Lawrence Hall
8 October 2020
Voting – the Liturgy
of Self-Empowerment
No
one pretends that democracy is perfect or all-wise. Indeed, it has been said
that democracy is the worst form of government except all those other forms
that have been tried from time to time.``
Winston Churchill, Speech in the House of Commons, 11
November 1947
On Tuesday morning the 13th of October, or whenever
we vote, let us dress appropriately for an important secular ceremony by
putting on our Sunday shoes, suit, or slacks and sports coat, shirt, and tie. One would no more vote in knee pants and a
Yosemite Sam tee than one would participate in the Sunday liturgy that way.
Voting is the core of our frayed but determined democracy. Yes,
yes, I know that someone on the InterGossip yelps that we are a republic, which
is also true, but our system of voting is democratic (with-a-small-‘D’), so
there we are.
Campaigning for candidates has become our national sport,
our national hobby, our national pastime, our national focus, our national
disease, our national anger, and our national temper-tantrum. Citizens almost
never discuss candidates and issues; instead they choose up sides with less
thought than they would exercise in choosing a favorite baseball team, wear
funny hats proclaiming their cultus, yell at each other, and sometimes endeavor
to harm a fellow American for not being a good comrade, a party loyalist, an
unquestioning and unthinking obedientiary.
And yet, without voting, all of this noise is, as Macbeth says
of himself, “…but a walking shadow, a poor player / That struts and frets his
hour upon the stage / And then is heard no more. It is a tale / Told by an
idiot, full of sound and fury, / Signifying nothing.” (V.v.26-30).
To vote, to mark the ballot or pull the lever, all alone in
the carrel or the booth, is to be an American. Voting is not as dangerous as
standing with the lads at Lexington Green or crossing that field of fire at
Gettysburg or nursing the wounded on Bataan or jumping off a landing craft and
facing an eighty-eight, but voting, freely choosing one’s own government,
leading one’s self, not waiting to be led, is what those actions were all
about.
Not to vote is to regard the brief young lives of those young
men and women who died in fear and pain at Lexington and Gettysburg and Bataan
and Normandy and everywhere else as having no meaning.
The voting booth is where we stand our ground against
tyranny.
And put your britches on; the majesty of self-government is
not a Zoom meeting.
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