changing my mind: an apology

[For those of you looking for the book review post, I'm sorry. The journals started typesetting last week and I'm lucky that I'm even awake enough now to be posting this. The review post is coming, it's just going to have to wait a few more weeks. Utah had its caucus meetings last week so my mind has been mulling over the topic of voting. This post is meant in no way as an invitation to debate or harass anyone on political standing or beliefs. I was simply trying to get some of my recent thoughts down. Comments, discussions, and questions are welcome but let's please keep all of that civil. I have had to overhear enough angry arguments lately to set me up for life.]

In high school my government teacher, a man commendably invested in getting his students to be active participants in politics, taught a very important lesson on the power of votes. He impressed upon me the great privilege and responsibility it is to be a member of a country that is run largely by citizen involvement. If we don't vote, we can't complain about the outcome.

He was honest with us about the way presidential elections work, how only a nominee of the Republican or Democratic party can win the presidency. I internalized his assertion that a vote for a third-party candidate is a waste and tantamount to not voting at all. And not voting spits in the face of those countless men and women who've fought on many kinds of battlefields to guarantee us this right. To be a responsible citizen is to vote and voting only counts if you vote for someone from these two parties. It's a perspective that I have been a proponent of ever since and admonished several people with if I ever heard that someone was even considering voting for a third-party candidate.

"It's pointless."
"There's no way they could even win in this system."
"If you vote third-party you're essentially not voting."

To anyone I've ever said anything like this to: I'm sorry.

It's generally recognized that you may never fully agree with any of the presidential nominees from either the Republican or Democratic party. We rarely agree with anyone 100% so this isn't surprising and it's almost become an old adage around election season to say, with resignation, that you'll just have to settle for the lesser of two evils. What other option is there?

This current presidential election is the first I've personally encountered [while of legal age to vote] that has left me looking at my choices this way. While I agree with certain portions of most candidates' platforms, I find that there are several topics that give me cause for concern on both sides of the party line. As November creeps nearer it is becoming evermore apparent that the choices available to me between these prominent parties are of the "lesser of evils" variety. It's not how I'd like an election to be but if I'm going to be an active and contributing member in my country's politics I will sometimes be required to push down my disappointment, concern, and disgust and vote for whichever nominee I believe will do the least harm, right?

This has been my somewhat cynical view on voting for the last six years. I've never been entirely satisfied with it but didn't think about it too much because what is there to do about it? The current campaigns being what they are this time around has forced me to reevaluate my approach - an uncomfortable and difficult proposition - and I've learned some things, especially this last week or two.

As much as that high school government teacher was one of my favorites and his intentions were good, I've realized that there was a crucial complementary element missing from his lesson he was teaching. When people choose not to vote at all it can be argued that they hold some responsibility for negative consequences that might arise from an election because they didn't cast votes that might have resulted in different outcomes. Yes. This is something I still strongly believe but it's only one side of the coin and, unfortunately, it's the only one we ever really talk about. As much as we can be held responsible for not voting when we might have, we are accountable for those people we do vote for and what they do, even if it's in small part. We can't vote for someone and then throw our hands in the air when they do something that they said they would but maybe we hoped they wouldn't which is why voting for the lesser of two evils shouldn't be our fall-back.

The lesser of two evils is still evil.

Kasey Cross recently wrote a compelling post for why voting third-party isn't a waste and this concept has a central roll in her argument. Now, I had heard this quote before, earlier in the week, and my brain said, "well duh" but Cross uses an example that really brought the point home for me because while I don't speak politics very well I definitely speak Harry Potter. Speaking in reference to the current election she says, "Think of it this way: Voldemort and Dolores Umbridge are running for president. Voting for Trump because you don't like Hillary is essentially voting for Voldemort because you don't like Umbridge. Congratulations, you just voted to become a Death Eater and watch the world burn. You really don't have to do that though, because, conveniently Dumbledore is running as a third party candidate, and would voting for Dumbledore be a wasted vote?" 

Now I'm not equating either candidate with these fictional characters but I think the point is a good one. When we cast our votes for one candidate or another we can't claim responsibility for only the good they might do for our country. We are effectively claiming to support all decisions they might make as president. While we are all individuals with agency and cannot perfect predict what one candidate might do as opposed to another, there are plenty of prominent declarations of policy that every candidate has made upon which we can base our votes. When so many of their intentions are so loudly stated we can't vote for Trump and then wash our hands of the wall he plans to build. We can't vote for Sanders then say, "yeah, but I don't support his goal to use taxes to make college free." We do not get to pick and choose which parts of a platform we support; we can't split our vote.

The truth, of course, is that we probably won't ever agree with a candidate's policies entirely. So the question comes down to priorities and what we deem most important. Which policies are most important to you and which ones are you willing to disagree or compromise on? Is it more important to you that Planned Parenthood lose federal funding than to have the US open its doors to Syrian refugees? Is it more important to you that these refugees be welcomed into our country than to have religious rights protected for the citizens of this country? Your answers to these questions are your own. I'm not looking to start a debate here, but rather encourage a thought process.

Chances are you'll never agreed completely with any presidential candidate but it makes the most sense to vote for the one with whom your views most closely align, right? I'm tired of looking at elections with the jaded intent of voting for the candidate that will do the least harm. I want to feel confident that my vote is going toward the person I feel with do the most good. Honestly, I have no idea who I'm voting for, come November. I need to do more of my own research and personal assessment but if the candidate I think is best capable of doing good turns out to be a third-party candidate I no longer feel like that will be a wasted vote.

Can a third-party candidate win in our current system? No. But that system will never change if people continue to funnel themselves into the prescribed parties simply because that's how it's been for ages. The system can change, the balance of power can shift if people really want it to. To me, though, this is a secondary consideration. Whatever the outcome in November, this year and in the future, I want to be at peace with myself in knowing that I did not contribute to the campaign of a candidate that I personally believe would do harm to our country.

The only vote truly wasted is the one you don't actually believe in.

an exercise in burying the lead

Okay, the book review post will go up next week. I'm holding myself to this so you all keep me accountable. It's going to be another doozy, though slightly less so than expected since I ended up setting two of the books aside for content concerns.

For the last week and a half I have been on what I refer to as the "middle shift" at work. My morning counterpart moved to another office within our department so while we wait for the hiring process to run its [incredibly circus-like] course, I'm working 10-3. I actually enjoy having this shift every once in a while because it's a more consistent flow of tasks and lets me off with more time in the afternoon; even if that also means that I have to shower in the afternoon which I am not a huge fan of. The adjusted schedule, combined with a full general schedule and Thursday evening choir practices for a Relief Society activity this last Saturday, heavily influenced the lack of posts in the last two weeks. I've committed to spring cleaning my schedule and priorities this week, though, so here I am once again scrambling back onto the bandwagon.

It's occurred to me many times before that I have so much time in a week, a day, and I generally use it so poorly that I hardly get the things I need to do done, let alone a lot of things I want to do. So this weekend I sat down and scheduled out my time, parsing down to the things I have to do each day and then looking at the time left over. Guys, it's atrocious - how much time I've been wasting. It can't continue or I'm just going to spiral completely out of control. Up until Saturday our counters had been entirely taken over by dishes that had been sitting there for up to two weeks. Two weeks you guys. As embarrassing as that is to admit, I get really tired of not being honest with people so there it is. I suck at doing dishes and sometimes there are weeks that even looking at the counter threatens to send me into a panic attack. People struggle with different things. So one of the items I've included on my must do list is dishes and I'm tackling this challenge the same way I've tackled writing in the past: time it. I figure if I wash dishes for 20 minutes a day I'll get through the bulk of them every day which will prevent the dreaded build-up. And 20 minutes doesn't feel like too much. Knowing that, regardless of how many dishes are left at the end of that time, I won't beat myself up for stopping at that 20 minute mark takes some of the stress out of it.

Another of my must priorities is exercise. I've been doing a little hodge-podge workout for a few weeks but I need more cardio than that's currently affording so I finally used the recumbent exercise bike that we got last week. [Thanks TiAta!] I don't think people generally believe me when I say that I'm out of shape, simply because I'm skinny. [From experience, skinny does not equal in-shape.] Before I had even been on the bike for five minutes my legs were begging for the sweet release of death. Okay, it wasn't that dramatic but it took a lot of willpower and youtube videos to get through 20 minutes of that. Guys, I hate sweating. Like. Really really hate sweating. Unless I'm swimming or taking a bath/shower I do not like to be wet. I honestly can't remember the last time I purposefully did something [aside from having to stand outside in the summer for any amount of time] that made me really sweat. Suffice to say it was not a pleasant experience. This is going to take some getting used to.

There are a few other things I'm hoping to set aside more purposeful time for, but I have to be careful not to over-schedule myself or I'll just revert back to bad habits.

Things are really gearing up for the student journals I'm working with. One started type-setting last week and the other [once a few more edits are done] will begin that process when we get back from Spring Break this week. I've never done type-setting before so I imagine it'll be a bit of a scramble to learn and still be helpful enough to get the journals ready to print in time. But this isn't their first time going through the process so I'm not overly worried. It's really exciting to see an issue come together like this.

If you remember the mention I made in my last post of some exciting news about one of my short stories, this is where it comes in. One of my short stories was accepted for publication by another journal on campus.

Flynn Rider's sarcastic enthusiasm is all the validation I need.

So I've been working with an editor to polish and tighten the piece, including writing additional material for the end of the story - a request that initially surprised me but I'm now wholly supportive of. It's been a very interesting experience thus far, trying to communicate and understand the comments and suggestions of someone else on a piece you're so familiar with. It's made me more aware of how I have comported myself as an editor and member of workshops in the past.

Constructive criticism is always good to hear, even if you don't choose to change what's noted, but areas where you might suggest different wording or additional material might sound great to you when you write it out but to the author the additions will stand out clearly because it's not in their voice. That's why they're suggestions, of course, so the author can take and play with the idea you're trying to encourage. But it had never occurred to me just how obvious the difference in voice could feel until reading some sections and phrases my editor has suggested. In my work for these other journals they've really stressed being careful not to change the voice of the piece and I'm learning just how easy it can be to do that unintentionally - so be careful out there, kids!