Dakota Beacon

It is a solemn day - election day.  Will it be a night of celebration or one of grim disappointment?  This depends as much on you as it does on the person voting in Scranton, PA, or Miami, FL.  It depends not on someone else but on you.  If you, like me, have a rally-addicted relative and have been watching tens of thousands of (prospective) voters clamoring to get into Trump rallies and willing to stand in 98-degree sun in Arizona or Florida and 22-degree cold and snow on a windswept tarmac in Wisconsin, or kept outside the gate but refusing to give up and go home in Minnesota-stan due to the Democrats’ orders who run the state like a prison, maybe you feel confident of victory.  Nigel Farage does.  In fact, having shown up for at least a couple of these massive rallies, the Brexit organizer of Britain went home and bet 10,000 Pounds on Trump’s victory.  Maybe he knows something about what is in the wind with elections.  

But this could all end up in ruins if it makes you think that Trump has enough votes without yours.  That with this much groundswell support your one little vote is not going to matter one way or the other.  In fact, your little vote is ALL that matters.  That is why there is incentive in certain quarters to try to suppress it in the first place - to make you feel powerless and insignificant.  That is an evil deception.  Don't fall for it.

Over a year ago we watched a corrupted Hong Kong government move into that city to shut down its protests.  Hong Kong citizens, accustomed to their economic and political freedom, and enjoying the prosperity that accompanies those freedoms, were suddenly silenced.  Some were arrested, some killed, in fact, many beaten.  Some were “disappeared”. Thousands of Hong Kong protesters risked everything to take to the streets, waving American flags and singing patriotic American songs - “The Star Spangled Banner”,Les  Miserables’ “Do You Hear the People SIng” (banned by the CCP), even “God Save the Queen”, strongly preferring the more benign days of British rule and relative freedom to the dictatorship of the CCP.  They went out on their lunch hour, risking harsh repercussions.  Today Hong Kong has fallen silent.  The CCP won.  The glorious days of Hong Kong are over now.  They never stood a chance.  They just wanted the world to see the truth.   The people of Hong Kong are literally dying to win the freedom we so often and so foolishly take for granted.  It turns out that freedom is a tenuous thing.  One morning you might wake up to find that it was snatched while you slept.  It’s true that Hong Kong perhaps would have felt a more immediate threat than we do - after all, the Chinese Communist Party was hanging over them, just waiting for an opportunity, waiting to test to see what would happen.  With us, they are drawing closer but we don’t feel their hot breath on our necks (some of us don’t), so we are too complacent.

All around the world people are suffering without a voice.  Iran.  China.  North Korea.  Much of Africa.  Cuba.  Other parts of Latin America. Russia.   These are people who would give their very lives to have that one little vote.  That one little vote is the difference between harsh and final dictatorship, oppression and, yes, slavery - and that precious voice.  

We have been allowing ourselves to be censored, we have allowed our wings to be clipped by overbearing Silicon Valley authoritarians, many of them serving foreign interests and governments.  Our very freedom threatens us because we think we need to allow them to take advantage of it.  We need to find a creative solution which will preserve our First Amendment.  Perhaps, depending upon their degree of failure to fix the current election, we will find that solution and allow our thoughts to be expressed.  If we wait long enough, the inability to express thoughts freely will inevitably lead to control of those thoughts themselves.  

All of this is to plead with you not to leave it to someone else, an earnest relative, your neighbor, your kids.  Get your own vote in - and if possible take someone with you who needs a ride.  You can’t do this next year when the spirit moves you, when you regret not bothering today.  By then you will be out of luck.  There are those who really believe that if you don’t all vote for freedom now, by next election year there will be such powerful forces silencing you that the next one will be meaningless.  It can’t be put off.  If you have not already voted, go and vote today.   If you can, offer a ride to others.  Many people have found it more difficult than ever before to get around this year.  If you, yourself, are in this position, please ask someone who can help you.  This is not “being a bother”.  On the contrary, it is merely making the effort to do your part and fulfill your obligation and earn the freedom you have enjoyed.  Don’t be shy.  Check with Uber and Lyft in your city and see if they are offering discounts on rides to the polls if you have no other options.    And, by the way, this is a great way for them to appreciate the freedom to run a business in a free society!  We should thank them for this effort to fulfill their civic duties.  

So - bottom line:  Don’t let the so-called professional pollsters or the massive, unprecedented Trump rallies you’ve seen this week - or the tepid, pathetic, amateurish-looking Biden flops - put you in a state of complacency.  All any candidate has is that one little vote that you control.  Use it or one day, lose it.

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