When you break it down, there is little in the act of voting that differs from the most pedestrian of bureaucratic errands. Yet there is something hugely humbling in this, something very close to the feeling of the Fear of God. There is majesty to it, and devotion and the palpable sense of affecting, if only in a small way - but directly - the world's course.
Ours is an age of congenital cynicism.... Still, there is something about voting that overpowers alienation and chronic disappointment and cosmopolitanism and cool.
Tuesday, November 04, 2008
An Essay For Election Day
Today is, of course, an historically important election day in the United States. As we experience the day, this essay from Haaretz last week by Bradley Burston, titled "Voting As a Religious Experience" is worth a read. It is the reflections of the writer as he mails off his absentee ballot to California from a post office in Jerusalem. He says in part:
