I'm Sooo Not Alone

http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/nation/la-na-senate-texas-20120801,0,4846333.story?track=rss

I've been adrift a few days, taking in life, mostly learning; today I got back to the gym and back to giving out my life's advice.

I guess I've been looking for signs that my contrarianism hasn't regressed to individualism because I've been finding them.

Take the story above,  the Tea Party movement is indeed a live and well, and that makes me smile.

I don't know what constitutes membership in the Tea Party, which isn't to say I'm longing to find out, because I do like my own private individualism, albeit with a Republican registration.  I do however feel a kinship with those good people.

Presidential elections, I believe, are the litmus test of Americans.  We dip that stick in the mud every four years and analyse the numbers and results. Obviously, but where I go is that as an individual, what does how I vote mean?  Further, is it a validation or disregarding of any learning I've done in the previous four years, or a turning my back on positions I'd taken since the last election.

The voting booth is sometimes the most courageous event we take, one that sometimes requires a tremendous leap of faith, a blind turn if you will.

That's my generalization, voting is a courageous act, because courage is linked somehow to doing an act that has great trepidation attach to it.  A sense of danger.   Voting has never been that way for me, but based on the statistics, not many people change the way they vote every four years.  Which I find uncourageous because people change and political parties change, although much slower.  Voting based on party loyalty, if not based on principles is also an indication of no personal growth.


For those people, whether they know it or not, voting is a courageous act.  So courageous in fact that many blow it and do nothing but the usual,  pull the party lever.   To hell with that point about immigration or deficit spending that was so vital to hold as the loyal opposition, its the Party on election day, not the principles.

Principles take courage.

Principled also vote for something, not against something.  That would be against principles, unless of course if your principles and the opposition candidate were your only choices.


Yes, if every four years you compromise on your education and principles and vote party, rationale being against the other candidate, that to me is simply lacking courage.  Maybe this year its because this is the most important election ever and the fate of the nation hangs in the balance.  Reflect on twenty years of that rationale and I think its safe to say one's principles aren't so important after all.

A devout liberal or conservative voting Green or Libertarian is likely principled based each and every time, but some of those folks I've run into over the last ten years have complained about so much, but only when as it applies to the other party.

Take this years election.  Hypothetically,  Obama vs. Romney vs. Tea Party.  What would I do?  Principles. Tea Party.  That's for me.  Maybe for someone else its Romney.

We'll see what happens, how the numbers come in on the first Tuesday in November,  hopefully the numbers show a true reflection on the principles of America, not just how lacking in courage we are.  Either way the numbers will become truth, and quite possibly halt the last best chance America has to changing the system or at the very least providing real pressure to change the system.

Occupy protesters were ardent, but disruption in the voting booth is where it matters most.  The Tea Party may be our last best hope.