No Falling, Just Voting

It is a beautiful, warm, Oklahoma fall day, perfect for casting an historic vote. I proudly, and with tears of joy welling in my eyes, cast my vote for Barack Obama and Joe Biden. And all the other Democrats on the ticket. I vote straight-party ticket, always have, always will.

I even managed to escape without injury!

Honestly, I don’t know how any person of good conscience could still vote Republican, especially after the past eight years. I am utterly baffled and truly wish that someone could explain it to me. How can a so-called “values voter” find common ground with the robber barons of the right? How can a so-called christian reconcile the teachings of Christ with the depredations of the GOP? How can a struggling family ally themselves with personification of the economic policies that authored that struggle?

Do people honestly believe that the party that gleefully sacrifices the lives of our valiant soldiers and innocent civilians and licks its chops at very thought of lethal injection or the electric chair shares their views about the sanctity of life? Anti-choicers, you are being used and you will be jettisoned when they find you no longer useful.

How can folks who claim Christ as their savior reject His instructions to love our neighbors as ourselves,  to clothe the naked, feed the hungry, heal the sick, to not stand on the street corner to pray, to be peace-makers? And by the way, that’s “suffer the little children” not make the little children suffer. The Republican party stands at direct odds with the teachings of Jesus, and yet so many of the faithful cling to false hopes that the GOP feeds them, lapping up the lies that ooze out of the mouths of the right wing pundits, preachers, and politicians. Starving at the feet of their masters, they pant after whatever crumbs fall off the table of the greedy.

The only thing I can understand is that the GOP feeds the fears, petty hatreds, and ignorance of its base, the basest of its base.

As for me, I will not be a prisoner of fear, I will not allow hate to rule me, and I forcefully reject ignorance. I vote for the future, not the past. I vote for bright hopes. I vote Democratic. And I voted for Obama!