And so begins the presidential election bender (we’ve been in cocktail hour for sometime now). It starts off with a few tempting treats and they turn out to be so good, that you just have to have more. Then Super Tuesday rolls around and you stuff yourself on polls, analysis, second-by-second vote count updates with blog commentary attached, Anderson Cooper and high flatulent campaign promises out the whazoo.

By the time we get to North Carolina in May—let’s just be honest—we’ll know the outcomes of both primaries and the only reason the left-over states will actually have theirs is because they can (and law students, correct me if I’m wrong, but probably have to by constitutional mandate as well). Technically, every vote does count. It just really makes me want to whine, like only a four-year-old can, knowing that due to the mad dash for primacy in the primaries we saw in state congresses all over the country last year, my primary vote may not mean anything.

Or will it? Isn’t that the question we are searching to answer this election year?

“Do the voices of dissenting Americans really matter anymore?”

They mattered when patriots were fighting for freedom from the Crown. They mattered when Southern and Northern states locked heads in one of our world’s epic civil wars. They mattered when women stood up and demanded a vote and when Martin Luther King Jr. told us all about his dream.

But do they still matter today? Does that idea of one voice, one vote still mean something in our culture? It seems as though a lot of people in this country have grown cynical about their role in America. They remember from grade school that it’s supposed to be important (and that many died fighting for it), but I fear we may have grown so complacent and hopeless, that we have forgotten what a unique and noble foundation we have here—AND must to work to support. Think about all the work that our grandparent’s generation put into America. Work that we've
put to shame in this generation.

My musing has brought me to wonder: Are the people of Tom Friedman’s ever-flattening earth going to reach their tipping point this election year? Are they going to use the power they have found in the Internet and new media to make noise which cannot be ignored? And will they have the strength to make demands that carry enough weight to actually inspire political action over the course of the next presidency and beyond?

Are the American people angry enough—and hopeful enough to give this country a kick in the ass to get it going before things really do start to crumble?

We are at a very precarious point in our journey as a nation, one that may affect us for centuries to come. And all I can say is: God give us the courage to make tough choices, to stand for something positive again and to have the conviction to work tirelessly for everything we hope to see made real.