I want you to imagine for a moment that you live in a country where politics is more than incessant propaganda, slogans, one-line promises, and big money.

I want you to pretend for a moment that the laws passed come from some nobel place in the hearts of our leaders, and not from little black books of favors and payback. Of course, that's not our world. Nobility and honor have been replaced with fake hollywood impersonations, forced upon us by the same type of people pushing fart pills and cheese.

Rememer why they're doing it. Always remember that their slick, painted facad is built facing us. Their slogans and promises and photo ops and pundet rallys are all staged for our eyes to hide the dirty little games they have to play just to afford the show that hides the deals that fund the show that hides the emptiness that their game has become.

They do it for us. They ride this laughable merry-go-round for us. They put on this fiction of folly, this force fed frenzy of pretend policy and make believe motives because we are watching. In the end, the voters still hold the final power, because what the politicians think we want, and the levers they think we will pull, drives everything that they do. What it comes down to is a contest to manipulate the fingers of the people to put themselves into power so they can continue the cycle of raising money and staging their public image. National politics is in a spiral, twirling tighter and tighter, growing more and more shallow until almost all we have left is The Game: make money to get votes to make money to get votes

It can only stop at the one place where everyone is looking: the source, the eye of the storm.

Your vote.

We stand on the shoulders of men who were driven by genuine conviction and honor, and we watch the bitter shadow of what their work has become. Their legacy, this impossible marvel of freedom, descends not to presidents and govenors, but to us. What shall we do with this trust? Become a player in their media circus, a tool for their final tally?

Everything you have seen in this campaign has been packaged, polished, and presented to bring you to either side A or side B. It's a championship match and you are nothing but the prize. You can choose to stand in the middle of the fray, waiting and watching, considering their commercials, deciphering their debates, and trying to decide whether to buy Pepsi or Coke.

Your vote is more important than that. Your vote is why they do everything that they do. They are the tail, and you are the dog. It is only their advertising, their slight of hand that keeps the illusion of the reverse alive. They tell us how they will help us, and what they will do for us, hoping that we won't notice that they're only saying what they think we want to hear. It is our willing participation in the media melodrama that enables them to continue their empty dance of promises, half truths, and attack ads.

Our federal government has been thrown out of balance by the technology of modern communication. The ideal of being a representative of the will of the people has been bent into a high speed feedback loop of policy and polls until all we have left is this thrashing about.

Stop for a monent.

Think.

Is this the way it's supposed to be?

If you look under the veneer of makeup and spin, do you really trust them, knowing what you know?

Some people say that we should vote for someone who has a chance of winning, that to vote outside the major party arena is just a waste. "I don't want to throw my vote away," they say, and then they close the curtain, pick the most popular puppet, and perform an act that has about as much meaning as pissing in the ocean.

If anything, a vote for someone else has more meaning precisely because that vote contributes a higher percentage to the smaller pool. But there's more to it than that. The very premise is flawed.

You're not there to vote on what you think other people are going to do. You're voting for what you think is right, and those are two very different things.

One comes from within, from the best truth you can find and is worthy of the honor which voting demands.

The other is sheep following sheep.

As funny as it sounds, the politicians are looking to you for leadership, and if all you're going to do is buy into their little soap opera, and reward them for radical last minute tax plans, or a string of petty, micro-managed non-issues like school uniforms and time off for PTA, then we are going nowhere but down, because you cannot run a country with a phony, pixelated husk standing in for leadership.

The only wasted vote is the one not cast, and right behind that is the one cast only for the selfish reason of wanting to ride on a popular bandwagon.

I understand that sometimes it's just as good to vote against someone as to vote for someone. I know that there is genuine concern about splitting the support of the lesser evil, only to empower the greater evil, so to speak, but if you vote for what you believe, rather than what you think you're supposed to believe, or what you think other people believe, then you will be voting as a true American. To do any less is to play into a drama written and performed specifically to manipulate you. Look to yourself, not to them. Vote for what you believe in. That's why you vote.

If your heart and devotion are truely behind one of the major money candidates, for whatever reason, then you must vote your heart, and everything else be damned. But if you are settling for less than you would like, or feel some reluctance, then listen to that too.

The bottom line is, how will they ever know how we really feel unless we tell them?

If we all go in to the voting booth this November and vote for more of the same, then I hope that's what you want, because that's what we are all going to get: more dodging, playing with numbers, and dangling non-issues in front of us that we're supposed to cheer for. That's how it works. That's why we vote. That's why they're watching us.

Voting is more than the senseless game it is trying to become. It is, as it has always been, as it is even now, lurking somewhere behind the shallow, slick TV spots, the most critical trust we carry as Americans, whether or not we are worthy of it.

There have always been third party candidates, but this year there is a particularly strong group of alternatives, led by Harry Browne. This is not just an accident. There is a swell of discontent and impatience and dissatisfaction that calls these men to our attention. The old game is wearing thin. We can choose to prop it up for another four years, or we can continue what was started by Perot in 1992, and the Republicans in 1994, and that is to begin a return to honor, a return to trust, and a return to the real America.

Their eyes, as always, are upon us. Let us lead them.

:^D