To all my friends - VOTE
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0vtHwWReGU0
I know most of you don’t need to see this (but that dude from Superbad is funny as shit in it). But I know some of you don’t vote because we’ve talked about it before. This is important. This matters.
If you live in CA you may think that it doesn’t matter as due to the electoral math it will go blue anyway. Well… add to the popular vote. Give Obama a fucking mandate. More has been done this year to turn the establishment on its ear than any time in my lifetime. Even hardcore free-market, “trickle down” bullshit people are starting to see that the direction we’ve taken under Reagan, Bush, Clinton and Bush is seriously flawed. Something is up when George Will and Chris Buckley and Chris Hitchins like Obama. When Alan Greenspan says he was wrong. When the Fox News Channel doesn’t even annoy anymore but just becomes laugh-out-loud funny I think we’re in a decent place, no matter how dark it might seem. Maybe we had to have the last 8 years so we can have what I hope will happen next.
We have a chance to get a transcendent leader in the executive with a majority in the senate. We have a chance to stop the polarization, division and gerrymandering that has completely screwed the national dialog and the political landscape in this country. Lost are the very good points that exist all across the political spectrum to be replaced by extreme views that fit into easy talking points and seem to divide us horribly at such a pivotal time in history.
You are a citizen on the United Fucking States of America and that means your vote controls the destiny of billions of people on this planet. People that are lucky enough to vote in other countries don’t effect that global fate as much as we can. This is a moral obligation.
We’ve lived through a nightmare in the last 8 years. Now is the time to throw it back in their faces. Now is the time where we can say “love it or leave it” to that asshole that drives around Montecito in a yellow Hummer with American flags all over the place and stickers that brag about gas consumption. Now is the time where we can have a President who not only can UNDERSTAND multiple points of view and different ideas, but understands THAT IS A GOOD THING. Maybe that will rub off on the country. Maybe people will understand that there is no true “left” in this very right leaning country and that anybody to the left of them ever so slightly is not a commie-pinko America hater. Maybe the Republican party will realize they’ve been hijacked by lunatics and return to the ideas that make them important, relevant and vital. Maybe Democrats will DO something. Maybe we’ll start to see that two parties aren’t enough to hold all of the great ideas and diverse schools of thought we have in this country and start to seek viable alternatives to express that diversity in our political system.
Maybe the world will see that America is still a great idea. Maybe we’ll show them that this place IS indeed the greatest country on earth or at least offer a better case why some of us think so. We’ll show them this not by having people say it is the greatest and mindlessly chant “USA USA USA” (only 9% of Americans have ever been to another country, so how do they know anyway?), but by showing that while we may have fallen asleep at the wheel for the last 30 years and especially the last 8, we do have the capacity to correct things and get ourselves right. We pull shit off like WWII and the Civil Rights Movement and Rock N’ Roll every once in a while. Do we have a few black marks? Sure. But we also have that weird nacho cheese at Taco Bell and that stuff is DELICIOUS.
This country IS a great idea. A melting pot of races, ideas, religions… THAT is the America I know. There are those who want to keep it white and with Jesus and build walls and bomb the shit out of small brown countries and they’ve been WINNING. They’ve been winning because we’ve been asleep. There is a social and economic civil war in this country and it is important that you find your side or at least find out where you stand. Listen, talk and argue. Convince and embrace. And when it is necessary - FIGHT.
Wake the fuck up. Wake everyone you know up (especially if they are in Ohio, PA, Florida, Nevada, etc.) and do something about this shit.
Vote him in. He’s the black one. Daddy O will set us free. And after this year keep it up. No matter what you think or what your political beliefs are at least take the time to get some. And then do something about them. All the time - as often as possible, not just every four years.
I’m sorry to send a mass email and I’m sorry if this has been patronizing to some of you, but I’ve had loved ones and family members go to war to make Dick Cheney’s friends a few more million. I’ve watched people go without help for DAYS after an American city was DESTROYED. I’ve watched people demonize people and ideas for being “un-American” and not get called on it. I’ve watched people make popular the notion that our leaders should be people we want to have a beer with and not people that should be held to a higher standard of thought, charisma, empathy and intelligence. I know for a lot of you it is your first election and thought it important to tell you how imperative it should be to you to be involved on some level. I’ve been seething for 8 years and we’re just about to come out of this dark, dark time in our history. I’m really stoked to watch it happen and I hope that you’ll do everything you can to be a part of it and get as many people as you know to do the same.
-s. towers
