to make me believe that I hold power in a dysfunctional system. 


At work, no one says a thing. The coffee machine sounds its finish from the break room; Aaron, Lisa and Ron get up and file toward the sound. You split between reviewing emails form your boss and skimming local political news and blogs.

"Hello _____," says your boss over the cubicle wall. It's an open office. You smile, craving a moment of wall-scriven absurdity on facebook.

"Good morning."
"Did you vote this morning?"
"Not yet."
"You should do that tonight. I'll check in on that ________ project after lunch, OK?"
"Great. Thanks," you nod. Screw voting. Coffee is your need now.

11a.m. You've dozed off in a post-french-roast crash. People, citizens surround you in their booths, little pencils in hand. A finger pokes your back; you turn around to see a ten-year-old smiling broadly. The child holds a sign reading "SUNSHINE is the best disinfectant." Zip code, S.S. #, connected arrows. Sun shines through the skylight of the gym at Pepperdock Elementary school, and you start weeping. Then a distinct thought "For the raindrop, joy is entering the river." A Rumi quote from french roast? Did you ever wake up this morning? Are you really at work? Are you a Democrat or a Republican?


Lunch brings you out of that pseudo-dream with a dull PB&J and a saccharine bottle of mango-peach juice.

"I like Asiago," says Ron across the lunch table.
"No, Steven Jenright is my guy - my kids need a real education." You don't have kids. Maybe you won't vote for him.
"Laura Demlady has 20 years of experience as a real estate lawyer. And she's a decent person."
"What does that even mean, decent? Reformingman listens to his constituents," responds Lisa.

Your colleagues have already voted. They ask you - for whom did you vote?
"No one, yet. I'm going tonight."
"Oh, good luck with that. The polls are a nightmare after work."

Unless you don't go.


Only an hour more at the office. A window open to facebook rests next to ten or more political blogs. The review went well - ________, Inc. is happy, even glowing, over your performance. If you had kids, or even a spouse, this'd be good news for them. A raise is coming.

A candy bar commercial runs through your head, and sticky caramel with cookie crunch and nougat and chocolate calls to you in fantastic contrast to the fluourescent-lit afternoon of high, dry achievement. The vending machine is full of choices - A5, B6, C2, D8, F4, B7 - choices you can barely decipher in your desire for them. The gummy strawberries have vitamins A, C, and E. The creme-filled crackers remind you of your grandparents' house. The trail mix would fill you up. The chocolate bar would bring that zany commercial to life, but leave you crashing while driving home - sleep behind the wheel is too dangerous. Your dollar sneaks back into your pocket, and the next 45 minutes lead you in and out of various e-published assessments of candidates Laura, Joe, Steven and Asiago the Independent. Why don't political candidates change their names like celebrities? Nobody should run under the name of a cheese!, you assert incredulously.

"Huh? Did you say something?" asks your cube-neighbor.

It's time to go - home or vote?

"Oh, good night, Dameon! See you tomorrow!" You buy a candy bar from the machine on your way out of the building.


At home, sunlight spills through the kitchen window where you stand. Your dog stares at you. Your roommates are out. Your brother calls, but you don't pick up. You notice yourself becoming transfixed with an ant crawling along the top of the dish rack when the neighbors across the street picks up her Demlady sign from the lawn and floors it out of the driveway. You run out and ask if you can hop in, feeling like a 12-year-old and a fugitive.

"Uh, OK," she says. You get in; you will vote.


At the booth, a wave of chocolate-cookie-caramel-nougat-induced exhaustion hits you. You exhale, blogs dogging your consciousness.

What a load of nonsense. What a patriotic sap. What a political pansy you are, trying to say no to well-earned apathy in the face of a bullying system. Blog, schmog. You're a person with your own parties to go to - conservative and liberal labels don't mean anything. You won't even be categorized as an independent. Independents just undermine the success of people who are going to bomb each other to political pieces, anyway. YOUR news is that you have a real li- OWW!


You're on the floor rubbing your ass. Two kids are playing tag at the polls, one having just knocked your knees from under you.

"But I was bored, Mom! This place stinks."

"I know, hon, I know. Someday you'll be the one getting knocked down, though, and then you'll realize what a pain in the butt you're being right now."

Your neighbor stands by the exit as the mother and son skirmish past her. You fill out your choices, hand it in and leave with her.

"Who did you vote for?" your ride asks on the way home.

"I don't remember," you lie. Privacy is dignity when voting is an inevitable comedy. "My butt hurts. I should win."

Ethnic studies are bad; Bible is good - OR, Angry Rant at No One

A law was passed in AZ on May 12, 2010 that has scheduled the end of ethnic studies in the state for December 31, 2010. This is overdue. Ethnic studies promote the overthrow of the government. They encourage minorities to join in what they call "solidarity," or a mob-like state in which people assume that they are disempowered and must kill their oppressors to attain justice.

Do we need our youth learning that they are "oppressed" and need to free themselves through violence? No. If they are oppressed, it's better that they keep their peace in oppression than that they break a system that is working for many well-intentioned white people.

More power to you, Arizona!

I feel a little bit conflicted, though, because if I am all white, does that mean that I don't have an ethnicity? There are no ethnic studies classes for white people. "Ethnos" means people, so does that mean I am not a person? Ethnic, according to The American Heritage Dictionary 2000 edition I have at my house, also has as one of its meanings: "not Christian or Jewish, heathen." So, because I am not covered in ethnic studies, I am a Muslim terrorist?

Or what if one of my white ancestors was an oppressor of my other white ancestor, and one part of me tries to rise up and destroy the other part to free itself? I am both English and Irish. Shouldn't I pass a ban on myself from reading Irish literature to protect the English part of me from being choked in my sleep by a drunk, power-hungry Irishwoman? And maybe I am not all white. Maybe I am a real, ethnic person, and not a terrorist at all.

Maybe one of those not-white people slept with one of my English ancestors, and my Irish self is choking me in the night without just cause? I could be part African, or Chinese, or Nigerian, or Indian, and not even know it. Then my Chinese self might decide it's oppressed and take out its English, Irish, Scottish, Dutch and Lithuanian oppressors in me. But only if I start reading about Chinese culture.

The only safe way for even a peace-loving caucasian like me to escape the rage of the oppressed is to not read anything except the Bible. There are no ethnic people in the Bible. It is the history of pure people and God's call to them to come home throughout history. Even if someone who wasn't in the Bible has snuck into your family, it's OK if you only read the Bible because you're not reading anything that would make them think that they didn't deserve their oppression. But if you are very white and you know for sure that you are, it is even more dangerous for you; don't read anything - just listen to the voice of God, which is unobstructed in you by threats of biological insurrection.

And if you aren't white, do you really think you need to kill people to have a good life? No, well why are you fighting to read books that encourage the overthrow of the government? People will die if you overthrow the government. People are dying now, but those are from natural causes. Death is a part of life, so stop trying to think that you need to do something to make the world better.


HB 2281, thanks for saving us from the wretched bodies of the earth. Their brain cells are a threat to the American way. See them in detention, self-serving their agitated state. It's contained and right; we're free from their spite and history.

Blessed are the peacemakers. Watch out for the rainbowed rest, the so-called oppressed. And the Irish.