By Colleen O’Connor
In a few weeks, voters must decide. How to vote? And why?
First, the “why?” answer is simple.
The obvious one. People have died to give you that right and to defended it with their lives.
More specifically, let’s remember 1960’s Civil Rights leader, Vernon F. Dahmer, Sr. Then the disqualifying “civics” question asked of most Blacks was, “How many bubbles in a bar of soap?”
Dahmer quietly kept a voter registration book in his small store and encouraged African-Americans to sign up.
This, earned him the notice of the Ku Klux Klan. One night the KKK shot up his store — poured on gasoline, and set it afire. Dahmer and his wife were severely burned. He did not survive his injuries.
Dead at the age of 57, but not before repeating his personal and political mantra — uttered even on his deathbed, then engraved on his tombstone — “If you don’t vote. You don’t count.”
Think of Dahmer when you decide not to vote. Your reason: Cowardice? Laziness? Fear?
Next, “How” to vote.
There are three non-partisan suggestions options.
First, vote with your heart.
If you sit quietly and “examine your conscience,” that blood-driving force just might speak to you. Good memories; charitable thoughts of family, friends, children, others in your neighborhood. A walk outdoors. Or watch a movie that captures it.
Watch Gary Cooper’s Oscar-winning performance in Sargent York — about the WWI Medal of Valor winner — who charged the enemy’s machine gun nest, captured 4 officers, 128 men, and several guns. His explanation, “A higher power than man guided and watched over me and told me what to do.”
Described by the Saturday Evening Post, as “as a mountaineer, a man of strong religious convictions, skilled with firearms, patriotic, plainspoken and unsophisticated, an uneducated man, he seems to do everything correctly by intuition.” York admitted as much in his speech to the Unknown Soldier:
“By our victory in the last war, we won a lease on liberty, not a deed to it. …We are standing at the crossroads of history. … And because we were for a time, side by side, I know this Unknown Soldier does too. We owe it to him to renew that lease of liberty he helped us to get.”
Second choice, vote with your head.
Do the research. Consult the history; economics, cultural and neighborhood implications. Read. The ballots; the papers, [ed.: the OB Rag] and the news that is trustworthy.
Third choice, vote with your spleen.
You know “the spleen” that organ that takes all the venom, toxicity, and abuse many people dump into that small purifying vessel just behind a rib.
“Though your spleen isn’t a large organ, it plays many important roles in your body. It helps remove old and damaged blood cells, and it produces infection-fighting cells to protect your health. The spleen also makes certain substances that have an important role in inflammation and healing.”
Surely, healing is a good reason to vote and address what ails the divided, aggrieved and angry electorate.
Get it? Garbage in. Garbage out. Bad spleen. Take care of your health, and the nation, as you would take care of your spleen.
Today, our stressed spleens have lots of “old and damaged” material to remove and repair.
In the Age of Fake News, Artificial Intelligence, the 4th Industrial revolution, the Coronavirus epidemic, Presidential caucuses, debates, attack commercials, social media conspiracies, foreign interference, and more blood-letting than the Middle Ages, spleen care is now mandatory.
This election, should you be hesitant about the cost or value of your vote, remember Sargent York and Gary Cooper’s great line, when offers pour in to exploit his hero status. Offers from Hollywood, Ziegfeld and major business — totaling near a quarter of a million dollars.
York reflects on the war and the deaths of so many soldiers. Then asks if these offers are because of his war performance. He then declines. “I ain’t proud of what we done over there. What we done in France is something we had to do. Some fellas done it aint a’comin back,” he says. “Way I figure things like that ain’t for the buyin’ and sellin’. And this is one of them.”
And neither is your vote.
Or—better still, remember, Vernon F. Dahmer’s dying words, “If you don’t vote. You don’t count.”
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