Up Next, 2016 Presidential Election

As a registered voter, it is not too early to begin preparing for the 2016 Presidential election. We should already be familiar with how those politicians that are in Washington to represent us have been and are currently conducting themselves.  Have they been and are they still ignoring our collective voice while cozying up to big money in what has become our disgraceful money-based political system?  And have they suddenly now become or will they soon become shameless schmoozers who will dupe those of us who are not on top of political issues into reelecting them?

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We have a responsibility as American Citizens and registered voters to make our democracy as perfect as a democracy can possibly be.  We may be thoroughly disgusted with the system and how it works but we must continue to participate in it in order to make it better.  We cannot and will not make it better by burying our heads in the sand!  Besides, that is exactly what some billionaires and millionaires and others who favor an oligarchy want us to do.  That way, our government which is supposed to be of the people, by the people and for the people can be run by them while the rest of us watch from the sideline.

Many times ambitious politicians get all the way down into the mud in their efforts to achieve their political goals.  They themselves will say and do almost anything and will also stir up their constituents – who, as a result, sometimes say and do hateful things, to win votes.  In her 2015 commencement speech to the students of Oberlin College First Lady of the United States (FLOTUS) Michelle Obama encouraged those students to, despite its ugliness, not run away from the noise but to run to it because the noise is the place where they would be able to make the most meaningful difference.  While encouraging them, she spoke of others who in the past refused to be deterred and instead had run to the noise.

According to this quote from 3chicspolitico the FLOTUS said “But these folks didn’t let the ugliness and the obstacles deter them. They didn’t just give up and retreat to the comfortable company of like-minded folks, because they understood that this is how democracy operates. It is loud and messy, and it’s not particularly warm and fuzzy. And believe me, I know this from personal experience. (Laughter.) Over the years, I’ve occasionally run into the noise myself. But I’ve come to realize that most of that clamor is really coming from just a handful of very loud folks out on the fringes.”

In Denver, we just completed voting in a runoff election to select a City Councilman to represent the District in which I live; District 11. Although this was a local election, democracy got a bit loud and messy as each side leveled negative allegations against the other. Ultimately, however, we elected a City Councilman to represent us.

My point is that we must either ignore the noise and do our civic duty by voting anyway or we must run to it and have reasonable discourse with those who disagree with us in an effort to get them to see things from our perspective. But whether or not we win them over to our side, we still must vote and so must they. The thing that we absolutely must refuse to do is quit out of pure frustration with the system and hand our government over to a few billionaires and millionaires.

When I hear all of the talk by those who say that ‘we need to take back our government’, I take that to mean that we need to take it back and clean it up, not destroy it. We must take it back from those politicians who are abusing it by violating their oath and abusing their power. We must not become so cynical and battle-weary that we give up on our country by becoming quitters. Even though democracy may many times become loud and messy – depending on our level of interest in politics, let us either run to the noise and try to make things better or ignore it and vote anyway.

Eulus Dennis