Perpetuating a myth

Because I call out voting as futile, I’m not allowed to complain. At least that’s what a few readers have expressed, some outraged, admonishing, pressuring, writing: “People have died for the right to vote.”

I think about George Carlin who said it’s those who vote who have no right to complain and then I think some more, about our history, that people really have died for certain privileges. The admonishment about dying for the right to vote is necessary in perpetuating a myth, one of many about America, to convince us that our voices matter.

I used to believe mine did.

I wrote that first article after my nephew was killed in Iraq, convinced that my words could prevent other families from hearing the shattering words that change lives forever, “We regret to inform you.”

I was encouraged when the 2006 election results blared, the Democratic Party took control of both houses of Congress, and Nancy Pelosi was Madam Speaker. I was certain war funding would end, but no. Barbaric foreign policy continued.

Really, I arrived late to the Epiphany. That I don’t count. That politicians don’t represent us. That Wall Street has its greedy hands on the wheel, its footprints on our lives and the lives of people in the countries we explode, countries where drones destroy more than the targeted. Where boots on the ground destroy more than an enemy. Where both motivate more hatred of Americans.

We have murdered hundreds of thousands of people, including children.

So, another election’s a past-tense event. Billions of dollars were spent. “If elections don’t matter, why do they spend so much money?” Yes, that question arrived in my inbox.

Also a past tense event: Veterans’ Day. I read that the US government has declared that the attributive is the official spelling, no apostrophe, so in defiance, what little’s now allowed, I’ve inserted one.

Anyway, Troops, thank you for your service.

To empire.

To Wall Street.

To perpetuating conflict.

To terrorizing.

To inspiring hatred, more terrorist organizations.

To population control.

To studies about PTSD.

To nationalism.

To the pomp and circumstance of military funerals.

To inhumanity.

Really, you deserve an accounting, of what we are as a nation, the truth of war. Apparently so does the public, once (fairly recently) war weary but now scared shitless of the Islamic State. A public scared shitless is precisely what’s required for perpetual conflict.

Missy Comley Beattie has written for National Public Radio and Nashville Life Magazine. She was an instructor of memoirs writing at Johns Hopkins’ Osher Lifelong Learning Institute in Baltimore. Email: missybeat@gmail.com.