Two things always happen at the beginning of November. One of these things is my birthday. I turned 25 today. This freaked me out and almost became a blog entry itself, but I had a couple of weeks to get over it before it even happened. So, it turns out I’m feeling pretty good about being a 25 year-old (old being the operative word) after all. That means I’m going to write about the other thing that happens in November – Election Day.<\/p>\n
Yes, it’s election time. As consistently as my age increments every year, my knowledge of the current events of our world, nation, state, county and city seems to continually decrement. Of course this is rather backwards. With age and experience, knowledge and wisdom should come along as well. However, the further removed I am from my high school political systems course, the less I seem to follow politics and the news in general (sorry Mr. Coffman!). Every day I read technology, entertainment, and sports news with a smattering of business\/financial news here and there to satisfy my corporate culture conditioning. I skip right over the “World” and “U.S.” sections. I channel surf right through CNN and MSNBC to watch ESPN or HBO and I listen to music or sports talk on the radio in the car. Evidentally, I can’t even muster the brainpower to regularly watch the Daily Show or read Doonesbury. However, for roughly 364 days a year, this doesn’t bother me at all. I’m content in my own shallowness. I’m perfectly happy to read about the new iPod models, hear who’s been traded to the Yankees, or see which Hollywood couple has broken up now.<\/p>\n
Except, well, Election Day is always there to make me feel ashamed of myself. Every year I get the practice ballot and it sits on my desk until that dreaded day and I never take the time to read it and I go to the polls clueless as can be, usually regretting my decisions during the following days.<\/p>\n
It’s important to look at some of my history regarding this topic. I wasn’t kidding about my APS (American Political Systems) class in High School. Mr. Coffman “changed my life” during that class. It was truly an eye-opener. I was reading the L.A. Times (not just the sports section), watching CNN (Inside Politics), and listening to KNX. I was an active member of our political system. I was a true constituent. I was knowledgeable and I had all the tools I needed. I couldn’t wait until I could finally vote.<\/p>\n
The first election I got to vote in was the 2000 presidential election. You may remember this one. It was only the third time in the history of our country and the first time in over 100 years that the majority of voters actually voted for the loser. That’s right, the winner actually got less votes than the other guy, and our wonderful electoral college system helped to put George W. Bush into office. With the exception of perhaps 10 months later (September 11, 2001), I’m confident that I have never watched CNN for as many hours straight as I did on the election night of 2000. I just wanted to know who our president was, and it was clear that no one really knew. In fact it wasn’t until days later when I had given up on our political system and our media all together that I finally found out that my vote didn’t really matter all that much after all.<\/p>\n
Okay, okay. I know. My vote matters. Right?<\/p>\n
I must admit that this experience did not leave a good taste in my mouth. My first election was rather unsatisfying. It felt to me like either Florida or our Supreme Court decided who our president was and the rest of the votes didn’t really count. At any rate, it definitely made me wonder how much my single vote in the state of California really mattered in the grand scheme of things. No way I could swing things myself. I realize this is faulty logic (because if everyone thought this, no one would vote), but after 2000, I just couldn’t stomach things. I felt like if you were able to become president, you wouldn’t be a good one. It seemed like a flawed system to me.<\/p>\n
Following this pathetic excuse for an election, I still did follow the news quite a bit. I was still in college, and while in school, current events are a part of learning, so it wasn’t hard to keep in touch with what was going on in the world. However, I think it was around this time that I developed my patented signature political cynicism that all my friends and family seem to know so well and despise so much. I’ve always been something of a cynic at heart, but I don’t think I’m quite as bad as everyone tries to make me out to be. When it comes to my opinion of our government, however, I guess they have a point.<\/p>\n
In 2004 I began advertising my intent to stay away from the polls and completely avoid voting. That’s right, I planned to not vote. I was convinced that my vote didn’t matter and there was no reason to participate. In reality, I caved under the pressure of my parents and close friends and chose to go to the polling place yet again, as uninformed as ever and with a jaded sense of our system of government. I voted for my candidate of choice and took wild guesses at how I thought I felt about our state’s propositions and such. I went home feeling sick to my stomach that I had participated in this game at all.<\/p>\n
Here I am at election time again, finding myself at yet another crossroads – unprepared to vote but feeling the burden of my citizenship\/patriotism. It seems that every year it becomes more and more a question of which candidate is the lesser of two evils or which option screws us over less than the alternative. It doesn’t seem to be about who is actually the right person for the job or what proposition might actually better our community as a whole. I’m beginning to feel less and less of an allegiance to my registered “party” and more of a devotion to “undeclared” seeing as virtually no “party” seems to agree with all the things I believe in.<\/p>\n
I realize that this has gotten to be something of an editorial, albeit a rather personal one, and perhaps my longest blog entry to date. The purpose of it was completely selfish as I force myself to think about things in a slightly different light here on my 25th birthday. I feel like it’s my second Bar Mitzvah – like this is the day I’m really supposed to start acting like a man. Real men vote. Men are informed and educated and they feel strongly about politics. I’m still finding it hard to do so, but I’m hoping that I can leave my polling place tomorrow on a mission – a mission to not make the same mistake again and to show up with my practice ballot filled out confidently in the year 2008…probably voting for a Libertarian or something.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Two things always happen at the beginning of November. One of these things is my birthday. I turned 25 today. This freaked me out and almost became a blog entry itself, but I had a couple of weeks to get over it before it even happened. So, it turns out I’m feeling pretty good about […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3,4,10],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-29","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-personal","category-philosophical","category-political"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/archive.bryanfriedman.me\/ramblings\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/29","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/archive.bryanfriedman.me\/ramblings\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/archive.bryanfriedman.me\/ramblings\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archive.bryanfriedman.me\/ramblings\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archive.bryanfriedman.me\/ramblings\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=29"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/archive.bryanfriedman.me\/ramblings\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/29\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/archive.bryanfriedman.me\/ramblings\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=29"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archive.bryanfriedman.me\/ramblings\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=29"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archive.bryanfriedman.me\/ramblings\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=29"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}