The Pink Flamingo :: I Finally Get to Vote for John McCain

Every time I have the honor and the privilege to vote, I think about the Northern Exposure episode where Chris (the DJ) reveals that he cannot vote because he is a felon. On air he begins to wax poetic about the right to vote and our freedom, our Founding Fathers. When the process begins, he shows up, long hair cut, beard shaved, clad in a suit and tie. Because he has lost the right to vote, all he could ask is to be there to watch others exercise their vote.

I think about my great aunt, Mabel Perkins. She was in her 90’s when she made the front page of the local papers and a TV interview as the oldest person to vote in our county. She told her story of being a sufferegette, fighting for a woman’s right to vote. She told how she, her sisters, and her mother were some of the first women in the city of Minneapolis to vote the moment they were allowed to do so.

Her cautionary tale is simple. If the right to vote can be given to women it an be taken away, therefore we must vote every time we possibly can – to preserve that right.

I think about my great (whatever) grandfather Paul Dustin (I think it’s Paul, could be Timothy, I always get them mixed-up) who marched to battle at Bunker Hill as a Minuteman. He stood beside his brothers, cousins, uncles, and friends as they fought the Redcoats. There was James Carter, father and son who fought for freedom, and Richard Bohannon, and his father who was too old but donated what he could to the cause. There were the Ladds, and the Nutts, and the Godbeys. Then there were the distant cousins, the Lighthorse Harry Lee’s who proposed Independence. There was Jeremiah Moore who wrote Patrick Henry’s immortal words, “Give me liberty, or give me death.” I think about the Moore and French family friends, the Madisons, Monroes, and the Jeffersons. And I think about my very, very favorite relative of them all, a distant cousin, the very first Commander and Chief, General George Washington.

These brave men (and the women who supported them) were willing to give their all, their life, liberty, estate – everything – for the dream of freedom. The very least I can do is honor their service and their vision by voting.

Today I was able to exercise that privilege.

The most exciting part was being able – finally – to vote for John McCain. As I filled in the annoying dots that make up the New Mexican voting process I prayed that the Lord would bless him and his campaign. We’re going to need it.

We’re up against a showman who doesn’t give a rip who he destroys, steps on, or throws under the bus to get where he’s going. As I watch him “change” the world, in an auditorium filled with tens of thousands of people, I think about John McCain’s rather humble speech, in a small room with what appeared to be less than a thousand people. There was no rhetoric. There was no show. No flourish, just the outline of a plan.

And so I wonder, how the heck to we go up against a Narcissist at best or at worst a psychopath? How do you compete with his army of a million boots on the ground. His deaf, dumb, and blind minions want nothing but change, no matter if it is good or bad. Patrick McCain of Right Pundits emailed me this evening,

“A person that runs on a platform of only "change" for the sake of it has a lot in common with 1930's Germany, that is to say it is meaningless rhetoric and potentially dangerous.”