Corporations spend a lot of their time and money making sure their interests are taken care of. Wealthy and powerful people spend a lot of their time and money making sure their interests are taken care of. People with weird and extreme beliefs spend a lot of their time and money making sure their interests are taken care of.
The result is that our political lives—our world—looks a lot like what you’d expect a world driven by these interests would look like.
Meanwhile, millions of parents will go to sleep each night worrying about their kids…and then don’t vote! They worry about the future they’ll be leaving to their children…and then they don’t take the most basic step they can take towards doing anything about. In effect, they are ceding the field to the people and interests…that don’t have their kids interests at heart.
How crazy is that?
They all have their reasons: They’re too busy. The whole system is broken. One vote can’t possibly make a difference. Oh really? You’re busier than those busy powerful people?
In a recent email over at Daily Stoic, we talked about Anton DiSclafani’s decision to vote in a primary in his state in the Deep South, even though his political preferences were not even close to being represented. As it happens, in choosing between the lesser of two evils, DiSclafani cast the deciding vote in the election—it was literally decided by one vote!
The last U.S. presidential election was decided by a comfortable margin if you look at the popular vote. But if 85,000 voters in Arizona, Georgia, and Wisconsin had made different decisions—or decided not to vote at all—the outcome at the Electoral College would have been vastly different. That’s a profoundly consequential .05% of the record 159 million ballots cast. Don’t let anyone tell you you can’t make a difference as a voter.
Today is Election Day in America (and countries all over the world will have theirs sometime soon). If you don’t vote, if you can’t be bothered to participate, then how can you say you really want your kids to have a better life? How can you really say you’d do anything to protect them?
Do this for them. It’s literally the least you can do.