I don’t ask the Foreign legion
or anyone to win my freedom
or to fight my battle better than I can
 though there’s one thing that I cry for
I believe enough to die for that is
every man’s responsiblity to man.
 
-Maya Angelou

On Saturday, I was excited in my new pursuit to door-knock on fellow compatriot doors in Duluth for the new election season.  It had been four years since I had dusted my feet and taken the plunge.  Josh mapped out a route for us, and we brought our handy map to the rich side of town.  
I am 54 and my long-distance running days are long behind me.  I was given coordinates of around 6th Street East and 26th Avenue East.  I crawled the marble and granite steps of registered voters, hoping to engage in friendly conversation.  I found one twenty-something yuppie half-dressing for a wedding saying he was too busy.  I  slowly, painfully scaled a rickety staircase in a three story brick rented out garage with breathless anticipation adjacent to a main house, hoping there were voters in my income range but there was nothing.  Debris laid next to a tiered plastic shelf revealing an air of commoners.
I finally found a woman about 30 years old at an upscale brownstone style home.  She came out with her cat.  “Hi, I am Jane with the DFL.  I was wondering if you planned to vote in this election.”  She said, “What is the DFL?”  I said, “It’s the Democrat Farmer Labor Party.”  “I am afraid I don’t know what that is,” she retorted.  “It’s a major political party that sponsors candidates for election.”  She said, “Ohhhhhh, I have to go,” staring listlessly.  She stated she didn’t have time and skipped off behind the door.  “May I leave a brochure?”  A faint “yes” was heard.  
There are three things you have to know if you’ve lived in Minnesota for any length of time.  The Vikings wear purple and are our football team. The DFL is a longstanding political party that has dominated Minnesota politics for generations.  The DFL has produced two vice presidents of the United States, Hubert H. Humphrey and Walter Mondale.  The third thing is, it’s good to have a thermometer in the winter.  If you don’t know these things, you are Minnesota illiterate.  
I began resenting the rich, cursing them with each fortress I approached.  Give me a friggin’ break.  You bastards are too rich to even care.  Someone has broken the trail for you.  You could not give a flying crap about the mid-term election.  I was looking for one ray of hope in a neighborhood so beautiful it took my breath away but boring enough to be a cemetery.   To live your whole life in a state of self-satisfied ignorance is an abdication of your responsibility as a citizen.  After living middle class in my youth and in poverty since having a child in 1998, I don’t know if it was my place to resent people who have “made it.”  I could feel sorry for them.   
I blundered down five more blocks of cold stone mansions with tangled branches and misdirected leaves, finally reaching a trendy middle-aged couple in a modest house near College Street.  I was now in the middle-class neighborhood.  A few college students lived in houses nearby.  Both husband and wife were home.  Yes, they were voting, but not party line.  They liked the top two DFL candidates but were unsure about the lower-level races.  “We vote for the person, not the party.”  I asked, “What is your number-one issue for this election?”  The husband said, “I don’t have one.”  I was getting warmer, at least around people who were part of the electoral process.  
The truth is, if our nation has so few problems that intersect with our daily lives to arouse participation, that is a good thing.  Not enough of the majority find it necessary to vote because they are out of touch or too comfortable.  They will be the ones to complain when one thing goes wrong that impacts their lives, like interest rates on their mortgages or student loan consolidation.  But right now, they are not in the field of Iraq ducking swords and bullets.  Their sons or daughters are not in a high-risk war.  They are just ordinary Americans who don’t give a crap.  It doesn’t hurt me—it hurts us as a whole.  
Meanwhile, I am in the tub soaking my legs.  Living in that grand-scale neighborhood has no appeal to me.  I want to feel the movement of the streets.  In reference to politics, Hunter S. Thompson said, “People who know jackrabbits will tell you they are primarily motivated by fear, stupidity and craziness.  But I have spent enough time in jackrabbit country to know that most of them lead pretty dull lives, they are bored with their daily routines. No wonder some of them drift over the line into cheap thrills once in a while; there has to be a powerful adrenaline rush in crouching by the side of the road, waiting for the next set of headlights, then streaking out.”  
Thompson grabbed a piece of their power brokering in the 1972 presidential election, writing “Fear and Loathing on the Campaign Trail ’72.”  He knew what it felt like to find the pulse, tempo, lies, promises, underbelly, the climate of political affairs.  He wasn’t wrapped up in a mansion making soufflés for the disengaged.  America, be part of the moment in the wheels that drive our nation. Light a fire.  Show some level of concern. I am relying on my instincts and my inherent optimism to continue believing there are people who really do care.  Down the cobblestone sidewalk I will go.