always do your best

Yesterday, thinking about Memorial Day and its meanings, and serving your country, and things like that, I thought of something, remembered something, and was told something.


The thing I was told was -- that while Switzerland never gets into wars, they are always prepared; every young man does "universal service" and then there's continued periodic training throughout their adult lives, until -- I don't know, whatever age....  A friend who lives part-time in Switzerland said, "What they say is, 'Switzerland doesn't have an Army; Switzerland is an Army.'"


The thing I thought of was -- some of my friends-and-associates think I'm sort of -- adamant -- about people voting, that everyone should vote.  (I try not to "lecture"...)  One friend who's since retired explained to me that he would stop off and vote on Election Day if he thought it would make any difference in the outcome, but, he says, "It's just my one vote, and that's not going to make any difference one way or the other." 


Eeuhwh -- he's right. 
And he's wrong.


I guess -- my concept of voting is similar to a soldier's concept of war.  How much "difference" my vote makes in all those millions, is not the point -- it's the principle; I participate on principle.  If everyone took the attitude that their one vote didn't matter, then no one would vote, elections wouldn't work, and what would we have? -- Two to four of these yoyos -- no, I meant candidates -- "duking it out" or fighting a duel with pistols to see who would be president? 


Participatory democracy needs participation.



And it's like World War II, and other wars -- one individual soldier doesn't win it, for us, but just like in a factory or on a football team, each individual in the effort, or -- on the team -- pitches in and makes their effort and helps to --


elect a president, or


defeat mad aggressors, and evil dictators.  ("Please allow me to introduce myself, I'm a man of wealth and taste; I've been around for a long, long year...")




It's like my dad -- when he was 18 or 20 -- I don't know -- dispensing anti-malaria whatever-it-was to his comrades, as a medic...by doing this, he obviously was not personally or single-handedly trouncing Hitler or Hirohito.  That took a big gigantic Group Effort.  You just do your part.  That's all our country asks. 





Same with voting, I think.





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