By Staff
I knew it was coming. During election years – it always sneaks up on me during the summer months. Just after the primaries. When the candidates are chosen and the debate is on.
I knew it was coming.
I knew I was going to have to start paying attention.
I cram for elections like a midterm for a course in political science. I'm happy to get a C – that is to say – to get through an election year without an abundance of curse words and aspirin.
Before I was of the age to vote – I couldn't have cared less about the political arena or the voting process. I was the quintessential relatively uniformed and relatively uninterested American future. And though that might sound a little alarming considering my occupation – which should make being informed within the political arena second nature rather than an annoying necessity – there you have it. Blame it on my generation – too busy whiling away the summer months with friends and advancing video games to take much notice of trickle-down economics. A generation that thought it had seen everything when it watched its soldiers go off to the Persian Gulf in the 90s – only to realize they were sadly mistaken when those soldiers would go back to an even stormier desert.
I still don't like it. I could do without the debates. I could do without the "My name is (insert Obama or McCain here) and I approve this message" messages. I could do without the uproar as people of opposing views choose to slug them out everywhere from news programs to school yards and living rooms. But I know that I can't ignore it. Because ignorance really is only to the detriment of our own well being.
And I owe my education in the nature of politics and more specifically – the process of voting to two very opposing and yet incredibly influential forums. My family for one. Within a tree of grandparents, aunts, uncles and parents a multitude of political views were presented to me from a very young age. And those views spanned an entire ocean.
With so many family members living in the Middle East -rooted in a life of terrorism the likes of which we as a nation are only beginning to get to know personally -and a history of relatives who have immigrated here – I was given a uniquely global perspective.
I could expand on the education I received from my family's history, as they lived through the civil rights movement and the beginning of the Vietnam era while living in Grand Rapids. But I can't do that without divulging political preferences – and that's simply not my place. Nor is it to divulge those of a group of small town residents slinging back bottles of Anheuser Busch in a bar that's now abandoned in downtown Buchanan. They say you shouldn't discuss politics or religion in a bar – but people do anyway. And I was always curious of the controversies. It wasn't just points of view I was listening to. It was passion. One by one, people would explain how policy changes would affect them and the businesses they owned, operated or toiled away their days in.
Such words … pull the passion of politics out of the dirty water. Enter, sweet cynicism. On television, no matter how charismatic each candidate may seem – it can seem like little more than pandering. The Latino vote, the Jewish vote, the female vote, the blue collar vote, the guy in the restaurant in a small town in Wyoming vote.
Sometimes it seems as though what was devised as a truly original process – the core of what this nation was founded on – has become little more than a game of capture the flag.
But seeing such passion in the eyes of those who felt the need to explain to me what a difference a vote makes – I promised myself I wouldn't go completely uninformed or uninterested again. Though I certainly don't get election crazy. And I don't throw fists at opposing views on health care or even the war.
I still pay more attention to those cute, glossy signs that bounce around during conventions than to the loopholes that commentators and reporters alike try to find in candidate plans. And I still give points for how each candidate rolls his/her sleeves up. If they're high and tight – they're passionate about what they're doing. If they're low and loose – they're just not that into it.
All jokes aside … if I've learned anything from the people the process touches the most – it's that if passion leads you to action – that in itself fulfills. It's enough to make your way to the polls – as inconvenient as it may be – and drop a ballot in a box. And know that you're making sure that those who are fighting for us in the hot sands of tumultuous desert … those that are waiting in endless lines for government assistance … those that truly believe they can make a difference as they travel across the country in a campaign bus – aren't trying so hard for nothing.