Pundits are scoffing that younger voters will sit out this election in large numbers. But, especially with the Supreme Court up for grabs, we are setting the trajectory of our nation for decades.
Will women drift into second-class citizenship, their lives overshadowed by judgmental old men? Will voter suppression tactics succeed and thus become the norm? Will the super-rich continue to wall off more and more wealth from circulation in the general economy?
Will we endorse denial of a human role in our evolving environment until the only choices left to us are an endless nightmare? Do we want those who work for a wage to have some voice in their lives? Will we choose civil servants or corporate lawyers as our protectors?
Will we say to our most vulnerable that health and security are only for the fortunate? Will we heap more punishment upon those who love differently? Will we endorse an entrenched aristocracy of hereditary wealth while poverty spreads and the middle class slips into extinction?
Will we cede our heritage of common-wealth in wilderness and infrastructure to the whims of private owners? Do we want to re-segregate those who look, sound or believe differently? Are we in this together or is everyone in it alone? Do we prefer the dreams of Ayn Rand to those of Jefferson?
This is not some random contest between two individuals; this is your future being decided. Choose to be engaged or to be irrelevant.
Michael Basinger,
mbasinge@uwyo.edu
