Four More Years of Meh

"The clock just struck and it's democracy time!"

-Abe Lincoln

Four years ago I was one of the youngest voters. I had turned 18 days before, and had registered well before my birthday. I had sixth period off so instead of napping in my car in the parking lot before practice like I usually did, I went to participate in my first ever election. My polling place was in my neighbor's garage. Since it was the middle of the day the only other voters out were retirees. My neighbor himself was handing out the ballots. When he asked if it was my first time voting, so he could show me how to fill out a ballot, I said "yes" with way too much enthusiasm. I marked  the bubble for Obama and for no on Prop 8, and got my sticker. Actually, I got two stickers, one in English and one in Spanish. They might have only made that concession because it was my first time. (Apparently absentee voters don't get a sticker, which completely defeats the purpose of voting. Just like it doesn't happen unless you post it on facebook, your vote doesn't count if you don't have the sticker don't have the sticker to show for it.)

When I got home from practice my parents were watching CNN showing that Obama was already crushing the electoral vote. I had been anticipating a long night of white knuckles and electoral math, but it looked like it was already over before it started. But that wasn't what made me happy. What made me happy was that this was the first time that the youth vote was a significant demographic. And I was one of the youngest out there, only eligible to vote less than a week prior. In fact, the yellow card with my polling location on it had only come in the mail the day before. Watching those people celebrating in Hyde park, I felt like I had done something, I was part of the movement that was pointing this country in the right direction. I still haven't missed an election since.

Now, four years later, I stood outside some grungy building a block from campus, with a short line of people, mostly college students, moving pretty quickly. But people still complained. I told the group of girls standing behind me they should stop complaining, octogenarians in Florida are standing in line for hours. People in rural Uganda waited in line all day to vote a few years ago. There were allegedly precincts this year , two thousand and fucking twelve, where poll station workers tried to intimidate black people out of voting. People stand in long lines to vote, people have gone to jail to vote, people have died to vote. On the democracy spectrum, we got it easy.

But it wasn't the same this time. Of course I'm happy with the result. And I still felt that solemnity while filling in my ballot, even though I might have been checking out the girl voting in the next booth over. (But what could I have said as an opening line? So... vote here often?) But this election wasn't a movement, it wasn't optimism sweeping the land. We know that Obama can't just waltz into the Oval Office and kick the budget deficit in the teeth. It was a grind, resisting a dangerous culture of absolute materialism, the health-and-wealth gospel, and corporate excess. And even though the figurehead of that has been handed a narrow defeat, this election gives me little optimism. Maybe things will get done in the next four years, maybe national sanity will be restored, maybe we'll all find something to satisfy us other than all the stuff we have. And maybe our leaders will be supportive of that kind of culture.

But, still, fuck yeah, we got to commit an act of democracy today. And that's enough.