THIS is why I like you. Please lend me your patience:

ZeitGuy

(318 posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore

Wed Oct-15-08 06:12 PM
Original message

THIS is why I like you. Please lend me your patience:

Edited on Wed Oct-15-08 07:01 PM by ZeitGuy

(On Edit: title, typos, and to note that, with the next long missive, I'll include another recipe)

It�s great when it�s other folks with the problem and not you, isn't it?

Here are some things you don't do:

You don't accidental drive up onto crowded sidewalks and kill shoppers at a farmers market. You don't keep seventy-five cats as pets, and you don't enjoy a high-fiber diet rich in your own toenails. Sure, you tried licking the business end of a 9-volt battery once, and then you did it again just because the first jolt didn't hurt all that much. You may might have put your baby sister up on top of the refrigerator and left her there for two hours while you went out and rode your bike with friends, and yep, you ate a little construction paper paste when you were six. But you've never once discharged both barrels of a 12-gage shotgun inside of your house at Thanksgiving and blown apart Grandma's 100-year-old-formerly-mint-condition Stickley chair, along with part of the left thigh of Grandma, who was sitting in it at the time.

Take a minute to enjoy your internal gloat. And enjoy the fact that I am totally not writing about you. Not a single one of you. I�m writing about them, people. So don�t reply indignantly to this OP and get all attitude-y and pout �Not ME! That's not how I am!� We already know this. Ain't it super? Indeed it is. Let�s take 10 seconds to pat ourselves on the back and feel really good about ourselves.

Okay, now let's move on to my point.

I personally am a registered Independent voter with a political philosophy that straddles fiscal conservatism and social liberalism -- recognizing that, as American citizen, denizens of this Earth and members of civilized society, we have an obligation to support and protect each other, but also a responsibility to pay as we go. I am also a person of pale complexion who grew up in an area that is 99.95% white. And even so, it is with no small degree of horror and dismay that I have learned from some of my own family members, and a few of my white friends and aquaintances (many of whom hail from blue collar, union and even traditionally Democratic-leaning families) that they will not vote for Barack Obama simply because he is a black man. And I�ve read it in a dozen places and I hear it said every day that �there are just some people who, no matter what they think about the issues, will not vote for a black man.� Now, I'm not concerned about the reality of a so-called "Bradley Effect"--only with that notion being used as a smokescreen to cover another attempt to steal an election, but let's put that aside.

Are you feeling a little superior, a little smug? You betcha--and you know why? You are voting the issues, or experience, or ideology. I insist that, because you are reading this--because you are in DU in the first place (except for the odd trolls lurking around here)--you are voting for one candidate and not the other for very sane, very logical reasons. I even sympathize if you�re a Libertarian/Green/TeleTubby Party member, and you just won�t feel irrelevant enough unless you get to vote for your own personal moon-bat. At the end of the day, it's gotta feel great to not be voting race. You are each one sufficiently evolved and enlightened in my book, because you do not make decisions that are this important based upon skin color. In short, you rock.

But let�s talk about them for a second, shall we?

And let�s talk about them lying on their deathbeds. Not tomorrow, not in two years, but say, 40, 50, 60 years down the line. Their kids and grandkids huddled around them, watching them hitching in their last, labored breaths. And there they are, with their wretched lives stretched out behind them and the dark void before them. I�ve sat deathwatch on a couple of people in my lifetime and know many other friends who have as well, caring for loved ones in their last days. I�d like to believe that it�s all a shimmering white light and a sweet, fuzzy, morphine haze. I wish I could believe that most people, in their last days, become wiser and forgiving and possessed of an inner peace. But I doubt that's the case for many. And certainly not for them.

Regrets return en masse, circling inside of the minds of the dying like turkey vultures over a rotting carcass. Even people of faith, who believe that they are forgiven, can be nagged by regret. We all have regrets, things that we will never admit that we did, that we�re ashamed of, and maybe things that we even make excuses for, but which still rise up like Jacob Marley's ghost in the back of our minds whenever we make that sanctimonious statement: �Well at least I never did X, Y or Z!�

Maybe you killed a robin with your Wrist-Rocket, or flashed your junk at the other neighborhood kids behind your dad's garage when you were ten. Maybe you told your desperate brother you just didn�t have the money to loan him when, in fact, you just didn�t want to give it to him because you were saving up for that 47" Sharp Aquos. Maybe it was the time your wife sent you to the store for a few things and you ended up in the back stock-room, shagging the cute checker who always smiled at you when you came in. Maybe you saw that guy get side-swiped on I-5 and hit the guard rail and spin out, and you didn�t stop to see if he was okay, and then read in the paper the next day that he ended up in ICU. Maybe you could have done something at some point in your life to make someone else's life better, but you didn�t. You might have been able to save someone but you didn�t. But, flashing forward 40-50 years, laying there on those cold sheets, listing to the hiss and thuk! of your ventilator, only you would know.

So, again, there you lay, decades later. You�ve taught your children how to be good people. Maybe you�ve even taught them about a compassionate Buddha or a forgiving Christ, you�ve taught them that it�s never wrong to do the right thing. But as the light dies, and you want, so badly, to go gently into that good night, you start, you jerk, like a dream where you are descending a staircase and miss a step. You�re wrenched back into a sensation of unsettling ache, because you know (and only you know) that, despite how you felt about the health and prosperity of your country, you just could not pull that lever because you just couldn�t stomach the thought of voting for the black guy. And regardless of the outcome of the election, you're the lesser of a human being for what you did...or didn't do.

That�s how these people will be forced to sum up a lifetime of perhaps otherwise decent accomplishments: with a sick, soul-wrenching feeling that they did the wrong thing. And if they were right about their God, they will never rest. For all eternity.

I�m so glad that none of you are that person. Let�s rejoice. For no matter our choice, we did not make it for hateful, small-minded reasons. Doing the right thing never needs to be justified, but we can always joyfully celebrate it, openly or privately, together or each of us in our own individual way.

And come Wednesday morning, November 5, you will wake up to the first day of the future of our country--a future that you helped to create, and for all the right reasons. Imagine how great you�re going to feel, how satisfied with having done the right thing.

And in the end, you can rest easy. For all eternity.

VOTE.