An Historic Election

This year was an historic election. At least for me. In forty years of voting, this year was the first in which every candidate I voted for was elected. During the first thirty or so years of voting, I rarely went for winners. This was mostly due to my being outside – sometimes way outside – the mainstream of the American electorate. One year I voted for Jesse Jackson, and am proud of it. Another year I voted for Ralph Nader, not so much. As I grow older, though, I’m not sure what difference my vote (or anyone’s vote) really makes. Every two or four years we go through the machinations of democracy, passionately expressing our preferences (severely limited by convoluted prerequisites and primaries (why can’t everyone vote for whoever they want? – wouldn’t that be real democracy?)), pushing the buttons or filling in the bubbles, hoping against hope that what our button pushing or bubble filling is going to make any difference in the way the world is going to go. The truth is is that the world is probably less deterministic and more like a pinball machine. We bounce around from bumper to bumper in a free-form free-fall where we think our occasional flipper play has some real influence for how things will turn out, but that silver ball always ends up dropping in the hole at the bottom of the machine. Politics – life – is reacting. Shit happens, and whoever’s “in charge” (as if anyone ever is) responds in whatever way and whatever happens happens. The Greeks tried to teach us this centuries ago. They called it fate.  (Ask Oedipus.) Ironically, they also gave us democracy, a form of government that provides the illusion that one can counter fate.