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One of the things about living in a so-called "swing state" is that suddenly you get presidential candidates showing up all the time...this was a rally at University of Nevada, Reno this past Saturday, less than a mile from my house.

For the first time in my life, I have chosen to vote in an election. It's not that in previous elections I was a lazy voter or anything. It's that I was taking a deliberate stand of voting abstinence. I was exercising my choice of not voting. It would take awhile to explain, but to put it simply I had not wanted to endorse what our presidential elections had become and I was essentially "saving my vote."

This is not what I was saving my vote for. I had a plan, I had a philosophical concept of what I was going to do with my never-cast vote. I had a statement I was going to make.

So much for plans.

I have to use my vote this time around. I find myself living in a nation where, inexplicably, a large group of people are still beating their chests in displays of their "conservative" values, where social intolerance is used to beat back the evidence of their own lack of introspection. Where fear mongering and and saber rattling supercede logic and diplomacy. Where the corporate good is more valuable than the preservation of our planet. Where knowledge is not pursued, but rather world views are assumed for the sake of not having to face up to the discomfort that maybe the universe does not work the way you would like it to.

And I find myself in a nation where John McCain, one of the handful of politicians I thought had a shred of decency, has placed himself behind the wheel of the same slimy, corrupted right-wing propaganda machine that has consumed this country over the past eight years.

No. I cannot sit this one out. I will not tolerate anymore a nation where chants of "drill baby drill" and songs of "bomb, bomb Iran" pass as political wit. I will be sure that whatever the outcome of this election, I will be able to say that I placed myself on the side of history I actually believed in.

So yes, I am going to vote for Barack Obama.

Description
One of the things about living in a so-called "swing state" is that suddenly you get presidential candidates showing up all the time...this was a rally at University of Nevada, Reno this past Saturday, less than a mile from my house.

For the first time in my life, I have chosen to vote in an election. It's not that in previous elections I was a lazy voter or anything. It's that I was taking a deliberate stand of voting abstinence. I was exercising my choice of not voting. It would take awhile to explain, but to put it simply I had not wanted to endorse what our presidential elections had become and I was essentially "saving my vote."

This is not what I was saving my vote for. I had a plan, I had a philosophical concept of what I was going to do with my never-cast vote. I had a statement I was going to make.

So much for plans.

I have to use my vote this time around. I find myself living in a nation where, inexplicably, a large group of people are still beating their chests in displays of their "conservative" values, where social intolerance is used to beat back the evidence of their own lack of introspection. Where fear mongering and and saber rattling supercede logic and diplomacy. Where the corporate good is more valuable than the preservation of our planet. Where knowledge is not pursued, but rather world views are assumed for the sake of not having to face up to the discomfort that maybe the universe does not work the way you would like it to.

And I find myself in a nation where John McCain, one of the handful of politicians I thought had a shred of decency, has placed himself behind the wheel of the same slimy, corrupted right-wing propaganda machine that has consumed this country over the past eight years.

No. I cannot sit this one out. I will not tolerate anymore a nation where chants of "drill baby drill" and songs of "bomb, bomb Iran" pass as political wit. I will be sure that whatever the outcome of this election, I will be able to say that I placed myself on the side of history I actually believed in.

So yes, I am going to vote for Barack Obama.