I Want To Stand FOR Something

You go to a restaurant with 10 friends, when it’s time for dessert, 5 order ice cream and the other 5 order pineapple upside down cake.  You have sensitive teeth and ice cream causes pain, and you allergic to pineapple, so what do you order?  Of course you order the apple pie, I mean, really, is there even a second thought?  

Why do we put less thought process in who we exercise our right to vote for than we do in picking our dessert?

While we are not yet nearly done with the primary elections, the country seems to already moved on to the general elections with assumptions of who will be nominated.  From what I can tell, neither of those people are supported by the majority of their own party, much less by Americans in general.  In fact, many people really abhor them (for good reason, if you ask me) and don’t want either as President.  However, even more, they just don’t want the other one to win.

One of the candidates is running with a campaign with talking points about making American great again and getting our country back.  I’ll skip over, for now, the fact that our country still IS great and, um, it’s still here, under American control, but you know what is not so “great” about our country right now?  That our choices are so poor that the majority of people aren’t voting FOR someone, they are only voting AGAINST someone.  Is this the best we have to offer?  Have we as Americans become so jaded and determined to tear everyone down that we’ve scared off the good people from running?

Many people think this is the election that will make some big, mostly undefined, changes for good or for bad in our country and think this will be some kind of turning point.  Those same people, they are trying to convince you to vote for the candidate with the “R” so the “D” won’t win, or to vote for the one with the “D” so the “R” won’t win.  They don’t tell you why should vote FOR that candidate, only that you can’t let the other letter win.  We’re playing middle school playground mean girl politics.

If you really do stand behind one of the main party candidates, vote for them.  If you really want to make a change the landscape of our government, and not just exact revenge on the people you blame for your misery, quit ordering the ice cream or the pineapple upside down cake just because that is what everyone else is doing, or because that friend who talked behind your back ordered the opposite.  There are 3^rd party candidates.  Look into them.  You might find that one is everything you are looking for.  If people quit analyzing what the person sitting next to them is choosing, the apple pie just might be the most popular dessert on the menu.

We’re told that voting for a third party is a “wasted vote,” but if you ask me, voting for someone you can’t stand just so someone else doesn’t win is wasted freedom. 

Stop giving your freedom away.  I know I won’t.  That’s why they have wine, because a glass tastes even greater after you’ve done something you can feel good about.

Shades of Gray

Life isn’t black and white.  I think that’s why they made color TV, so we could see all the nuances.  If only we could train our brains to see the colors.

Politically, I’m a bit towards the conservative side, but I don’t always agree with the conservative view (as my conversations tonight could certainly attest to).  I consider myself Libertarian as that is the political philosophy that seems to most align with my beliefs, but even then I don’t always agree.  I look at issues, and decide for myself what I think of them individually.  I don’t care if there is an R, a D, or neither next to the name of the person proposing a bill or running for office.  I have MY beliefs, and I really don’t care what organization endorses them.

Tonight I was discussing the elections with friends, friends who for the most part share most of my beliefs.  On a few issues, however, we certainly are far apart.

One of those issues was immigration.  I do believe that we need to control who comes into our country, and stop illegal immigration.  I do understand that most people come here because they are looking for a better life.  I do think that if you chose to come here illegally, it is not right to have you stay here ahead of those that went through the legal processes, in fact it is insulting to those who came here legally.

But I also believe that there is space between the black and the white.  Every rule has an exception, and we need to be able to account for those.  We may cheer at the notion of building a wall and somehow miraculously rounding up thousands of people in a few days and sending them back to where they came, but we’re not actually thinking about reality.

What do you do with the child who came here as an infant with parents that came here illegally, and obtained illegal documents, who 40 years later has no idea they are an illegal citizen?  Yep, you can be like some people I talked with today and deny that scenario ever happens, but that doesn’t help the thousands of people that the situation likely actually applies to.  Yes, some people come here for “handouts” or because they are criminals, but most people, just like your ancestors, came here because they wanted a better life than they could have where they came from.  So that child who is now 40, with a family, friends, job, and productive member of society, who only knows what it is like to be an American and has no life  their native country, what do you do?  Do you just tell them, “Too bad, so sad, you will be out of here tomorrow,” or do you give them a chance and a window of time to gain citizenship?  Sure, there is bureaucracy involved in helping them stay, but there is in kicking them out too.

And don’t even get me started on how we supposedly need to keep out all Muslims because a handful of them might be bad.  Wasn’t freedom of religion one of the things this country was founded on?  Should we make sure to ban all people from countries that have any Muslim citizens, wouldn’t that make us stop immigration altogether?  Yes, I understand that there are terrorists, and some of them are Muslim.  Some of them, however, are the sons and daughters of lily white people who have lived here in the United States for 5 or 6 or some number of generations.  Yes, we should vet people who choose to come here, but banning entire nations of people also bans the people who are escaping persecution from the same people we are trying to protect ourselves from.  And maybe I shouldn’t mention that a certain charismatic, egomaniac leader already tried this with another religion.

Things aren’t always black and white.  Building walls is only an attempt to hide from our problems and pretend they don’t exist.

If you really want to make a difference in how your country is run, choose a leader who will let all American’s have a voice by allowing our government to work as it is designed, and not someone who will dictate by executive order to only represent either their party or just themselves.  And when you have an opportunity to vote locally, for local and state government and your representatives in the house and the senate, take an hour and Google, see what your candidates stand for, and vote for those who represent what you think.  If you want to see real change, the congressional level is key.

In the mean time, I’ll listen to people explaining why they are voting for a President because they don’t like Congress, or because there is a certain letter next to their name, or because they believe our Constitution is something to be ignored if it gets them what they want.

That’s why they have wine.