Ironically, I try to stay out of politics. I say ironically because I've held an appointed political position and I often have to teach politics to teens and adults from a current to historical perspective. This year long----I don't even know what to call it----gearing up to a Presidential choice has saddened me. That saddening has made me reticent to "get behind" any of the 4----yes, there are 4 candidates. One thing that I will say before I get into my mini-rant is that I don't make choices/vote from a perspective of whether I personally-emotionally "like" a candidate. I see candidates as public employees and my vote as my "hiring" of them. Oh, and I really dislike and find it disrespectful from sides that scream at me why I should follow them. Because we all know that being screamed at how wrong you are is exactly what has transformed all of our opinions throughout life.
I'm also deeply concerned about real issues being relegated to non-issues in this election. Like racism, misogyny, emails, immigration, integrity and the environment Somehow in the swarm of dualism, the perception that there are only 2 candidates, and therefore two ways of considering the lection and it's issues we've lost sight of this as a leadership role instead of a popularity/agreement contest. The other day I was strolling along thinking about my undecidedness and I thought about Trayvon Martin and Michael Garner and Sean Bell and about Syrian refugees and Obamacare and Newtown and Detroit and unequal pay and persistent poverty for 40-60 million Americans.
I believe that it takes time for humanity to progress, to move along, to evolve but I also believe that if we are pushed in to only two choices, that's not a choice. Evolution is not bullying by two political parties to accept one over the other because of disappointment in the current political system or repudiation of negative social traits of a candidate. What happened to an alignment to hope, to evolution, to progress? Is gender or it's now this or that one's turn the best progress we can make? Are there no new ideas?
These past few years have given us an increase in racialized violence frm a police force, armed by the military to no longer be simply peace keepers but paramilitary forces, armed for war in small towns and cities across America. So we're under a formulating martial law backed by overwhelming armament on the local level. There was a time when if you and I opposed the police force and got together with a thousand like minded people concerned about our rights, we had a chance. Now we're against a standing army, everywhere.
Children kill children because of mental illness, influences of excessive violence from their entertainment and a 4000% increase in diagnosis in being of wrongmindedness. This means that the coming generation is being bombarded by a self-doubt of internal reality perception. A disconnect from self. Perhaps even a disconnect from how to connect to a higher power.
I think about candidates expressing racism, discrimination and prejudice and the shock and ire that some react with----often people who've by the virtue of skin color haven't experienced directed racism. They champion the racists' remarks as character of exclusively his own when even as LBJ crafted the Civil Rights Act with MLK his recorded phone calls have him talking about niggers this and niggers that. Those of us darker than milk know that many men, particularly older ones, occasionally the rich ones, are the milk most soured. Walls of color and wan have been built and reinforced for decades by Presidents. We are in no way surprised by candidates of racialized bent.
EMails really don't matter to me and I watched several seasons of Homeland recently on Hulu so I believe that things that happened in Banghazi and Benghazi, they are two separate places, are often the tip of a classified, interwoven web. Whether military or diplomats, I believe that when you offer to serve or choose to apply to work for them, make a conscious decision about what they are willing to sacrifice themselves for.
I am undecided because the maelstrom of drama in this election makes me believe that like a bout of diarrhea both those with decades of experience and those with decades of money must go. It is their level of thinking that lacks solution to domestic and foreign issues. To the issues that will free people who are now under martial law and children who are targets. I believe that our societal political system of left or right, dualism, is limited, it demands that in order to be heard, you must first conform to either left or right. That there are only two ways of seeing the world. Us or them. Good and bad. Male or female. Black or white.
To not vote is not to sacrifice a candidate it is to say I disagree with you and I disagree with you too.
Now imagine this: a racist in the White House. We've survived. There should of course come a time where women manage the office just as they do in European, Eastern and Africa countries. But is femaleness reason enough? Was Blackness enough? I often bristle at the way right and left promise the end of the world should one vote for the other instead of their candidate. Because that suggests that the rest of us would allow one person to destroy the world because of their elected position. Humanity is a smidge better than that. Or that we should flee the land if someone we don't agree with is elected because we've never survived a person of iffy character and personality traits. Those who suggest they'll flee are of course privileged and what about the rest of us, what about the poorest of us? What about the people of Detroit who can't leave? Is one's faith so fragile that one person would make you relinquish your home? Then what good were you to begin with?
We need men and women of both character and ideas and compassion and strength and even ruthlessness to change the world. Those kinds of people generally wrestle with themselves, their convictions and watch the world and participate on the levels that matter and those that don't.
I've got students to get through college no matter who is in the White House and a company to manage that will continue to help and educate people all over the world with books and videos and articles. A President that I'm not in love with, nor like, that will move the boulder and inch is small to me. Maintaining the status quo of how Washington politics works or simply bringing in brashness isn't moving to me either. It would be nice to hear on a national platform from the other two candidates, put their feet to the fire and see what the numbers look like then---when opinions and positions that aren't aligned to left or right are taken seriously....because historically that's how we've grown.
Never forget Presidents didn't like or trust MLK......and 93% of Black churches wouldn't host him for years on end DURING the Civil Rights Movement.
Tell me what you think on here or in email: KylePhoenixShow1@gmail.com!
Enjoy!
No comments:
Post a Comment