Politics-Schmolitics (An Explanation of Where I Am)

I’m tired of my parents trying to shove their politics down my throat. It isn’t enough that I spent the first fourteen years of my life with no window to the political world but Republican talk radio (other opinions cropped up in my teachers and peers in high school), but now I have to listen to them monologue when I call home and hear their echoes when my eight-year-old sister parrots their opinions.1

“Who are you voting for, sissy?”2

“I’m not sure, hon. I haven’t decided yet. It’s a very big and very personal decision.”3

“Well, don’t vote for Obama, he scares me.”4

He scares her?! He scares her because she has no frame of reference other than the Republican talk radio that streams into our house 24/7, and the reiteration of its messages provided by my parents almost as frequently. She can’t vote for another ten years, and if she isn’t too little to understand many of the issues, than she’s growing up way too fast. There’s no reason for her to be exposed to all of the knowledge the ever-droning radio provides. It’s unhealthy to expose a child to that much media, especially media that’s trying to form specific thought patterns in its audience.5

The hosts of Republican talk radio, and militant Republicans in general, paint themselves as the salvation of our country. They love God, they love America, they’ll keep our national morals and backbone from eroding, they’re intelligent, they’re amazing. They’re hatemongers. You want to take a stand for Christian values? Try loving your enemies. Try pulling the plank from your own eye before reaching for the speck in someone else’s. Heck, try letting someone you disagree with finish a sentence before interrupting them to tell them they’re stupid. They aren’t crusaders, they’re propagandists, throwing acid on anyone that has a slightly differing viewpoint from theirs. There is no attempt at objectivity, no small effort at disguising their hatred and disdain for anyone they deem to be inferior, and their audience is massive. Color me clueless, but I don’t see how information relayed through a haze of bitterness is more accurate or conducive to forming one’s own opinion than information gained through a report that at least attempts objectivity.6

I am not a terribly politically-minded person. I don’t follow the news, national and international, as closely as I should, and I don’t have as many well-supported opinions as I ought to. I’m a registered independent – I don’t even know for sure who I will be voting for in the upcoming election, though I have a fair idea. I may not have pinned down what I think about offshore drilling, or listed what taxes I am willing to pay in the near future, but there are a few beliefs that I can not budge from: I believe that love wins. I believe that the wellbeing of a community is more important than the wellbeing of the pride of a political party. All life is precious – that of the unborn child, and that of the drug addict on the street corner, and that of the clergyman, and that of the murderer in the prison cell. It should be protected and fought for. I believe that each and every individual has the responsibility to become the best they possibly can, and the right to live in a world that helps them get there. And I believe that, when I step into the voting booth, it is my job to choose the candidate who will come closest to helping that world come to pass.7

When I vote, I don’t want to vote for who my parents like. (Don’t misunderstand, I won’t vote the opposite way just to assert my independence, but my decision will not be influenced by theirs.) I don’t want to vote for the person whose supporters were the loudest, or the person who was the smoothest speaker. I am naïve in many ways, but I am not nearly green enough to think that the next President will single-handedly turn the world on its head. Whoever it is, they can only move in a positive direction by being willing to compromise, to set aside their party and their pride to dialogue with other people of power and determine what is best for the country and the world. When I vote, I will be casting my ballot for the Presidential and Vice-Presidential candidates I feel will be best able to step outside of the lines and right angles of the box their party holds them in, and into the curves and shades that make up the world the rest of us inhabit. 8

And I will do so without any radio personality’s approval.