For­tune Favors the Bold — © Copy­right 2012 by William Beem

For­tune Favors the Bold

I did some­thing bold yes­ter­day. I voted. Why is that bold? It’s because I took a risk. Yes, you could say that I risked stand­ing in a long line, as pre­dicted. That wasn’t the part that was bold, though. My time from arrival to depar­ture was about 50 min­utes. The thing I risked by stand­ing in line with a bunch of strangers was being annoyed and, much worse, react­ing to the annoyance.

The rea­son I knew I was risk­ing annoy­ance started months ago on social media. Peo­ple feel com­pelled spout all sorts of polit­i­cal crap that they think will influ­ence oth­ers. It doesn’t. Not one piece of that crap posted on Face­book or Google+ had any impact upon my vote. If any­thing, it merely caused me to re-​evaluate who should be my online friend. If you’re the kind of per­son who posts unso­licited polit­i­cal pro­pa­ganda for me to see, then say­onara. I don’t care at all if you have a dif­fer­ent opin­ion or pref­er­ence than I do.

It’s actu­ally inter­est­ing to dis­cuss polit­i­cal top­ics. The thing that I find dis­in­ter­est­ing is when folks treat their polit­i­cal beliefs like a sport­ing event or aren’t recep­tive to a counter-​perspective. That’s when it ceases to become a dis­cus­sion and instead becomes a ser­mon. I’m not a fan of folks preach­ing down to me, par­tic­u­larly when so many do so with inac­cu­rate infor­ma­tion. Does it seem to you like there’s more mis­in­for­ma­tion in this elec­tion than any other, or is it because I’m pay­ing closer atten­tion as I get older? Hard to be sure. Peo­ple argu­ing about pol­i­tics has got­ten to the point that it’s more com­bat­ive than a pil­low fight. In fact, I’m almost sure we can resolve more issues by a pil­low fight than we can by social media.

My time in the line while wait­ing to vote was sim­i­lar. I lis­tened to com­ments about peo­ple who pulled up to park based upon their appear­ance, their vehi­cle and any bumper stick­ers on them. I heard peo­ple ask ques­tions show­ing that they had no under­stand­ing of the issues before them, par­tic­u­larly about the con­sti­tu­tional amend­ments here in Florida. It’s great to have the right to vote. It’s impor­tant. You would think folks would take some time to read and under­stand the issues before them before vot­ing. At least I thought that much, but I seem to be wrong. Plenty of folks seem to be con­tent to ask oth­ers around them if this amend­ment was good or bad. Once told whether to vote for it or not, the deci­sion was over. This tells me that the lob­by­ists are wast­ing a lot of money with tele­vi­sion ads. Instead, they should just setup a booth called “Vot­ing Advice” at each polling station.

That’s not my way. Although I have plenty of opin­ions on issues and can­di­dates, I keep them to myself unless solicited for my opin­ion. It’s good to vote. It’s good to talk about the issues. I just don’t like mod­ern pro­pa­ganda through social media. It was much more fun when peo­ple used col­or­ful posters for such things.

Your Chance to Vote

Since it’s the polit­i­cal sea­son and peo­ple like to argue about the can­di­dates, I’ve decided to do my part. This is the most divi­sive poll I could con­struct for pho­tog­ra­phers. What’s your favorite HDR Soft­ware? I would gen­uinely like to know if you have a pref­er­ence, as it may change some of the con­tent I pro­duce in the future. So let your voice be heard! Just do it here where it counts.