NO FUTURE TENSE: Post-Election Musings
Louise Annarino
March 7,2012
In the Sicilian language, as in Arabic, there is no future tense. Imagine an America with no future tense? Impossible. So, while we mourn the loss of some campaigns and exult in the success of others, let us continue to plan for the future. The November election is only months away. The gains made yesterday in the primaries are yet to be confirmed in the general election. Stay involved. Get active. Every vote counts. Just as it takes only one ticket to win the lottery;it takes only one vote to win an election. Get every vote, one at a time. No vote is inconsequential.
Campaigns are a numbers game. It is a simple formula one plus one until the momentum of sheer numbers arouses a public whole. Then, numbers explode in a geometric progression. Which is why candidates hunger for momentum, and for an enthusiastic base. No base can get enthusiastic when numbers are low. One plus one, we move forward.
In Sicily, for 3,000 years of recorded history, the island was settled by one group after another, building upon the foundations of the people they overcame to build new settlements. Devastation and the threat of devastation cured any enthusiasm for building for the future. Sicilians simply lived in the moment, drawing joy from the basics of life; delicious food and wine, sweet music, family and village. These would survive any future loss; and, the very loss of a future.
Campaigns and elections come and go. Voters, like ancient Sicilians, have 3 choices: Wait out an election. Get involved with one side or the other and suffer the consequent joys or disappointments. Create their own political movement. In the United States we see all 3 options at play, including an amorphous and flexible joining of causes and movements. Why do we so often choose choice number 1? Why is voter turn-out so poor? Do we believe we have no future? How can this be?
Is it that when money, not candidates, wins elections the average citizen feels his or her vote does not really count? Is the middle class so overcome by Super Pacs funded by the same persons who outsourced their jobs, and stored America’s wealth in off-shore accounts that it has no future? Has the Republican plan to destroy our belief in a future which President Obama’s campaign of hope awoke by blocking his every effort to re-build the American dream succeeded? We are not Sicilians. We are Americans. We believe in the future; and in our right and ability to influence it. The ugly hoards have descended upon our world through FOX News and in political ads. But, in America we have the power to stop their reign of terror. And, we have a president who has a clear vision of, and works every minute of every day to assure our future.
Ready to build our future? You can. You must.Some of us awoke disappointed in one or more election outcomes. Our candidate did not win? Too bad. We can be thankful for each candidate who ran, who had the courage to secure our future if we would allow it. But, that is the past. Those decisions are over. The future lies ahead. Get involved. One vote at a time until we build momentum and our future. Support President Obama. The campaign of hope in our future continues. We are Americans. We are the future.
annarino writes 