History
helps
By
Will Collette
Tomorrow,
America goes to the polls. I hope all Progressive Charlestown readers will do
their civic duty and cast their ballots. Though no one is forcing you to vote,
you should do it because it is both a right and a responsibility of citizenship
and because, believe it or not, it makes a difference.
In
2012, only after every ballot was counted did we learn that Democrat Paula
Andersen actually won the Charlestown Town Council vice-president position,
rather than simply being a back-bencher. A lot of elections in Rhode Island –
almost all of the state offices, for example – are expected to be very close.
The
Providence
Journal has reported that
requests for mail ballots are up 26% statewide over the number requested in
2010, and because the process for counting them is laborious, the results of
some races may not be known until after Election Day.
Very
aggressive, well-funded Republicans are trying to decimate South County’s
outstanding roster of state legislators. Representatives Donna Walsh, Teresa
Tanzi and Larry Valencia, plus Senator Cathie Cool Rumsey, are all facing big-money
attacks, all sounding pretty much the same, that blame these conscientious
legislators for just about every imaginable crime except the Kennedy
assassination.
Donna
Walsh’s opponent, extremist Tea Partier Blake Filippi, has bombarded the
district with false statements and offensive attacks while he obfuscates where
he lives and covers up his own radical politics. He’s running on a popular idea
of eliminating state income taxes on Social Security – except as a radical
libertarian, he doesn’t even think Social Security should exist based on a twisted
reading of the Tenth Amendment.
We
have a full array of hypocrites and phonies running for town office on the Charlestown
Citizens Alliance slate. The CCA Party hopes to extend its rule over
Charlestown from six years to eight. If you read Progressive Charlestown,
you’ve seen their track record and can expect more of the same.
Of course the big national story is how this
election will change the composition of Congress. An angry electorate,
frustrated at years of gridlock, may decide to take out its anger on incumbents
in the US Senate, most of whom are Democrats, and thus ensure even more
gridlock and turmoil at the national level..
Americans
often vote against their own self-interest. There are a lot of reasons for
that. One big reason is money buys media time – you see it here in Charlestown
with the swarms of outrageous mailers from the CCA Party and their unofficial
candidate Blake Filippi. You see it on local TV. It’s the same all over the
country. Big money buys big media and drowns out sanity and a cool analysis of
your own self-interest.
When
all those big bucks push a message of fear, as in Charlestown and everywhere
else, fear overrides good sense. There’s lots of science to back up the theorem
that it’s hard to make smart decisions when you’re so scared you just shit in
your pants.
I
tend to approach all elections with a profound sense of pessimism. During the
organizer part of my career, I was taught to avoid strategies that lock you
into “all-or-nothing” outcomes, as elections do where you either win or lose. I
don’t like to gamble for that reason.
If
after all the votes are counted, we do well, then I will rejoice in having my
pessimism found to be unwarranted. If progressives lose – whether it’s here in
Charlestown, in the State House or in Congress – then we’ll just have to figure
out what to do next.
History
tells us that nothing is permanent. Every empire falls. Every regime changes.
In most instances, people endure. Just remember that if the CCA Party wins
another term running Charlestown that we all survived eight years of Ronald
Reagan without being blown to atoms. So we can survive eight years of CCA rule. Of course, your vote could be the one that changes that.
But
no matter what happens, the sun will rise. The stars will shine. The birds will chirp and life will go on.
No
matter what happens on Tuesday, I plan to take a bit of a sabbatical from politics
and cut back on my voluntary workload in favor of taking care of long-postponed
responsibilities. I just turned 65 and now that I’m a card-carrying senior
citizen, my perspective shifts to matters more pressing and more personal.
Let
no one, friend or foe, see this as a swan song. Just change.