Longtime So Cal resident Charles Carr is a nationally published journalist and playwright. His award-winning Southpaw column has appeared in college textbooks published by Macmillan, St. Martin's Press, Bedford, and others. Charles writes Southpaw for his hometown newspapers, The Times-Advocate and The Roadrunner.

It's in our veins

    For those who haven't already voted in some fashion, Tuesday, Nov. 5 is a glorious day. No matter what might otherwise be falling out of the sky at the moment, it's the day we Americans get to collectively tell the smug and the powerful to go jump in a lake, if we so choose. And choose we should, again and again. It's a solemn once-every-couple-of-years date kept religiously by members of this planet's most fortunate family.

    Think about it. No matter how turned-off we are by our political process, no matter how powerless and manipulated we feel at the moment, one incontrovertible fact remains: Every two years the citizens of the United States of America and they alone have the opportunity to change an entire chamber of congress, the House of Representatives. Every single seat -- all 435 -- is up for grabs. We're also able to completely shift the balance of power in the Senate. And this time around, of course, we're going to elect a new president.

    I'm not going to give you the "most important election of our lives" speech because, frankly, to the members of a free society, every opportunity to vote is a glad chore. Sure, we might have to remind ourselves of that as we trudge down to our polling place, supremely inconvenienced, too busy with more important things. But then comes a deep sense of satisfaction.

    And, of course, this time is special. We will live with the results of this election for the rest of our lives. Our cheeky "I DID IT IN 2024" sticker will be up on the fridge for so long the glue will have worn off and it is now held up by all the stickers since, either as a brag or as proof that what came to be was not our fault.

    Why vote?

    If you're a woman, you vote to put your foot down; the way you do in your own household when things get out of whack.

    If you're a man, you vote because, well, because, judging by the way we men ran this nation when our say was the only one that mattered, too many decisions were made by gut not by brain. It's time for us to help set this nation on the right course.

    If you're eco-minded, you vote because you do not believe the world is a like a hotel room that we can trash like a petulant rock star and check out without repercussions.

    If you're a young person, you vote because it's a rite of passage infinitely more meaningful and consequential to your future than being able to drive or to take a drink. Any upcoming generation that does not make its wishes known at the ballot box now will suffer the decisions that were made in their absence -- perhaps for the rest of their lives.

    If you're a senior, you vote because, well, how many of us older folks wish now we'd spoken out more loudly in our youths, done more about the environment, social policy, and so many other issues? How simple it would have been way back then to put America -- the world -- on the correct path had we only taken things a little slower, done things a little smarter. Yet, over and over again we settled for easy and convenient. Now, every decision is complicated and agonizing. We don't have a time machine, but seniors can do the next best thing by voting not only to look after their Own interests, but also to protect a future they might not even be around for.

    We vote so that we are no longer identified as... the kind of person who doesn't vote; someone with their finger perpetually in the wind. The kind of person who throws in their cards without realizing that, just by being an American, life has dealt them a royal flush.

    We vote because we still believe a nation can exist in which each member has a role in determining its destiny.

    And, most of all, we vote as a solemn remembrance of the countless souls before us who one bright day walked into a military enlistment center without anyone telling them to do so and ultimately gave their lives so that the rest of us could make lesser decisions at our leisure.

    We vote because it runs in our veins. Blood, white, and blue.