Hello all, I am finally back after a nice dollop of life got in my way of posting when I would have liked.  Today, I want to help bring to light some opinions and observations about our “love it or hate it” political system and how we let it become a power grab entirely out of our hands.  Sounds depressing, I know, but read on and let me explain the ways you and I as individuals can work to fix this problem.  This is the first piece in a series I have titled Power Play and will cover the effects of power on a lot of touchy subjects for most people.  I intend to inform more so than convince as I believe the only way to truly look at who you are and decide what you believe is to educate yourself.  Anyway, I hope to shed some light on some things to help you as a reader look inward and develop your own view.

The whole idea of a two party system is efficiency, plain and simple.  It is simply a this or that mentality, something that you will see frequently referenced in this series going forward.  Whether you consider yourself red or blue, elephant or donkey, liberal or conservative, you will find yourself having a hard time having a voice among your respective crowd.  This system succeeds in getting people to take a side (for the most part), but that is merely surface level in the big picture.  You do not see any other groups popping up and making a real run at any form of our government, simply because the system is extremely strong in keeping its foundation consistent.  You will never see the political uprising and system change that so many people call for (Sorry Bernie Sanders) unless there is a massive movement that would easily eclipse the Civil Rights movement and any other protest in our country’s history.  Even then, the power does not waver from those in charge if voting does not follow suit.  This was the intention of the founding fathers in some part, to keep the number of cooks in the kitchen low.  They also had the intention of a small voting pool (specifically white land owners) but times have changed drastically (for the better) and there are a lot more voices that have the ability to speak up.

How does one speak louder among the ever growing population in this country? Well, you may have seen plenty of people tell you to call your senator/representative/county official about issue X, Y, or Z and these people are generally right.  This is the most effective way to make any sort of real difference in our system, because the influence you have in a district of 20,000 people is leaps and bounds ahead of say 200,000,000 in a national election. This is compounded even more so if your mentality is not in line with most of those around you.  At every level of the system, there is a party in power and a party powerless.  That is the core principal of almost any system but it is most abundantly true in our United States.  The party in power will do their best to stay there, while the other side has to try to build in the time between elections in order to make any difference. This is the main breakdown in American politics.  States become Red or Blue and stay that way.  This is why the 2016 election and almost every other shock political win in the past 100 years has happened.  People assume a state one side or the other and write them off only to be surprised when a district, state, or even the country prove them wrong. Only in these scenarios do we see people in mass take there political power back.

I am not registered to either party and because of this, I cannot vote in my state’s primaries. That power is completely taken from my hands and forces compromise.  I am mostly powerless in my current environment due to my firm stance of deciding each political election independently.  I am proud of stating myself independent, but I certainly have views that lean more one side than the other.  I can state for the most part that I see things in a “liberal” view but I also have tremendous respect for the military and the more conservative view of our country’s security as my father spent 21 years in the Navy.  He and I butted heads on almost everything in the book before this last Presidential election but we respected each other’s perspectives because they were clearly impassioned as well as from two totally different generational periods.

This example leads right into how you can gain your own personal power back in politics.  It is not as simple as “stand up for your beliefs” as much as it is “stand up for your right to have beliefs and respect the belief of others”.  That is the power that each individual has and should exert in the political scope.  You are not going to change anyone’s mind by entrenching yourself and only accepting one option or one solution to a political problem.  One side will never totally take over the other, and we can honestly thank the people that disagree with most for that.  Our political system works in principal (not always in practice however) because people have opinions and take sides, and I encourage you to continue doing so regardless of my approval or agreement.  Debate and argument are what keep the typical citizen caring about what goes on in the government.  That interest is why Congress cares what we think as individuals and why the system does not derail even when it feels like half the country is in agony for a period of years.

My final point and easily the most important thing I can warn you about is allowing political blinders to form in your brain.  As I said in my post on perspective, our brains like to assimilate and search for confirming evidence to keep things as they are.  This is unavoidable and helpful for the most part as it keeps our view of the world in general order.  In politics, though, it is maybe the most toxic and dangerous issue the country faces.  I cannot state enough that any form of media or group that can exist solely on political coverage is a business, they profit off of an agenda.  This applies to anyone and everyone, regardless of what side you stand on.  If you allow yourself to become politically rigid, you become a brick in a wall that the rest of the country has to climb over to move forward.  I say that with every intention to stir you to not become complacent, whether it angers you or not. This rant of sorts is the smallest tip of the political iceberg and I keep it vague to make it clear that both sides can suffer from these issues but can also benefit from a small shift in thought and mentality.  I am sure that politics will surface again in my continued writings so I will just slap a “To Be Continued” on this topic and part ways.  Thank you again for stopping by and I hope to hear from you, I gladly take constructive feedback on this blogging venture.