Opinion: A vote of honor...or cowardice?

by Fred Guidry

"Are you a registered voter?" he asks. The humble stoop in his young shoulders immediately conveys a sense of having already been beaten down by life. I wonder for a second if he's homeless or not. Why else would someone subject themselves to this humiliating method of earning a living?

A part of me wants to sign his sheet if for no other reason than to provide him with the few pennies he'll earn for the signature. But if I do, won't I run the risk of some strange, obnoxious caller interrupting me right in the middle of a rare, much needed nap? (A simple trip to Safeway can become an ordeal sometime.)

It's not that I'm callous or uncivic minded; it's just that I'm questioning what we have gotten from all these initiatives over the years. One of the most popular initiatives placed on the ballot was Proposition 13 back in 1978. Writer Stephen Moore said that Prop. 13, which successfully "cut California's notoriously high property taxes by 30 percent and then capped the rate of increase in the future," led the way for the Regan tax cuts of 1981. Hello, anybody struggling to stay in school?

So what effect has the many hundreds of propositions shoved in our faces these past 20 years had on our culture? Have they drawn us closer together or played on our primitive sense of tribalism so prevalent in the world today? When a person who was humiliated in high school by bullies goes into the darkness of a voting booth this March 7th, and pulls that anonymous curtain, will he stupidly attempt to exercise HIS inner demos by voting to "have them all locked up!"

UmŠ is anyone thinking through any of this? Of course the little criminals are going to get out one day...more screwed up than when they went in. We all know this kind of voting costs us a lot more money in the long run - it's more than just a simple matter of providing better education and opportunities for our fellow citizens. But does it matter?

What's apparent is that greedy individuals parading as our "political leaders" are aware of our fears, resentments and petty jealousies. They play to it. Depend on it. On top of that, we entered the Space Age 30 years ago and now we're into a new technocratic century, more alienated from ourselves and each other than ever.

The tired old phrase "you can't legislate morality" is a joke in light of the fact we've become accustomed to voting on issues such as gay marriage, Indian Gaming and abortion. Our theologians have failed to show us new ways to see divinity in our daily life. So few of us have the spiritual strength to embrace "the other," and hence, we maliciously cast our votes against those groups that we feel wronged us. Like the children we are, we make our world smaller, meaner and less joyous. What are we doing to ourselves?