Missive the Thirty-Third

What Is the Right Way?

DATELINE: Wednesday, November 8, 2000, at 1100 hours CDT.
Conway, Arkansas, USA

By D. Ebenezer Baldwin Bowles
CornDancer & Company

Cricket Song is enmeshed in the Presidential Election at the moment. Despite our uniqueness and the individuality of the fragments, we are a group now: curious, distracted, hopeful, weary, and captivated.

We wait while the Floridians try to make up their minds about whom they want to elect as President, Mr. Bush or Mr. Gore. They are measuring twice, cutting once. The plank they give us will complete the structure of the election.

The Tuesday Missive is late again, but the publisher granted his permission. My deadline is extended 'till eleven o'clock, thirty minutes hence. The wizened old publisher is a tolerant sort, especially when a memorable episode is afoot in the great Nation beyond.

Each of us at Cricket Song was caught-up in the electoral process yesterday. I left the fortress to dash about the landscape, participating in democracy.

Fresh, Intriguing, Pregnant with Possibility.

Far away in Mountain Town, where I delivered a sealed absentee ballot, I detected pockets of youthful optimism. The electoral process was fresh, intriguing, pregnant with possibility. Young ones force the elders to look again. Will the democracy survive with sufficient health to span the lifetime of another generation? Probably, but don't count it. The survival of democracy in the United States of America is not an absolute.

The fast, two-and-a-half hour drive from the heights of the mountain range to the lowlands of the river valley carried me back to a community without a soul - at least one I can identify. It's unfortunate that Cricket Song is physically located here, but so be it. Necessity extracts a price, and I pay it, but it's no wonder that I retreat behind the ramparts of Cricket Song. I live in a breeding ground for proto-Fascism. I live in crypto-Naziland.

Little Naziland's election commission, the good and pious protestants and catholics of the conservative power structure, effectively disenfranchised some of the voters this year. They moved the town center's polling places from the neighborhood churches and schools to a one-stop voting mall in a health-and-fitness center in the far-away suburbs.

The Haves Reveled in Their Wasteland.

Getting to the ballot box was no big deal to the suburbanites in their sport utility vehicles, late model sedans, and sleek pick-up trucks. The poor, elderly, and campus-bound university students were a bit more challenged by the change of venue. For them, voting suddenly became a more daunting prospect.

It took a while for me to find the voting mall. It was smack in the middle of the walled neighborhoods, new strip malls, and white-flight apartment buildings.

Standing outside the new structure, a tax-funded haven for the cult of the body, were gaggles of good ole boys and pretty young girls, holding up their signs, smiling and waving, nodding their heads "yes yes yes." The scene reminded me of a tailgate party at one of the big university's football games. The price of admission is steep and getting steeper.

The haves had it all again. They were safe in their suburban wasteland. They would not have to mingle with the unwashed masses. They reveled in it.

When I walked inside to search for my ballot box, two black-booted and big-bellied police officers stood ominously on the sidelines, eyeing the voters as they entered the great room of the gymnasium, where precinct tables were scattered about the expanse like so many booths at the county fair.

Let's Chase the Cops from the Temple.

Really! Crew-cut, uniformed, black-booted, pistol-packing policemen were posted at the entrance. I railed some about the disenfranchisement of the folks back in the town center, but no one paid much attention. I mean, I wasn't cussin', spittin', or screaming bloody murder, just muttering small talk at the wall. After casting my ballot, I wanted to take a few minutes and chase the cops from the temple of democracy, but a companion stopped me. Other responsibilities called to her. I don't think she had the spare time to bail me out of jail for rabble-rousing.

She hustled me outside, where we walked briskly toward our 1978 El Camino pick-up truck. I shouted a sentence or three about abrogated rights of citizenship to the candidate for alderman, who was standing on the grass beside the huge asphalt parking lot, hustling votes. He commiserated for minute, but as soon as he saw a few other voters begin to eye our dialogue, he turned away. It was the safe decision.

Back inside the old truck, I simmered down just enough to focus on the road and drive away. At the courthouse some 15-minutes later, I handed the absentee ballot to the county clerk and thanked her for her public service.

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Surviving Election Day At a Breeding Ground For Proto-Fascism.