I Will Vote No More - Perhaps Forever

Edgar, I'm sorry that you've come to feel the way you do, although I certainly understand how you got there.

I've gone from very involved to almost disinterested. How much disillusion can a person take?

However, no matter how I feel, how sick I am, how angry I am, how whatever I am, I vote. I think this was ingrained into my by immigrant relatives who saw voting as a sacred right.

Dang, I see I called Green Witch Ceili.

Fewer people should vote. It is regrettable when an intelligent person such as yourself drops out of the system, but since you're a liberal in Texas, your vote never really counted anyway. What you need to do now is convince your neighbors to stop voting.

Joe, I feel as though edgar is comparing the voting system in America to Chief Joseph. Actually, I don't know what liberal and conservative means any more. After Al Gore lost, people became very wary of the system in general. The founding fathers established the electoral college because most citizens at the time were illiterate. That is no longer true. I will continue to vote, but absentee ballots don't even have to be witnessed here.

I don't usually get into politics, but felt that I should today.

I understand Edgars frustration. I have voted in every election since I had the right but I feel that I have no voice in government weather the repubs or the dems are running things. Its all about money and I dont have the ammounts that it takes to be involved in governing the country. I wish I had the funds it takes to purchase a federal politician!!!

Since when?

I voted for Clinton, because I wanted a Democrat. Turned out he was the Republicans' best friend, although they bit the hand that fed them, like ravenous hyenas. He turned Democrats into lagging Republicans. In Obama we finally get a Democrat president and a powerful enough to be a game changing congress and we end up with a continuation of some Republican bad **** (endless ground wars and unchecked military spending, for but a few examples), a botched health care bill, bailouts of the rich and the only help for the workers being extended unemployment benefits. The money and power base of the nation flows to the rich only. Buck the system and you are marginalised instantly. They now check your credit when you apply for a job. That means a person with poor credit will be forced into desperate measures to even survive. They make you pay out the ass for medical care and put a person in jail for seeking a better way. They promise victims of natural disasters help, but fend off requests for help until people find some way to survive without it. The list is endless. If enough potential voters had an attitude similar to mine, we would be seeing it in the politicians who offer themselves for public service. If ever I detect a trend, I will again vote.

Think of it this way. If enough people hadn't of voted for Obama, we would now have John McCain as president and Sarah Palin as vice president.

A vote for Obama and the Democrats was a vote for Lilly Ledbetter. It was a vote for a reasoned policy in the Middle East (if you doubt this, imagine what McCain would have done). It is a vote for an end to don't ask don't tell. All of these things would not have happened without the votes of reasonable people, many of who are disappointed with Obama on many fronts, hadn't voted.

Politics is a battleship, you make progress bit by bit, vote by vote and election by election. Just because Obama is not the magic genie of herculean virtue that we were expecting doesn't mean that his election wasn't a move (however disappointing) in the right direction.

Of course it is your decision, although if you don't vote you have no right to complain about what happens.

I sure wish I could use your vote if you aren't going to use it. I am trying to make things better and every bit helps.

I never expected as much from Obama as all that. I only voted for him after he became the only choice left.

It can be frustrating. Especially if there's a particular campaign promise (or 2 or 3) that you anticipate eagerly, only to find that it doesn't come to pass...it's business as usual...and it's not even explained. Not even an attempt at explanation.

The good news is we won't have to listen to that campaign promise from that candidate more than once...unless he wants to be laughed out of town.

It's not a candidate or a party that has me upset. It's the general movement of Americans as a people. We are allowing ourselves to be exploited and controlled. I don't want to be a part of it any longer.

I pretty much agree with you Edgar, but when you stop voting the bad guys really win. If you're not going to vote, I at least hope you will try and make change for the better in other ways.

To much blurring between bad guys and good guys these days.

I am sorry Egdar but if you live in the U.S. you have no choice but to be exploited. Its the people who are too stupid to realize that they are voting against thier own welfare that seem to make up the majority of voters. For what reason other than the fact that they have been brainwashed into the idea that we all have the chance to be rich without realizing that only the rich 10% are getting richer while the rest of us are donating to the rich by getting poorer.

It's that. But in other ways, it's not just the money. It's every level of what is going on and how they control us, through owning the media and controlling the flow of knowledge that it requires to make good decisions.

No there is not. The difference more more clear than ever. Watch this.

And yet nothing constructive is moving ahead.

The bad guys are being quite effective at blocking the good guys. This isn't, in my mind, a reason to confuse the two.

Cycloptichorn

Have you considered going to Havana? The climate is very pleasant; beautiful beaches. universal health care; and a government that sees to it that everyone gets a job and a place to live. They even have allowances for basic foodstuffs.

Even better, they don't bother with elections at all.

Yeah, Edgar, go back to Commieland, you commie!