Get Off Your Asses Or Elephants

Get off your asses. Or your elephants. I don’t really care. Sure, I would like you to be mobilized for my particular candidates and issues, but in the grand scheme of things, I believe more in the political process than I do about arguing over issues. I want people to be impassioned about their role in choosing their leaders and making their community the best place in which to live.

I grew up longing to vote. The year I turned 18 I missed a pretty major gubernatorial vote by a matter of weeks. I knew all the Schoolhouse Rock songs about politics by heart. All that, and I never really considered myself patriotic. A lot of the time, I didn’t even respect my country as a force in the world. But I always felt that voting was not simply a right, but a duty that, even the greatest of dissenters should partake of in order to make their voices heard.

As a Florida voter, I have seen some fiery elections in my short voting history. An absentee voter in 2000, I single handedly held up the election of our president. I’ve seen bullet trains added to our constitution and the rights of pigs protected. And still, I want to get out and vote.

As an avid voter, I find it shocking when a friend tells me she or he isn’t registered to vote. I count my friends as fairly intelligent, most of whom have jobs where they are focused on service to the less fortunate. The feeling of apathy that these friends feel towards voting won’t change if candidate x is elected senator or if bill c passes. Like many other things in life (the Quarter Life Crisis included) it is hard to care about something until you are directly affected by it. Until you are dropped from your health insurance and need to find coverage, until you fall in love with someone of the same sex and find yourself unable to adopt children, until your best friend is shipped off to Iraq…

Being a QuarterLifer means that you have the burden, but also the opportunity to hammer out how you feel about life. It doesn’t mean you can’t change your mind down the road. Over the last ten years I’ve certainly changed how I feel about capital punishment, market economies, and climate change intervention. But being able to discuss and debate politics with anyone, of any age or leaning, is one of the few times in life that the generational walls are really broken down. I’ve been able to talk politics with professors, employers (careful with that one), and even my grandfather. Simply staying uninformed and apathetic is not an option.

I get it, it’s intimidating. Talking to people when you feel like you don’t really know how you feel about an issue, or not feeling like you have enough information to hold your ground in a heated debate is threatening. But during a time when we feel like we have so little control over the rest of our lives, this is an easy area to cling to. Start small. Call your local election headquarters (and yes, I will be at my Democratic headquarters) to see what you can do to help out. You don’t have to start by knocking on doors. Most places will be happy to have you stuff envelopes or answer phones. By taking the first step, you can get started in solidifying how you feel on issues, learning how the system works, and making sure that your voice truly is heard. A few hours a week can make all the difference to a candidate running for the first time or to people who didn’t know the registration deadline was approaching.

Now, here is the hard sell. You’ve only got a few weeks left. There is still time to get involved. Even if you aren’t interested in the big show, your local candidates effect what goes on directly in your life. On your day off, just go. Go to the Obama headquarters or the Nader camp or see if Bob Barr needs some help. Go look into Amendment 2 in Florida or 8 in California and make some calls from the comfort of your home reminding people to vote “NO!”  At the very least, take a look at The Daily Kos or Andrew Sullivan to expand your knowledge of what is going on out there.

Get off your asses and make a difference. Not for your country, but for you. No one can ever say that the knowledge that you gained is worthless. But first, you have to get off your ass.