This Is It, If You Don’t Vote Don’t Open Your Mouth To Complain…

This is it.
The issue or issues that are impor­tant to you are all on the bal­lot today.
For four years, more than half of the peo­ple in the United States have lived in a vir­tu­al fog of dis­be­lief, their lives sus­pend­ed in time while they wait for the moment that they will breathe again.
Many have admit­ted to feel­ings of depres­sion, anx­i­ety, and even thoughts of suicide.
Never in their lives did they ever imag­ine that their coun­try, in which they have had so much pride all their lives, would be reduced to this lev­el of cor­rup­tion no one had ever seen before.

President Barack Obama spoke about the path that America usu­al­ly takes on its jour­ney to becom­ing, a more per­fect union, years ago, “two steps for­ward, one step back­ward, and two steps to the side’. Never a straight path forward.
And so, after the Obama Presidency, maybe the first in the his­to­ry of the nation to be scan­dal-free, it was only to be expect­ed that we would be where we have been over the last four years.
If you still haven’t vot­ed and are eli­gi­ble to vote, you will have no say in the out­come of any elec­tions; you will cer­tain­ly have no say when­ev­er this elec­tion is decided.

Yesterday an African-American man told me he does not get involved in white peo­ple’s busi­ness after I asked him if he already voted?
Dumbfounded, I asked him to explain how his vot­ing would be white peo­ple’s busi­ness? At the same time I was await­ing his answer, which seemed dif­fi­cult for him to artic­u­late, I was won­der­ing what if any­thing would I be able to say to a 66-year-old man, that would set off a light, in a brain that old?
Needless to say, as you already may have imag­ined, the answer he gave me was so con­vo­lut­ed that I real­ized that noth­ing that I could say would pen­e­trate that dense for­est of ignorance.
We know that no can­di­date or polit­i­cal par­ty is going to encap­su­late all of our needs and desires, but let us imag­ine vot­ing through the words of the young con­gress­woman Alexandria Ocasio Cortez who bril­liant­ly said, “we are vot­ing for the peo­ple whom we are bet­ter able to lob­by.”
No, there are no per­fect can­di­dates or polit­i­cal par­ties. We live in an imper­fect world, with our imper­fect selves, we must use our brains rather than our emo­tions when we make decisions.
Organizing, vot­ing, and lob­by­ing, that’s the process.

For those not as lost as my 66-year old friend- You have a chance to let your voice be heard today.
Yes, I know that the Electoral College is archa­ic. I know that the Electoral col­lege makes it appear to you that your vote does not count, but it cer­tain­ly can­not be count­ed if you do not vote.
There is a rea­son that one polit­i­cal par­ty is fight­ing tooth and nail to pre­vent you from vot­ing; in fact, they are try­ing des­per­ate­ly to take it away from you.
If your vote did not mat­ter, ask your­selves, “Why are they work­ing so hard to take it away from me”?

Mike Beckles is a for­mer police Detective cor­po­ral, busi­ness­man, free­lance writer, a black achiev­er hon­oree, and pub­lish­er of the blog mike​beck​les​.com. 
He’s also a con­trib­u­tor to sev­er­al websites.
You may sub­scribe to his blogs free of charge, or sub­scribe to his Youtube chan­nel @chatt-a-box, for the lat­est pod­cast, all free to you, of course.