Unwelcome Dental Advice

When I was younger, I thought very little of voting. I always just rooted for the candidates that my parents rooted for, because I was young and stupid. My parents typically leaned to the right and thought that Reagan would save us all with trickle down economics. Gods, I was stupid for believing in the Gipper with them. Having lived in the world, I realize how much more there is to it than holding to tradition. The world is an ever-changing place, and we need to evolve with it. The old ways are great to reflect upon, but they’re archaic and outdated.

Many of the laws and things in the constitution that we abide by are meant for when the times were simpler. Consider the Second Amendment. When the Founding Fathers wrote the Constitution and all their amendments, they were working with antiquated weaponry, single-fire weapons that had to be manually reloaded with every shot. They penned the “2A” with the best intentions of preventing tyranny within their own government, but they didn’t think that personal arms would evolve so readily and in a way that a single weapon can now mow down hundreds of people in a matter of seconds without being reloaded.

They also wrote the Constitution in a way that it was meant to be updated as the times changed and progressed. Maybe that was all the foresight they needed when they created what was supposed to be the single greatest government in existence. They knew that people would evolve and things would change, so when they created their ultimate piece of legislation, they did so in a way that, when the times did eventually change, it too could be changed with them.

But we never did it. We never upgraded the Constitution to match our status quo. Sure, we added to it. Some of it for the better, some of it for the worse. Prohibition comes to mind when I think of “for the worse.” Women’s suffrage and black voting are a couple that I think of for “the better.” But we never sat down with the legislators we have in office and said, “you know? Let’s rewrite this thing to be a better, all-encompassing document for the current times and those ahead of us.”

I think it’s because there are people out there who wish the old days would come back. They’re scared, but for the wrong reasons. They’re scared of immigrants coming across our borders like they’re going to colonize us. They cry that the immigrants are taking our jobs, but are they going to work the orange groves to pick trees for pennies on the dollar? They’re afraid the left is out to take their guns, but then can’t give one good reason why a civilian should have military grade equipment that’s meant for war. They’re also the same people who claim that Sandy Hook didn’t happen, or that Ivermectin cured COVID.

Times are changing and there aren’t just two genders anymore. People are worried that someone who once identified as a man can now go into a woman’s bathroom and “spy on their kids.” Yes, because someone who was born with male parts but has always felt like they weren’t a man only transitioned because they want to see little kids taking shits. Or they most definitely transitioned from male to female to finally win that sports trophy they couldn’t get being the slightly weaker man versus the obviously dominant woman. You fucking troglodytes. Get over yourselves and realize that there’s a person suffering internally over their own identity because some wires got crossed. They’re not changing their assigned gender because they want to, they’re changing it because it’s who they were always meant to be.

And then we get into things like abortion. This has been a big-ticket item since even I was a child. I’ve always believed that a woman should have total control of their body, and to deny them that is a crime. If someone rapes a woman in Oklahoma, that woman is stuck birthing a baby because the person who assaulted her has more rights than she does. Hell, the fetus has more rights than she does. “Oh, but you could be aborting the next Albert Einstein!” Or, and hear me out, she could be aborting the next rapist after the child is born to a traumatized woman who can’t handle looking at someone with the face of her assaulter, so she throws him into an orphanage and the child grows up dejected and hating society.

And that’s the thing. The right doesn’t care about the child after its born. They simply want to impose their will upon people because they can. “You can’t abort a baby, because that’s murder. Even if you die in the process, we’re protecting that ‘precious life,’ but we don’t give a flying fuck what happens to it after that. If it grows up to be a murderer, that’s society’s fault, because society won’t let us control it on all levels.”

Times are getting even scarier, because the SCOTUS voted for almost blanket presidential immunity in “official” capacity. This has been a long-game play for the right. Giving a future president immunity to most things is a step in the direction of autocracy. You’ll hear people on the right say, “well, Joe Biden could abuse this power, too.” Sure, he could. But he won’t, because it’s undemocratic. Meanwhile, our other nominee, DJT, has already claimed he would use this power almost immediately when coming into office, should he win.

And this is where you all come in. If the idea that a single man could destroy our way of life scares the hell out of you (spoiler alert: it should!), then you need to get off your ass and vote. I didn’t see it as a kid, and I didn’t see it much as a young adult, but I see it now. Vote. Voting lets your voice and opinion be heard. Don’t let scare tactics by the right convince you that you don’t have a voice. Don’t let gerrymandering and bullying stop you from doing your democratic due diligence. If you don’t want to live under a dictatorship, then you need to do the right thing: fucking VOTE.