So you don’t “do” politics. You shy away from the conversations that your relatives are having at the holiday dinner table. You ignore the headlines and avoid the friends who have signs on their lawns during an election cycle. All of this is indeed your prerogative and you feel that it makes your life easier. You can’t stand the “drama”. You get enough crazy nonsense from work. You just want to sit and watch Netflix in your pajamas and ignore what is happening in the world. Why get upset? You can’t control it, can you? According to you, there is nothing you can do about it anyway.
This train of thought is totally acceptable. This is how we have been conditioned to think. No one wants to fight at the holiday table. You just want to look at Facebook to see your neighbor’s grandchildren trick or treating. Who wants to add stress to their lives unnecessarily? Nothing will ever change, so you are just going to let it go. You may not even go vote.
However…let’s think about this differently. If you were the manager of a company, would you simply allow the workers to do whatever they chose to do or would you oversee what they were doing and hold them accountable if they did not perform at an acceptable level?
Would you hand your children over to a stranger and not check on how they were being treated or would you monitor the situation closely to be sure your children were safe and well cared for.?
Do you want to hand over all of your money to strangers and trust that they are spending it appropriately, or would you request a full statement of how your money was allocated?
If you are ignoring politics, this is exactly what you are doing and more.
Public servants are just that, public servants. They work for YOU. They work for WE THE PEOPLE. Thus” we the people” must pay attention to what they are doing. They are spending YOUR money. Why would believe that you do not have a say, or that your input does not matter? What is being funded? Does it benefit your community? Does it assist those in need? Will it help your family have a better life?
Politicians vote on school matters. In some cases, they run your child’s school. They vote on the curriculum and decide what is important for the children to learn. They fill your children’s school library with books, that they choose. They fund the supplies for your child’s classroom and at times even set the menu for the school lunches. They decide on vaccinations that your child might require to attend school. They send your child’s school administration funds to keep the school operating.
The government votes on taxes that you will pay. Taxes that are taken out of your paycheck. They charge you taxes to live in your home. Those meetings that they have all of the time, which you pay their salaries to have, are determining issues that will ultimately affect YOUR life and the lives of your family.
But YOU don’t do politics.
No one is asking you to start protesting in the streets. Not everyone is cut out for that.
No one is telling you to make politics the topic of every holiday meal. We need to enjoy our families.
But what we need to make ourselves a better country is for everyone to pay attention.
READ. Read a lot, and not just memes on social media. Some of them are accurate, but you cannot base all decision-making on posts you read on Facebook or from watching Tik Tok videos. Read both sides of the story. This is not about political parties. In fact, the parties are part of the problem. In many cases, neither is there for” we the people”. They are working for their own careers, which is precisely why we must keep them on their toes.
Do not just watch left-learning or right-leaning news programs, or listen to podcasts that express one opinion. Listen to all of it, then make an informed decision.
Do not dismiss ideas that are not what you are used to thinking. The media loves for us to think something is “misinformation”. This has nothing to do with informing us of the “truth”. It is simply to create more news thus more work and more income for them. They love drama and in most cases, they are reading a script prepared for them that has zero to do with what is actually going on. After all broadcasting companies are generally making money for the same entities, whether they report left or right.
You do not have to DO politics, but you do need to have some knowledge. Knowledge is power.
And please, exercise your right to vote. I know that many people believe that votes do not matter. They really do not matter if you stay home and give up your rights.
We are in a crucial time in our history. We are not being told many truths. We are walking around fearful, confused, and often uninformed. We need to take back our power. It is easy. Just pay attention. Stop allowing yourself to be distracted. That is what they want. The politicians are like children who are sneaking around while their parents are taking a nap they told them could take.
This is your business. You are the CEO. They work FOR you. They do not tell YOU what to do. You are in charge. They have forgotten that since YOU do not do politics.
It is time to remind them who they work for.
You MUST stand beside your fellow citizens. We are very divided and that makes us vulnerable, it makes us weak. Those in charge, prefer that we are arguing with each other because then we do not argue with them.
We are a part of our own history, it is downright dangerous to ignore what is happening.
We are distracted, we are not interested. We are kept busy staring at screens. While we are distracted, there is a lot going on. We need to pay attention.
We are the owners of our own fate. Do not give that ownership away because you don’t DO politics.
It is not that simple.
One ant is easily squashed. An army of ants is far more difficult to ignore and they will continue to grow until they receive attention.
“Individually, we are one drop. Together, we are an ocean.” Ryunosuke Satoro