I've tried to abstain from making comments of an overly political nature. I've ignored the circus largely because I know where my voting tendencies lie and I'm not in the business of trying to convince people to agree with me. People have a right to believe in who they want to believe in and vote how they want to vote. It's why I was on Stacey Dash's side last week when she was vilified for going public with her support of Mitt Romney. I mean, I don't agree with her politics, but they're HER politics.
(I didn't necessarily agree with her quoting Martin Luther King, Jr. to defend her choice, but hey, she's an adult.)
The last ten days, however, I've seen the culmination of some of the most blatantly anti-American policies and politics in my lifetime. This is stuff that hearkens back to the Jim Crow-era South. Voter intimidation and voter disenfranchisement have become the stories of the summer, what with redistricting and new voter ID laws seemingly targeting minority and potential Liberal voters. The voter ID laws in Ohio, Pennsylvania and South Carolina are aimed at a non-existent voter fraud problem, and really only serve to eliminate the vote of underprivileged by requiring them to obtain expensive and difficult to acquire state ID.
The most egregious stuff has happened within the last week. David Seigel, the owner of Westwood Resorts in Florida, sent his 7000 employees a mass email that said that if President Obama were reelected, he would be forced to shutter his business and move to the Cayman Islands, thereby forcing 7,000 people out of work. The Koch Brothers, billionaire conservative contributors, sent out a similar mass mailing that warned employees would "suffer the consequences" if Obama won a second term -- higher gas prices, higher mortgages, and a thinly veiled threat of higher unemployment.
Come on, man. Isn't this illegal?
The so-called "job-creators," men with the keys to the kingdom, threatening higher unemployment if we vote in our own interests? If a place of employment did this kind of intimidation to people trying to unionize, they could be brought up on charges.
I can handle the constant pandering by our politicians. I can handle the lies they tell, either blatantly or by omission. I can handle "pundits" and "experts" decrying the opposition with hyperbole and exaggeration. But don't fuck with my vote.
Don't try to tell me that I need six points of ID to have an opinion on the direction of my country.
Don't try to threaten my jobs if I don't vote the way you want.
I am a grown-ass man. I will not be bullied.
Oh yeah, I'm not pulling these stories out of my ass. Read about them here and here.
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