UPDATE! Politics: the Death of Democracy

Wow, what a response! We are overwhelmed at the incredible outpouring of positive comments (literally have only had one customer bash me for posting it). The common theme is that most everyone agrees we need to start talking without an agenda. So my request is simple….share this idea far and wide. If you want to share our newsletter as a vehicle for that, great! If you want to share it it in your own words, great. Just do what you can to help steer us away from the us vs them mentality. Thanks for reading it!
Side note….congrats to those of you that realized my picture flub. In my angst over posting a “political” piece, I grabbed a picture of the Dawley’s pastured ducks, instead of the chickens I was talking about. Phyllis was the first to let me know about it so she gets a $10 credit. If I make it a contest to see who could figure it out first, it’s not really a screw up, right???
As you may have figured out, our little newsletter here pretty much avoids politics of any kind. From a business standpoint its better to stick to beautiful cuts of meat, stories of proud family moments and the occasional picture of our puppy Tuff. Before I go off script and offend anyone, here is a picture of Tuff to calm your frazzled nerves…
Now that your in a “puppy frame of mind”, I’m going to tell you a story. It’s a story about two friends of mine from another life. We are still FBF’s (that’s FaceBook Friends, meaning that we don’t have a relationship outside of social media anymore). We used to see each other socially all the time and I have a lot of respect for them. They are both intelligent men and I believe they both believe they have the greater good’s best interest at heart. We’ll call them Mark and Bob.
Mark is a staunch republican, while Bob is an unwavering democrat. Actually, they are both unwavering, which in my opinion is a large part of the problem. I have watched their interactions on FB for a while now for my own entertainment. Here is how I’m entertained. Typically, one of them will post an article or a meme outlining the obvious failings or triumphs of our current President and then there are 5-500 comments back and forth about how stupid and wrong the other guy is. The thing is they seem to both do a tremendous amount of research and so their barbs are pretty well thought out and to the point. It’s great comedy and goes way beyond the now easily spewed “libitard” or “racist” name calling in most posts on FB these days.
Quick sidebar but an important one to me….This is the only time you will hear me or anyone in my family use the word “libitard”. You may not realize it but it is a pretty direct derivative of the word retard which for those of us with developmentally disabled family members and friends is as offensive as the “N” word. Find a new word to indicate your disdain for those that disagree with you. Digression over….
Their intent seems to be to educate the other on their obvious ignorance. There are a couple tactics used. My favorite is the classic passive-aggressive “please explain to me X, I truly don’t understand” or the more direct “I’ve known you for a long time, how can you be so stupid?”. It goes on for a while and always ends the same. “Our world is doomed if your side wins”.
Let’s be clear… there is zero education going on here. In fact there is zero exchange of thought. There is zero consideration of new ideas. There is zero intake of information except to the point that what the other guy said can be used against him. It is the poster child for futility and wasted breath.
And it is exactly what the leaders of both sides want. Ok, here is as close to a political opinion as you’ll get from me. Until we realize we have been collectively duped for decades and that the government leaders we have in place, ALL OF THEM, are only interested in us being distracted nothing will change. If we are distracted by our outrage over the other side we won’t notice that our government leaders are ALL robbing us blind. And that is a perfect environment for them to continue to steal America from us day by day.
I’m not a conspiracy theorist by any stretch of the imagination. At least not in the “the moon landing was done on studio lot 54 at MGM” and “JFK now resides in a McMansion in North Caldwell, NJ” sense. But at some point don’t we have to realize that the system of government our lauded forefathers dreamed up and built has been bastardized by personal greed to the extent that it needs a major overhaul? I mean, four years ago we collectively voted in to the presidency a TV reality character with no political experience, a business background with a checkered past at best, and a truly shitty human being by his own supporters standards. I don’t care that he lost the popular vote, he won by the system in place and we have had to live with it. And now we are faced with a choice between the same divisive, hateful, unproductive leadership we have had for the last three plus years and a guy that even his own, completely dysfunctional party can’t rally behind. Seriously, that’s the best we can do???
Maybe it’s always been this way. Maybe this is just a part of turning 50. Maybe everyone at this point in their lives comes to the gross realization that, like Santa Clause, the Easter Bunny and 50 is the new 40, it’s all a scam. I was Alex P. Keaton growing up. Regan was my guy, what a leader. I believed (and still do) that capitalism was the greatest invention since they started canning beer. That if you worked hard and controlled your own destiny you could have anything you wanted. Obviously, that’s not the case anymore. Those ideals don’t exist anymore and fundamentally can’t be achieved under this version of our system of government.
I don’t like wallowing, it’s unproductive. So what do we do? Well, one of the great life lessons I have learned is if you’re digging yourself into a hole….put down the shovel. We must stop letting the government dictate how we act and react. They work for us, remember? We must not allow ourselves to be given a choice between two really awful candidates. You know why third party candidates get no attention? Because we have been ingrained to believe there are no other options besides the two controlling parties. When did we become a nation that accepted rote doctrine? Isn’t that why we hopped a boat from England?
Here is what I propose. Let’s start a conversation. Let’s talk about what we want as a nation. Let’s LISTEN. More importantly, let’s HEAR. Here’s an example. Democrats would have you believe that Republicans want closed borders, no immigration and a moat with piranha surrounding the USA. Republicans would have you believe that every Democrat wants the government to allow wide open borders and send limos for the criminally insane and dangerous. If Marc and Bob were to have an honest conversation and actually listen to one and other, they would realize this simply isn’t the case. Sure there are the ultra-left and ultra-right that actually think that way. But they are a very small minority. It is up to us in the middle to start real conversations and put leaders in place that will listen and act on what we as a nation demand. It all starts with common sense, a commodity sadly lacking in our country right now. It starts with saying “hey, how about we take care of everyone we have in our national family now before we allow more folks into our home” or “how about if we tax everyone equally instead of allowing the poor to get poorer and the rich to get richer”? By the way, I am in no way saying you can’t get as rich as you want, I hope to be rich someday. I’m just saying pay the same percentage if you make $10,000 a year or $10 billion.
Ok, I got the ball rolling. Talk amongst yourselves. Seriously, start talking. Not yelling. Not berating each other. Not re-posting memes created by a Russian bot or a 15 year old in Thousand Oaks. Post an idea, a thought, a possibility and DISCUSS it. Let’s start identifying folks that listen and take those ideas and flesh them out into a platform we can all get behind. And for the sake of the future of our nation, let’s elect them into office. And most importantly, let’s not accept what we are being served by the governmental elites anymore.
It’s all just exhausting isn’t it? But we have to suck it up and do the work. The only way to eat an elephant is one bite at a time. Nothing will be changed for us. How many of us spend hours teaching our kids that they have to work for what they want, that nobody is going to just give them stuff (and if you don’t you’re part of the problem)? Yet we sit by wait for the national situation to change while we do nothing substantive about it. Time to get to work, people!