2008: Election Of Your Life
Author: Karen Talavera

2008: Election Of Your Life
We're a year away from the next US presidential election
and already there is universal desperation for change in
this country, and through this country, the impetus for a
better world.  Judging from the broad spectrum of
candidates who've thrown their hat into the ring, no doubt
change is what we'll get.  The question for all Americans
is, how drastically do you want things to change, and in
which direction?  And the only question all Americans must
answer is, will you participate in the process of creating
change, or will you sit this one out?

If you're an American, the 2008 race may well be the
election of your life.  Don't sit it out.  Here is why:

If you are between age eighteen and twenty-five, your head
is spinning wondering what happened to the America you hear
people older than you reminisce about or of which you read
in books.  That America has not been your America.  Since
you were a child you've lived in a country increasingly
party-divided, a country now coming off the closest two
presidential elections in its recent history, which
sequentially turned-out the highest voting populations
ever.  Not to mention, you were introduced to the political
system via the 2000 Presidential election fiasco, likely
making you wonder whether your country is not just as
corrupt as some archetypal Latin American dictatorship
south of the border, one we've historically been eager to
overthrow.  Furthermore, the bombardment of messages,
technology, media hype and digital devices that you have
never known life to be without makes it nearly impossible
to pay attention to anything, or believe what you do
absorb.   Yet you have unique ways of tuning in via the
Internet, social media, and virtual group collaboration.
You have the cynicism of youth on your side to improve your
power of discernment.  Now in your twenties, you have an
opportunity to make your adult voice heard for, perhaps,
the first time.  Please use it.

If you're 30-ish or 40-ish, born in but too late to partake
in the free love partying and political-rallying of the
60's and 70's, you're still old enough to remember a
bucolic, likely suburban upbringing when only one of your
parents worked to provide a comfortable family life.  A
time before microwaves, cell-phones, the Internet and
digital-everything, your childhood was filled with freedom;
freedom from online pedophiles, freedom from overdeveloped
land, freedom from terrorist attacks, and even the simple
freedom of your mother not knowing where you rode your bike
and hung out after school.  You've witnessed, lived
through, and somehow adapted to drastically-accelerating
change in your country and the world at large in a
relatively short period of time.  This has given many of
you a global mindset and desire to move away from the
post-World War II capitalist, survivalist American Dream
race of achievement toward something truer, better, but not
necessarily bigger.  You see how we politically came to be
where we are in America, and may have seen enough of the
world to realize it doesn't have to be this way.  You are
in your prime, you carry economic clout, and you hold
leadership positions.  Now is your time to step up and be
involved.  Please do so.

If you are a baby-boomer, in your 50's or early 60's, the
present state of our union should feel not only painfully
familiar, but frightening.  You are no stranger to
revolution, to change, and to standing up to the
establishment.  Even if you weren't politically active
during the Kennedy, Eisenhower, and Nixon years, you are
definitely old enough to remember the lessons of those
times and you have no excuse for not doing so.  Many of
you, the progeny of early twentieth-century immigrants to
the US, through your courage managed to mold equal
opportunity for and abolish injustice against minorities.
Through your heritage and your diversity you've contributed
to the multi-cultural, multi-racial mix that is America
now.  You are the most numerous and wealthy generation this
nation has ever seen.  Your ballast can sink or stabilize
this ship.  Please, if you have not done so already, get on
board and help us steer it in the right direction.

And last but not least, if you are a veritable senior
citizen, age 75 or older, well you've just about seen it
all, haven't you?  You've seen how governments, a world, a
universe, can give and take life.  You have the long-term
view of where we've been as a country, and you possess the
wisdom of experience that can guide us toward where we're
going.  You've been around enough to have lived the adage
that those who fail to learn from history are doomed to
repeat it.  You may be angry, you may be frightened, you
may be resigned, you may be ill and infirm, or you may
simply be old and tired.  But YOU ARE STILL HERE.  And we
need you, all of you, to stay involved in preserving the
America - not the government, not the politics - but the
ideal, that so many of your generation fought and lost its
lives for.  Please don't leave the ring yet, stay in and
keep fighting the good fight.  The rest of us promise to
cheer you on.

It's not just that the presidential choices for 2008 are
more diverse than ever before, it's that the stakes are
higher than they've ever been in most Americans' lifetimes.
With global warming, an energy crisis and bio-terrorism
looming over our heads, we're talking about our very
survival as a species.  The nuclear Armageddon fears of the
past – whether the Russians or North Koreans will get
jacked up enough to start World War III – pale in
comparison to whether humans can survive a planetary
climate or pole shift.  We're talking about things that may
be beyond our control to change or reverse.  Now is the
time for unity, not division.  The whole system needs to
change if we're going to make it, as a country AND as
citizens of the world.  We want someone to show us the way,
not the old way, not the same way, but a new way.

Is there such a person?  Of course there is, and likely
more than one.  But you won't be able to discern who if you
don't even know the line-up.  And you won't be able to
chose your future if you don't get in the game.  The time
is long overdue to break from a re-run of the past.  In
evaluating who can lead America to a new future, don't just
vote for the new faces you haven't seen in the race before.
Don't let gender, color, religions, looks or age distract
you from the substance or lack thereof underneath.  Search
for courage, search for independence, search for the
candidates willing to cross party lines to do what's right.
Search for rules being broken because they need to be.
Know the issues and judge your candidates on where they
stand.  And vote your conscience; vote your heart, not
simply your party line. But most of all, vote!  Vote this
time around especially in the primaries as well as the
general election.  After all, 2008 may well be the election
of your life.


About the Author:

Karen Talavera is a keen observer, critical thinker and
aspiring book author with a passion for writing, learning
and teaching. She lives in South Florida and sounds off
frequently on her blog of the same name, Sound Off. Read
more of Karen's writing at
http://worldwidesoundoff.blogspot.com .