In our current culture and climate the political machine of America has become an ongoing and ever present entity of modern world. Everything is interconnected and relates back to politics nowadays, which has led to a diverse set of ideas but also has led to greater overarching issues in our society. As a civilization that is supposed to be at the cutting edge of technology advancement and is considered to be a first world country we have generated a lot of non-civil discourse amongst ourselves rather creating meaningful dialogues. Often it is stated that our country is divided by politics, this statement seems to be a reoccurring thing echoed by the vast social media machine. It rings true on something’s, however when you get your boots on the ground and talk to people you often find that the division is not as great as some might think. Personally, I think you have to separate out individuals in our culture into categories; those who care about politics, and those who don’t. By understanding that these groups are all around us, and that they interact in interesting ways you can start to understand why progress has halted on some things and why we have moved forward on other things. Of course there are always outliers, every great system of classifying or organizing needs to have an understanding that as soon as you try to assess and classify entities within the system you will discover discrepancies, or things that do not fit either or both parameters given. I think that an adaptable understand is required for most endeavors, most do not. I guess that might separate me from others, but that is alright. So let me break down the reasons why I think we have people that do and do not care about politics and finally why I think its an overall distraction for the people of this society.

Please understand that I do not intend to belittle or minimize the greater social problems, merely I intend to point out flaws that have caused greater stress on our society. I believe that politics is a game, a useful game when played correctly. Overall it is played incorrectly. Politics is the greatest social game ever constructed by our inherent human nature. Currently, those that play the game play with loud voices and disregard the idea that progress can be made in civil manners. Yes, there is a place for the loud voices; they have just become so loud that it has disallowed the facilities for civil mannerisms to take place. Everything has become ride or die in the current political climate. People are choosing sides for their entire political identity rather than being balanced with ideals. Some of the people in politics and their supports have picked their side and taken it to an extreme. Some are actually extremists, but mostly we have dedicated individuals who are unwavering in political identity. This has caused a big game of tug of war essentially. I feel it is necessary to expound upon this idea in order to point out the inherent flaw. The political game is supposed to be played with manners, wit, and compromise; instead it is played in America with immaturity, malice, and filibusters. Of course, the old ways were not always the best, but the new ways leave much to be desired. We cannot hope to make any progress when those in charge of the wheel of progress intend to stop every quarter mile to argue about the road they are supposed to drive. There are many issues with politics, I only hope to underline some of them. Before I dive deeper into it I feel it necessary to explain and define some things for my purposes of relaying information to you the reader. I was once told that if you wish to make an argument for something you must outline and define things as clearly as possible so you are understood and not misconstrued. I may be rather long winded with my thoughts, but I would rather that than have someone misunderstand my content. So let us continue to define things.

First, lets talk about those that care about politics. How do I define these individuals? I define these people as those who care about the political game, they make it necessary for themselves to know and understand the rules and news happening within the game. They openly will talk about it with you, they share things on social media. They are engaged in the game, even though the baring they have on the game is minimal they still continue. This is a good thing, I have no strife with anyone who is involved or not involved. Simply we must observe the behaviors of those involved and not involved. Those who are involved often select groups or ideals that align with their interests. They then become overly infatuated with them and as a result have made this political identity a part of their overall personality. They then seek out interest groups that align with that identity and surround themselves with individuals that promote those ideals. It is common place for these things to occur, nothing wrong with hanging out with people of the same mindset. You encourage group thinking and promote your social issues, I see a flaw in this of course but it really isn’t that bad of a thing. The fatal flaw I see is that these individuals close themselves off from outside thoughts. Both sides of the aisle have this issue, it is not just one sided. The political game mixed with social media has created a gravitational effect. These social media companies have algorithms that show you what you want to see, and promote that content on your timeline. So you won’t see a wildly different political viewpoint on your timeline, most of the time. This encourages networking and growth of ideals, however it is slow to progress. I’ll get into the why it is slow later on. Currently though, your exposure to your political world is skewed in your favor. That is what I am getting at. If you are a democrat, most likely your social media feeds will be filled with democratic stuff. If you are a republican, the same is the case. It is a positive feedback loop on steroids, it has engrained these ideas and promoted them in the minds of individuals to the point where opposition coming across their path is excused and being wrong. There is no entertaining the thought and having civil discourse, there is just absolute refusal. The other flaw they have is that they spend so much time talk about things that they either miss the opportunity for action or just never take it.

Second, those that do not care about politics. These are most commonly the people on the ground working 9 to 5 in a job that is intensive and soul draining. They often disregard the news, and do not care the happenings of the political game. They think that it has little bearing on their lives and thus have little to no interest in it. Why would they consume social media? They just worked overtime and wish to sit down and have a beer and watch TV or do their chores. Sometimes these are the people with the free time, they make enough money that they can live comfortably but they still would much rather be hanging out and not talking politics. Sometimes people try to disguise them selves as uncaring individuals when really they do because they talk about it often. These people know enough to be informed but act as if they don’t care. (Guilty, honestly I am a mixture of the two. Most of the time I do not pay attention, but I pay attention sometimes to understand why the price of something changed or to see if legislation has change.) Often people do not care for politics simply because they feel they could be doing something better with their lives. Rarely, people do not care because they see the bigger picture and think that the game is rigged and choose not to play. Then there are those that simply feel they are not smart enough. The issue with these people is that they my support something, but they might not care enough to actually do something about it. They get so caught up in ignoring it, that they don’t take action. Their inaction becomes a vacuum for those thinking everyone should be taking action in the other group, which in turn creates a stigma around these individuals that they are of opposing view points. In reality they often aren’t, they just are too tired or don’t care enough to refute it. They lack the motivation for the passion, they think the passion is a fleeting thing and that in the end it doesn’t matter.

So why is progress slow? Well we highlighted the individuals in society who do and don’t care, one group is active the other passive. The active people often bicker with each other and disrespect one another, this results in them not making little progress. Yes they are moving, but only inches when there is miles to go. Our passive group is open to progressing but are disengaged for any number of reasons. These feedback loops intersect; they are not parallel in a vacuum. They intersect, often the active people try to get the passive people involved. They do, but often a portion of the active people fall off the wagon and become passive. It’s not really binary, playing the game of politics or not. I know I might be explaining it as such, but honestly it has way more variables. I think that a lot of people try to play and not play the game. I think that it either results in some committing to being active or passive long term. Others I think continue to ride the line between the two. Personally I think I do, and I think that it is healthier to. We cannot progress without action, our society will not evolve and change over time. I think that we currently exist inside of a game where action is discouraged because you have to win your side absolutely. You have to ride or die a political belief, there is no room for compromise anymore. So it seems at least. Keep in mind this is my perspective, I am human and flawed. When this country was founded the political game was different, not everyone was educated, and those in power genuinely wanted to represent the ideas of their select people. They were willing to compromise with each other to get their goals accomplished. Yes, sometimes they even took years to do so. Yes, sometimes it didn’t always go the way they wanted. But more often were they able to sit down and have a civil conversation about it. Of course there was shouting, but there was much less of it. Now we have shouting from all directions, opinions that lack variety. You must conform to one side or the other, your the enemy if you sit in the middle or are on the other side. We don’t view each other as people, we see political opponents to be overcome and trampled. Competition is good, its great in fact. But this competition feels like a zero sum game. Yes compromising is slow sometimes, but straight up you get to make progress for everyone. You sit down and talk things out, understand each other and work out what your willing to give up to achieve your goals or what your willing to allow in order to get something in return. Now, its just “I will win. I refuse to have any conversation.” The compromises of the past took time and effort, and made progress little by little. The happenings of today often make little progress, but instead of little by little they do it all at once. Then nothing happens for a bit. Then a little progress happens. If you were to graph it like it was an interest rate, I would say the older way would make more progress overall because it was consistently happening. Here and now, its randomly happening in all directions. Often in opposing directions.

This is why I think politics is distracting the people from action. The game pitches each other against one another, while they squabble progress is halted. Yes, things do progress. But it is slower than it should be. I think honestly, the majority of the people in this country would happily sit down and have the discussions and compromise. I feel like the elected officials see the writing on the wall and know this. They also understand that their world runs of this absolutism, and if they abandon it they will be condemned as the political enemy. I think the thing wrong with this country is that our politicians no longer reflect that actually views of the people. They are a exaggerated and twisted form of it for the gain of others and themselves. I do not intend to sound like a conspiracy theorist, I intend to illustrate the idea that they have created a facade that has distracted the masses from the ways to progress. They’ve halted the flow of progress and only allow things through when it benefits them the most. I think greed has corrupted the top, and that they have lost sight of what they are supposed to represent for the majority. This seems to be a trend that more people have noticed. The amount of passive players of the political game has increased with the next generation as they have seen the writing on the wall. Most know that even if they wished to take action that it would be like screaming into the endless abyss. Only a small few will ever hear the echo of their own words while the rest will sit in solemn silence. More and more are choosing solemn silence, it is easier and requires less effort. They scrape by inactive in the game for progress just so that they can live lives meant to be lived. Rather than yell at each other over dinner or at a rally. Damn, that was rather melancholy. If your going to point out and complain about something, I think you should always follow up with a solution. People who complain and never solve are passive, those that complain and solve are active.

So what solution do I think we need? Honestly, I think we need to reform the political game. We need to reform things and go back to some tradition. I am not always the one for tradition, but in this instance combining tradition and some newer concepts would probably be a good thing. Our founding fathers set up the government to be the few ruling the many with the objective idea that the few would best represent the many. Yes, they intended for it to be an accurate reflection. The founding fathers also viewed the many as unwashed masses of dimwits that should not be given full unfeathered access to the power. If you did such, then you would be creating bigger problems in the long run. By making it scalable and making people represent the interest of a wider collective you please the most people and make sure their voices are represented. Now, back then they had a little bit more honor with it. They didn’t explicitly say it because they didn’t think it was going to devolve to the point it has. They assumed we would be self correcting and would be able to delineate and add extra rules as too preserve that concept. Currently, we do add rules and things to try and amend things and make it better and more suited for modern times. However there are things that still need catch up to be done. Our president is voted into office via the electoral college, you can lose the popular vote and win the electoral college. Supposedly it is supposed to be a fool proof plan, it was created with the intention of being edited and updated to better ensure the people were represented. But that didn’t happen, it became this thing of the political game wherein if you can sway the electoral college you can ignore the people. There is nothing stopping electors in the electoral college voting differently, now in some places they have made changes so that you have to vote with your state, but federally it is not. This is something we could reform. Otherwise we could implement term limits, modern politicians make careers out of being politicians. That is their income, that is what they do. They sit there and get re-elected for years and years until either they die or are dethroned. Which is no easy task. This means that a much older population is ruling the masses which is disproportionately younger than their representatives. A lot of issues in the younger generation are not being handled appropriately because there is a cultural divide between the perceived culture and the actual culture. If congress had younger people in their pushing issues that are actually different, the entire thing would be better. This is not to say that we need the young and hip folks to take over, but rather we need people in charge that are better able to relate to the average age group of the collective as a whole. Finally, we need these folks in charge to actually sit down and learn that they won’t get everything they want, but they’ll get something if they work together. More progress will be made if they can be civil instead of have filibusters that go nowhere. By being able to have civil conversation you are able to actually get stuff done. Modern politics refuses to have civil conversation and thus has resulted in inaction. Yelling at each other has distracted us from consistent social change. If you yell, your opponent won’t listen. If you talk calmly and listen with organic interactions where you show interest in the other people like they are people you facilitate long term progress by building relationships rather than degrading each other as non-human individuals that you hate.

Hopefully my thoughts make sense, hopefully they are presented in a way that you the reader can follow. I hope for people to get to the point where we can do this, but part of me knows it is futile to try. I will continue trying to convince more and more people that respecting each other with civil conversations makes the best and most long term changes but alas I know it will be like talking to a wall. Thank you for reading, please go enjoy my other writings!

-Ben