Here in 2024 and this current cycle of political discussion I have slowly started to understand more about the world around me. This world I often did not pay attention to as I had my head down and worked to take care of my family.

I have always participated in elections BUT I ultimately stopped at casting a vote. As time has passed over the last few years I have paid more attention and learned that ultimately the people in my community vote against their very best interest as well as my own best interest. This includes my neighbors and friends. We all vote in private but the results are public.

As I talk to more people as time goes by I slowly have learned that people are single issue voters more often than not. This blind faith in their single issue has allowed bad things to happen for them and their community. Just an example. Rural parts of my state vote a certain way and that vote has enabled the closure of many of their hospitals. Many people went from having a hospital within 30 minutes away to 90 minutes away as an example. This was happening before 2020 and continued on through the pandemic. They have been focused on public schools for the last 4 years and that is on the chopping block now. Instead of improving the public school system the answer from them is to give the public funding from schools to private schools (all types) instead.

People too often vote based on a few things as their issues and based on the words that elected officials say rather than the actions they perform while in position to perform actions. In order to get anything done it takes having a collection of people to do things as no single person is capable of changing anything. Not a easy thing to do because people collectively rarely agree on anything, especially when it comes to how to make things better for people.

Also a problem that we have is that people often are accepting of misinformation or disinformation if it leans into things they agree with. That is a different topic for another post.

But I really have become less accepting of the views presented that are based on refutable information. I lean more on accepting that someone is willfully wrong rather than presuming they are just not informed or such.

Ultimately I am at the point of this:
If you support the republican ticket (all levels from top of federal down to local) you are either a racist, racist adjacent or racism is not a bridge too far for you. It has taken me time to come to this conclusion and I am sad that things have spiraled down to this but there is no policies for the republican ticket outside of what they have been repeatedly doing which is taking everything they can away from people rather than allowing people the freedom of choice.