Hashtag nation

Hashtag Walkaway, can anybody give me a coherent and positive explanation of what the fuck this is? I’m serious, no argument or judgement, unless we have wildly different notions of what coherent means, positive is less important, though, I would like to hear from someone solidly in the Walkaway camp. I didn’t look it up, I stumbled across it, a short lead in and then a bunch of video testimonials, one from I guy obviously who had run for some local position in some area that’s not local to me. I say obviously because he repeats how the “liberal media” didn’t talk to him about … the subject was unclear, but, he was upset he wasn’t interviewed by the liberal media. With that guy I think “the liberal Media” did him a favor, he didn’t sound like he could either keep it together for a full two minutes or make a clear and concise point given any amount of time. I’m not entirely sure I would disagree with him if I understood what the fuck he was talking about.

It’s not like any of the other videos gave me any greater insight, but they did state a subject and something like a thesis. All of them kept interchanging the word liberal with the word democrat. From what I gather it’s the democratic party that they are walking away from, though it could easily be viewed as walking away from being liberal. I honestly don’t know what that means. For me some of my “liberal” notions are core beliefs not political posturing. The woman’s right to choose for instance, although it’s been law most of my life, it’s also still remains a hot political topic. If I were mostly a feminist the idea of choice would be inherent in everything I do. I have seen what happens to children who were born to one or more parents that either weren’t ready or weren’t capable of raising them. The issue of whether or not they were “human Souls” in utero or not is moot, they were born into a hellish world of neglect and/or abuse. It’s not a political issue to me or even an issue of rights, I will not walk away from the idea that you must bring an unwanted child to term.

That’s going to be my only paragraph of preaching. It’s not necessary to go issue by issue. I just wanted to illustrate that liberal and Democratic Party are not synonyms when push comes to shove. Often republican candidates have some piece of their platform that offends my sense of human dignity. When I argue these core beliefs I don’t do it with the expectation of changing a grown ass man or woman’s mind on the matter, if I do it in public it’s because the more I speak my nonsense the less time the rabid nutjob spewing the opposing vitriol gets to speak. That’s really just not right or proper, but it’s true.

One of the more dangerous American conceits is that the individual is the source of power. It’s epitomized in the phrase “Any child can grow up to be the president”. The relative truth of that statement isn’t important, it’s the idea through force of will, hard work, or, mostly, doing whatever it takes, a single individuals path is raised above the health of the community. When it comes to voting that same notion is twisted a bit to “your vote matters” again the relative truth of that is secondary to the idea that power lies with the individual. In this new age of rampant social media gone wild in translates to everybody gets to hammer their opinion, no matter how inarticulate, onto the ‘airwaves’ ad nauseum. Yes, free speech is one of those ideas in my core belief system, I like to think of articles of the constitution as non-partisan and yet it often seems conservatives have only read the second amendment and liberals have only read the first amendment, and even died in the wool atheists seem to think Moses came down off the mountain with the constitution etched in stone by God himself.

How is it that we put such a high premium on the individual and come election time are herded like cattle into one killing chute or the other? Wait, no, we volunteer to stand in line for one chute or the other. Only one of the handful of videos I saw did the person suggest they were going independent. If I knew the reasons behind the walkaway hashtag I might agree with them. I registered as an independent in 1980, the only time I voted a straight independent ticket. Even though everybody told me what would happen I was shocked when it did. Less than 1 percent. To say I threw my vote away would be to contradict myself in this entry. That entire one percent wouldn’t have changed the outcome at all. Every election since then wouldn’t have changed were the independent vote given to the guy who lost, except maybe in 2000, but that would have just been rigged harder anyhow.

It’s a gesture I understand completely, but futile and still based on the idea that the individual matters. I do believe with enough motivation and risk and and ability to hurdle obstacles that an individual can achieve great things, I just don’t think America is the only or even the best place to do it. Our emphasis on the individual and competition is an obstacle all it’s own, that we handicap genders and races (to some degree ALL races and genders, though the handicapping is skewed, those only striving for comfort think one gender or race is born with it. Comfort is an awfully low bar to resent another person over, it’s not a goal it’s a complaint.). We don’t have a caste system or a royal bloodline, so there’s that, but, you know, fuck.

Ok, I’m done. I am serious, if you know the hashtag walkaway thing and can articulate a reason it shouldn’t be ignored (other than the sheer number of people following it) please tell me. That’s not a challenge, despite how this reads, it’s a humble request.