Re: Corona Virus: is it the beginning of the end?
Turtlepower, I won't chase this, but I want to say it once, and I implore you to read it and really, really give it a think.
You say that you hate the electoral college, and thus you refuse to vote. What it sounds like you're saying is that your opinion doesn't matter, so why bother?
You know what? I used to be almost exactly the same way. I was politically apathetic until about 2014. I was the dude who'd go, "Why bother? They're all out to screw us one way or the other". And to some extent, it's true. When you are only one of millions upon millions of votes, or if you're in an area where your vote cannot possibly make a statistical difference, then I guess I see your point.
But speaking for myself, at least, I started to feel a bit better about things when I started going out to vote. for one thing, even if my vote was statistically insignificant, I began to feel like I was doing something to try and upset things I didn't like. For another thing, it's sometimes difficult to tell what might happen in a particular area. It's extremely rare that one vote makes a difference, but it's technically possible.
One day a few years back, I had to stare down one cold fact, and it's this. If you try and you fail, that sucks, but if you don't try, you fail by default. If you try, you may only have a 0.0001% chance of doing something meaningful, but not trying means that chance is a hard 0. So for me, personally, I decided that even if it was terribly unlikely that I could make a difference by voting, I should do it anyway. After all, there might be another few million of us out there who couldn't be bothered, and if we can get those folks mobilized in the right direction, change might actually happen.
I'm not trying to guilt you or browbeat you into doing something you don't want to do here. I recognize that you have every right to ignore what I say. But you seem like the sort of person who's gotten pretty tired of the status quo in some ways, and if you want to try and do some meaningful good, voting might be one way to do it. Your feeling of powerlessness is precisely what the Trumps of the world want. They want the helpless to feel even more helpless. They want the impoverished to be paralyzed. They want those who would rise up against them to ask how their one solitary vote could make a difference; they want you to conclude it won't, and stay silent on voting day. This is how good people can stand by and watch bad things happen at the hands of bad people. It happens everywhere, all the time, and it's even encouraged to happen by things like false reports of voting times, deliberate miscounts, and ID snags that target virtually everyone except able-bodied white men in some form or other. I know I personally started feeling better when I realized that I could be a part of the solution - or could try to be - and perhaps you'll find some of the same meaning there one day.
Whatever you do decide on that score, I won't badger you on this point. I won't bring this back up unless you engage it. And I have all kinds of sympathy for the cruel wake-up call you received. That can't have been easy to deal with, but my advice is to learn from your early complacency. Take it as a mistake you made rather than one you still have to pay someone for. You made it. Learn from it (which it seems you've already done). Move on. Be more aware in the future. I'm sure you can do that. You're an intelligent woman, by all accounts, and don't seem like you'd need telling the same lesson twice.
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