Confessions of An (Almost There) First-Time Voter!
A friend asked me if I had voted early. Many states let you do that and, as of now, maybe 40 million people across the country have already done so. I said no, I was waiting for the big day, November 8. While exercising my civic duty, I even speculated that I might be voter-intimidated by big burly gun-toting white-trashy low-IQ rubes! Just half-kidding, or am I? This is the District of Columbia after all, not some southern state. Not to dump on southern states or anything, but y'all sure appear to be the bastions of Trump-world and the ultimate experts in voter suppression of poor folks!
This is my first time voting in the U.S. having only become a citizen last year. I was excited to vote for America's first woman president, an admired and accomplished person - check out my cool stickers, buttons and badges at the end of this blog. I also wanted to dwell on, drink in, and fully appreciate the ambience of the voting booth while floating on a cloud of woolly-headed patriotism! How clueless of me! All that was before this entire election cycle was hijacked and turned on its head by that "orange amoeba" as they once referred to him on Saturday Night Live!
It's not just ordinary Americans who are bemused and befuddled by these strange goings-on. The world is watching these shenanigans play out on their TV screens and is scandalized (almost daily) by how this dreadful man out-Trumps himself at every turn, and gets away with it. Reagan was known as the Teflon president (because nothing bad ever stuck to him); this guy has an even thicker skin and more demented followers.
Worse than what the candidate is saying is what he has unleashed in a large portion of the electorate: open hatred of anyone who doesn't think or look like them, racism, bigotry, misogyny, and prejudice. By his words and actions, Trump tells his followers that it's okay for them to savor and spit out the bile they're feeling; that it's fine to discriminate against Blacks, Latinos and other minorities; to mistreat women and the disabled; to deny not just climate change but all science and all reality; to disregard and question NATO; to let all that long-suppressed xenophobia out, and blame everyone else for their troubles! I know there are real problems of unemployment in an underperforming economy, but shattering the voter's psyche is not how you fix them!
Public discourse has never been as rancid as it is today. Even after his projected November 8 defeat, the 30-40 percent of the electorate that supports him are not going gently into the good night (to paraphrase Dylan Thomas) or returning to their opioid-abusing lives of unquiet desperation. No, the genie is out of the bottle and may never ever go back. All the advances made in civil rights from the last half-century and more are being kicked into the sewer.
We are already hearing about how the Senate plans to impeach Clinton and strangle her Administration by investigating her ad infinitum. (We saw how Obama was blocked and stymied by the Hill for the last eight years). But, worse still, Senate Republicans have said they will never allow a Supreme Court nominee to be confirmed as long as there is a Democrat in the White House. And this from John McCain, who was himself the GOP presidential nominee in 2008 and not usually given to idiocy but, then, he did foist Sarah Palin on an unsuspecting electorate!
All this is so extreme and so unprecedented that one has to ask oneself: is America on its way to becoming a third-rate banana republic? State Department officers in the far corners of the world are hanging their heads in shame trying to explain the unexplainable! (Yeah, America, no more lectures to "backward" countries that reportedly mistreat minorities; first clean up your own front yard! I was a working reporter in the 90s in D.C. when India was constantly being scolded by Congress and the Administration about a range of fractious issues from stealing patents to "extra-judicial killings" in Kashmir and Punjab).
But I digress. We are already witnessing the politicization of the FBI which is interfering with the electoral process in unheard-of ways. Remember all those stories about J. Edgar Hoover blackmailing Martin Luther King and the Kennedy brothers (JFK and RFK) after illegally listening in on phone calls? The current FBI action seems to be in the same hoary Hoover tradition, except that happened more than sixty years ago!
Perhaps the most mind-boggling phenomenon we are witnessing is Russia's blatant intervention through state and non-state actors - including Wikileaks - hacking and publishing Democratic Party and private emails! Such abuses of power ought to be strongly condemned by all progressive-minded countries but those countries are themselves afraid of what's going to happen if the election goes the wrong way and this unhinged man gets into the White House.
I appeal to my fellow South Asians including those who have cast their lot with Trump! Have you seen some of his rallies on TV? There are minorities (self-loathing Blacks, Latinos, and Asians) positioned in the front rows - to fool us into thinking that the Trumpsters will take care of them when "Celebrity White House" comes to Washington. Maybe in an alternate reality!
After Brexit, I thought there might be a nationalist (near-fascist) sharp right turn in Western Europe but who knew it could happen this side of the Atlantic, in this great bastion of democracy! This tests one's resolve. I know people who are resorting to apathy. They're saying, my vote can't or won't make a difference. But, hey, stop and think! Give a damn! Don't be scared by the KKK tactics of the other side. I'm going to cast that vote, come November 8, and no big burly school-dropout roughneck is going to stop me!
Ludi Joseph
Washington, D.C.
November 6, 2016
A friend asked me if I had voted early. Many states let you do that and, as of now, maybe 40 million people across the country have already done so. I said no, I was waiting for the big day, November 8. While exercising my civic duty, I even speculated that I might be voter-intimidated by big burly gun-toting white-trashy low-IQ rubes! Just half-kidding, or am I? This is the District of Columbia after all, not some southern state. Not to dump on southern states or anything, but y'all sure appear to be the bastions of Trump-world and the ultimate experts in voter suppression of poor folks!
This is my first time voting in the U.S. having only become a citizen last year. I was excited to vote for America's first woman president, an admired and accomplished person - check out my cool stickers, buttons and badges at the end of this blog. I also wanted to dwell on, drink in, and fully appreciate the ambience of the voting booth while floating on a cloud of woolly-headed patriotism! How clueless of me! All that was before this entire election cycle was hijacked and turned on its head by that "orange amoeba" as they once referred to him on Saturday Night Live!
It's not just ordinary Americans who are bemused and befuddled by these strange goings-on. The world is watching these shenanigans play out on their TV screens and is scandalized (almost daily) by how this dreadful man out-Trumps himself at every turn, and gets away with it. Reagan was known as the Teflon president (because nothing bad ever stuck to him); this guy has an even thicker skin and more demented followers.
Worse than what the candidate is saying is what he has unleashed in a large portion of the electorate: open hatred of anyone who doesn't think or look like them, racism, bigotry, misogyny, and prejudice. By his words and actions, Trump tells his followers that it's okay for them to savor and spit out the bile they're feeling; that it's fine to discriminate against Blacks, Latinos and other minorities; to mistreat women and the disabled; to deny not just climate change but all science and all reality; to disregard and question NATO; to let all that long-suppressed xenophobia out, and blame everyone else for their troubles! I know there are real problems of unemployment in an underperforming economy, but shattering the voter's psyche is not how you fix them!
Public discourse has never been as rancid as it is today. Even after his projected November 8 defeat, the 30-40 percent of the electorate that supports him are not going gently into the good night (to paraphrase Dylan Thomas) or returning to their opioid-abusing lives of unquiet desperation. No, the genie is out of the bottle and may never ever go back. All the advances made in civil rights from the last half-century and more are being kicked into the sewer.
We are already hearing about how the Senate plans to impeach Clinton and strangle her Administration by investigating her ad infinitum. (We saw how Obama was blocked and stymied by the Hill for the last eight years). But, worse still, Senate Republicans have said they will never allow a Supreme Court nominee to be confirmed as long as there is a Democrat in the White House. And this from John McCain, who was himself the GOP presidential nominee in 2008 and not usually given to idiocy but, then, he did foist Sarah Palin on an unsuspecting electorate!
All this is so extreme and so unprecedented that one has to ask oneself: is America on its way to becoming a third-rate banana republic? State Department officers in the far corners of the world are hanging their heads in shame trying to explain the unexplainable! (Yeah, America, no more lectures to "backward" countries that reportedly mistreat minorities; first clean up your own front yard! I was a working reporter in the 90s in D.C. when India was constantly being scolded by Congress and the Administration about a range of fractious issues from stealing patents to "extra-judicial killings" in Kashmir and Punjab).
But I digress. We are already witnessing the politicization of the FBI which is interfering with the electoral process in unheard-of ways. Remember all those stories about J. Edgar Hoover blackmailing Martin Luther King and the Kennedy brothers (JFK and RFK) after illegally listening in on phone calls? The current FBI action seems to be in the same hoary Hoover tradition, except that happened more than sixty years ago!
Perhaps the most mind-boggling phenomenon we are witnessing is Russia's blatant intervention through state and non-state actors - including Wikileaks - hacking and publishing Democratic Party and private emails! Such abuses of power ought to be strongly condemned by all progressive-minded countries but those countries are themselves afraid of what's going to happen if the election goes the wrong way and this unhinged man gets into the White House.
I appeal to my fellow South Asians including those who have cast their lot with Trump! Have you seen some of his rallies on TV? There are minorities (self-loathing Blacks, Latinos, and Asians) positioned in the front rows - to fool us into thinking that the Trumpsters will take care of them when "Celebrity White House" comes to Washington. Maybe in an alternate reality!
After Brexit, I thought there might be a nationalist (near-fascist) sharp right turn in Western Europe but who knew it could happen this side of the Atlantic, in this great bastion of democracy! This tests one's resolve. I know people who are resorting to apathy. They're saying, my vote can't or won't make a difference. But, hey, stop and think! Give a damn! Don't be scared by the KKK tactics of the other side. I'm going to cast that vote, come November 8, and no big burly school-dropout roughneck is going to stop me!
Ludi Joseph
Washington, D.C.
November 6, 2016
