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Think Your One Voice Doesn't Matter?? Consider MN
I'll bet you thought that the 2008 Election of President, Senators, Representatives and a myriad of other governance personages was over in November of that fateful/glorious year.
Au contraire, mon ami.
The election for Senator from Minnesota has had a number of recounts and every conceiveable angle has been considered. [Republicans are continuing to bankroll the loser in the cynical decision that every day they keep Senator Franken out of the Senate is a victory for "their side." Thank god the country is now being governed by people who think "their side" is the United States of America.] So send a financial contribution to Mr. Franken care of MoveOn or his own campaign, if you value democracy over cynical opportunism.
And for heavens sake, drop what you're doing, go down to your local Post Office or Library, fill out an application for voter registration and when an election comes around, get off your duff and SHOW UP!
Al Franken has been elected to one of the most powerful positions in this entire country, with a total of six years to do good, evil or just plain incompetence and he has been elected with a margin of 312 votes out of THREE MILLION cast. He could have been at work months ago, if one thousand of the folks who comforted themselves with the idea that one vote will never make a difference had instead said to themselves that standing up for what you believe in is NEVER in vain. With a margin of 1312, Franken could have saved millions in legal fees and the people would have had three months of service at this critical time. 312!! Do you know how many zeros there are between the decimal point and the first digit in 312/3000000? [A lot.]
In my own home state of WA, Governor Chris Gregoire [also on the side of the angels] barely squeeked back into office.
I say "comforted" because cynicism always comes with the corrolary that therefore I don't have any moral or other obligation to DO anything. Telling myself that it doesn't matter anyway is just an easy excuse to stop putting out the effort. After all, if I don't get immediate gratification, why bother putting in the effort on anything?
Interesting thing, though: nearly every goal that is really worth achieving - stuff that can't be bought, for example - only comes to you in a context in which working for a long time and ultimately failing is a real possibility. Every single person who tried to take on Big Tobacco or large corporations, in the absence of existing precedent for liability, lost - after years of effort. So why did they bother? And did they really lose? Sure, in the short term. In the long term , however, they blazed a trail that when it had been trod over and over again, became a highway. The day that Representative Dellums and others first started talking about an economic boycott of South Africa, the apartheid government looked to be as solid as granite, set to live for another hundred years. There were failures and failures and failures. But the arc of history, no matter how many centuries it takes, tends toward justice. Nelson Mandela became President of a relatively peaceful South Africa because of all those brave men and women who failed and failed and failed, all acoss the world, for years.
Your gal or guy or cause or issue might fail. You might spend hours and dollars and end up not getting what you wanted. Congratulations! It means that you are alive and engaged. You are doing what ten thousand generations of your ancestors did, in sometimes glorious and mostly just hard-working, labor - you are taking steps into a future that you see as better than the present you inherited.
Keep doing it. Keep doing it until the day you die. THIS is what you were born for - not to be a consumasaurus. Having consumer stuff or having righteous indignation and cynicism are a poor substitute for fulfilling your true legacy as a human being. You were born to fight the good fight, regardless of the outcome. You were born to soar. Register. Vote. Show up.
Yeah, and: Don't start in on that "I don't want to be called for jury duty" nonsense. 47 out of the 50 states take potential jurors from DMV and other licensing databases and I don't see you giving up your car to ride the bus to get your groceries. Get real. If you don't want to serve, you'll be kicked off by one or other of the attorneys, and no one has their life destroyed by serving on a jury for two days every couple of years.