I hate driving. All of it. As if it helps, I never drive with the radio on, always under the speed limit, and make more unnecessary stops than there are cars in downtown’s infamous, always-overflooded-but-I’ll-still-go-look-to-see-if-there’s-a-spot parking garage. I won’t even bother mentioning the heart attacks I have on the freeway.
Only on quiet streets lined with empty houses will I dare lift a sticky palm to slide the window down or adjust the air conditioning―though still without music. I’d be lying if I said I felt relaxed during, let alone enjoyed driving, but oddly enough, I manage to maintain my composure at intersections. Mainly because when I approach one, I know what to do. Or rather, what I’m going to do. Because at intersections, I’m a “waiter.” So when a stop light flashes that dull yellow, rather than accelerating across an intersection, I always sit and wait.
Of course, opposite to “waiters” are “goers”―those who burst across an intersection when the stop light flickers that same yellow. Besides being reckless, a public danger, and a nightmare for “waiters”, “goers” aren’t all that bad. Because worse in such situations are the fence-sitters of intersection crossing: “intersection-sitters.” These indecisive drivers begin to enter an intersection but out of guilt, shame, confusion, or fear of getting ticketed, abruptly slow and sometimes even sit and wait in the intersection. Only in this instance, they’re not sitting and waiting safely behind a limit line which, once again, I’m usually behind (save the times when I started driving and “intersection-sat” myself).
Just like when “intersection-sitters” refuse to associate with “waiters” or “goers”, when fence-sitters refuse to associate with some political opinion or another, they not so much adopt neutral opinions as they do default to them either out of distaste for the opposing sides of an issue, or even, according to economist Eyal Winter, because “[they] just don’t care about politics, which…lead[s] to voter apathy” (qtd. In Brookridge). And in doing so, fence-sitters, albeit unintentionally, reduce significant political issues like abortion, immigration, and global warming to matters as unnecessarily opinionated as best Pop-Tart flavors. Understandably, it can be difficult to establish an opinion beyond defaulted neutrality in politics, and even driving, without becoming overwhelmed by the traffic of opinions in conversations and of vehicles through intersections.
But if fence-sitters ever do manage to navigate the chaos of political discourse and emerge with an opinion of their own, they need not worry about brazenly expressing their newfound opinions. Because in politics, and still driving, neutrality is less an issue of unenthusiasm for opinions than it is of citizens adopting “neutral” ones to justify voting abstention. Granted, voting-eligible citizens aren’t exactly set up for success in voting considering the United States lacks the convenience of simultaneous citizenship and voter registration. Inevitably, in imposing the trouble of voter registration on citizens themselves, a great number neglect to, forget about, or simply refuse to do so, as evidenced by the findings of researchers commissioned by the Pew Center on the States that, “at least 51 million eligible US citizens are unregistered...more than 24 percent of [those] eligible”. And with a quarter of voting-eligible citizens not even registered to vote, it seems almost impossible that of the remaining three-fourths, a sufficient number will cast ballots.
Consider the most recent election. As chaotic and controversial as it was, voter turnout only increased from the 2012 election by 1.6 percent from 58.6 to 60.2 percent (Wilson). While many neutralists by “voter apathy” refused to cast a ballot, many opinionated citizens, especially in relation to the most recent election, became politically neutral after assuming that “it ma[de] no sense to vote” (Wilson) when on a national scale, their one vote would be rendered obsolete. Though it should be noted that single votes have in fact altered the course of American history (think the election of Rutherford Hayes), and it should be understood that a single vote most likely won’t determine any modern political outcome, it is certain that 39.8 percent of possible votes missing will, especially considering that the demographics of non-voters are not evenly split among political parties. And if that’s not convincing enough, neutral and opinionated non-voters alike need only look to history to realize they are not only important but often the most important in political decisions.
This American tradition of political apathy takes its roots from the colonial era of oppression under Britain. As tensions between Britain and America escalated, two distinct groups formed in the colonies: the Patriots, for whom the only option was independence, and the Loyalists who opposed separation from the British crown. Yet, as Kennedy and Cohen write in The American Pageant, with “many colonists...apathetic or neutral,” the Patriots, a minority movement, needed the greater numbers of neutrals to separate from Britain, while Loyalists clamored for neutrals for the opposite reason. With both ends of the revolutionary spectrum fighting for the neutrals’ loyalty, this group clearly possessed a value they themselves did not know. And as evidenced in the consistently low percentages of voting-eligible citizens actually casting a ballot in modern elections, this isn’t much different today.
As deep of a history political neutrality has, impartiality―not neutrality―is the cure. Though often considered synonymous, impartiality relates to the equal treatment of separate parties, while neutrality deals with lack of alignment with a particular viewpoint. Back at the intersection, though I pride myself on waiting at every intersection and every yellow, this isn’t really impartiality, or at least not the ideal version. Though I may respect the intersection-crossing methods of “goers” and regard them in the same manner as I do my fellow “waiters”, true impartiality―the neutrality-curing kind―is the kind that realizes not every intersection and not every stop light are equal, and as such, each one encountered should be approached distinctly from those before and after. But not only that, each one should be approached with the understanding that what may be the best approach to one intersection is not necessarily the best to others.
So this means at the voting booth, rather than working through the ballot by just voting down or supporting every measure listed, considering each individual measure and its accompanying arguments deliberately and separately from those issues preceding and following.
Though my driving certainly isn’t the best, and I really should consider crossing intersections in certain yellow light instances, for my own safety and sanity, I won’t. I can only hope that soon, at the voting booth, I’m a whole lot more impartial there than I am behind the wheel.
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