Why I'm voting this year

It was an ordinary Tuesday morning. My husband left early for work. He kissed me as I lay groggily in the bed cuddling our eighteen-month-old son. My nearly four-year-old daughter was still asleep. Soon I would have to get up, but I'd wait for the consensus of the kids, and I'd catch just a few more much-needed Z's.

The radio had been playing softly all night, and was tuned to our local classical music station, which played NPR in the mornings. As I drifted in and out of sleep, the news of the day repeated. Gradually, bits of it, as in a dream, came into my consciousness.

A plane.

A plane crashed.

A plane crashed and it was horrible, horrible (I rolled over and went back to sleep because the media always think plane crashes are horrible, horrible)

A horrible plane crash.

A horrible plane crash in New York City.



I sat bolt upright in bed. Sonshine startled and woke up.

I went into the living room and turned on our TV, the place I had always gotten my news before I started listening to radio instead. And I saw the second plane crash. And I knew then, before anyone would say it definitively, that the first had been no accident. Because despite everyone's fears of a fiery death, the odds of a plane crash are very, very low. The odds of a plane crash in Manhattan were astronomically low, although it could happen. But the odds of two plane crashes right next to each other in Manhattan was just way too low for this to be an accident. I watched dumbfounded as it sunk in that this had to have been planned by a group of my fellow human beings.

As the second plane crash was played over and over again on the television, my daughter began to get scared. She saw the fireball and knew something bad had happened in which people surely had died, but she didn't understand it. So I turned off the television. And I logged onto the internet. I've been getting my news over the internet ever since.

I don't sleep with the radio on any more. Every morning I wake up, log on, and load up my favorite news website. I don't really read the news much any more; I don't have a lot of time in the mornings, now that Tiny Princess needs to get off to school. I just want to see what the banner headline is. If the banner headline is "Democrats Rude To Republicans: Republicans Give As Good As They Get", then I know I'm safe today and the world will go on as planned for twenty-four more hours. I say my morning prayers, and I thank the Lord for giving me one more day.

But I fear the day that the banner will read "Chicago devastated by 'dirty bomb' attack" or "Chemical weapons released in Los Angeles". I have relatives in Los Angeles. I want the group of my fellow human beings who make this sort of thing possible hunted down and brought to justice. God will surely condemn them for their murders. I would like for someone to arrange for them to meet with Him as soon as possible.