 The
current political mess has gotten me to thinking about what a wonderful
place this country is for all of us. Here we are at the beginning of
a new century and stuck in the middle of the biggest election brouhaha in
history. Can you believe this? A week or so ago, my column had to do
with the importance of voting. How many times have we heard people
say … "What’s the sense in voting, my vote isn’t that
important?" Well, I beg to differ with you on this issue and
I’ll wager that we’ll be hearing about the importance of a single vote for
the rest of our lives.
Isn’t it amazing that we are so evenly
divided on our political views in this country? In no other nation
that I know of in the world does this type of situation exist. I won’t get
into who I voted for or what my personal views may be on this subject as I
respect your right to your opinion as I hope that you do for mine. I
would like to just sit down sometime with a person having an opposite
viewpoint than mine and discuss, sanely, with them where they come from
and how they arrived at their conclusions. I’m sure there are some
nice folks out there with diametrically opposite ideas than the ones I
have for how the government should be run.
This past weekend I was in a discussion
about the current situation and had one young lady just blanche at the way
the conversation was going. She said that in her family, no one
ever, ever talked about religion or politics. It just wasn’t
allowed. How sad. In our family, we love to discuss politics
since we love to argue various positions. I believe in being vocal
about the things that concern us and that we care about. I happen to
be concerned about this nation. I think we earned the right to voice
our opinions and should whenever the time and place is appropriate to do
so. It’s kind of like bumper stickers. I’ve had discussions with
folks who think we shouldn’t put them on our cars. I admit I don’t
understand the reason behind this, but some people seem to get really
nervous expressing themselves in this manner.
This leads me to think about a great
subject for someone’s thesis for his or her master’s degree. As you know,
you have to publish a thesis on some subject (generally that no one ever
reads) in order for you to obtain a masters degree. Some of the
subjects that I’ve seen are rather uninspiring and of no interest to
anyone. Such as "The mating habits of the Norwegian Monarch
butterfly" or "Does the moon exert too much influence on tidal
basins in modern times versus 4,000 years ago?" No, I’d like to
see someone research and write about "Bumper stickers, do they
provoke anger, apathy or action?" I mean, here you are driving
down the road and you see a bumper sticker urging you to vote for someone
you don’t like?
I’ve heard several people say that they
don’t want to put a bumper sticker on their car since it will alert the
opposition as to how much support some candidate has and may inspire
others to get going in an effort to beat them at the polls. I
suppose there is some validity to this, but I just can’t see it. Are
you inclined to stop and help someone who is broken down along the highway
if they have a bumper sticker for someone you didn’t’ vote for? I do
know one thing as soon as the election is over I always remove any from
the car. If you lose, you look like a nut and if you win, it looks
like you’re gloating. My main reason is to get it off before the
glue really sets up, that stuff is hard to take off after a couple of
months. Besides, you never know when you might have car trouble and
there you are behind enemy lines. It pays to be thinking ahead.
As always, write me at www.pearyperry.com. |
