Voting and protesting

I admire those people that stand up for their principles. Protesters around the world are occupying buildings, streets and town squares railing against what they view as oppression. It's not so important whether I agree or not. It is important that they be heard and we all think about it. One of the greatest gifts of civilization, in my opinion is open communication. Civil protest is a form of communication. Good can come of it. I'm not one to occupy anything. I am always concerned about the availability of sanitary facilities and I'm not particularly fond of spending any time in jail either. That's just me. A protest of another kind has always appealed to me. Voting!

There is a phrase that is seen around that makes sense. "Be kind to your enemies, it messes with their heads." Has kind of a nice ring to it doesn't it? It suggests an entirely different type of protest that can be far more effective than occupation. And it's so easy too. Every political party wants us to vote for them. They spend huge, almost obscene amounts of money to bring us around to their way of thinking. It works in instances where someone is leaning in their direction in the first place and occasionally when a voter is on the fence about a particular issue. That's the political process in a nutshell. However, it is predicated on the assumption that many of us do not vote and their followers will overwhelm the others. The idea of voter protest completely messes up that whole scenario. There are hundreds of thousands of loose cannons out there that are fed up with then status quo. Most of them are so disenchanted with the system that they don't bother to vote, they assume theirs doesn't count anyway. They are so wrong!

Because so many people refrain from voting we are operating under the wishes of those that do vote. No sense in complaining because we didn't voice our opinion in the voting booth. The pinnacle of protest is within our grasp. If everyone voted, and I do mean everyone, our leaders would get one huge reality check. Middle income, working class people become so frustrated they simply give up and deal only with survival and trying to maintain a halfway decent life style in a world that chooses them as a tax base to support their own agendas and defines our moral environment according to boisterous special interest groups. Another phrase goes something like this: "All it takes for bad things to happen is for good people to do nothing." Not voting amounts to doing nothing.

I would like to see what the results would be if every eligible person in this country voted. Then we would know which way the culture is going. Wow! Brings special meaning to "The will of the people." Kind of scary but at least we'd know wouldn't we. Until we all vote en mass it will still remain a mystery. Talk about a protest huh?