Where Politics Meet Small Town America

Sure, you vote for your freedoms. Sure, you vote for what is right. Sure….

I will buy that the day that I can afford a Lamborghini on my Wyoming working three-jobs budget! People vote for, about 90% of the population, how they are swayed with propaganda. If you truly were in an isolated room and had to read about each candidate, or wait reading, is that a thing anymore? Anyways–being an informed voter not being swayed by friends, memes, social media, and TV media in general, I think politics would look a lot different today.

Politics starts at the grass-roots, local level. From this humble beginning it works its way up to the national stage. In small hometowns across America it gains traction. Sit at lunch or after work at the local bar for a drink with a friend and listen.

It starts with the hearsay, the gossip, about local county officials, sheriffs or commissioners. What about their younger days of law breaking do people reminisce on? There is a chuckle. A shrug. Then it's said we need someone new. One person goes with that idea for about a split second. They voice an opinion about needing a change before two or three people disagree; then, the outlier goes quiet. Conversation changes and the one person is pigeonholed into questioning their own motives or beliefs.

That same person shows up in November at the voting booth. Just like clockwork, they fill in the bubbles next to those names of people they know are not fit for office. Some people know they need to go to jail or just go home away from the government building where grownup business is done because that person has reported those same people. But they are just one person. They still vote for the lawless because maybe soon I will catch a break if they “hear” you support them.

Wake up small town America!

The reason the country has gone the way you feared it would be because somewhere all those politicians were born, then raised, then they became your show pieces in Congress. All from the “Greatest Generations” prior to us. The country is broken because the cradle is broken. Plain and simple.

Based on how the youth of the country is raised, moral fibers are woven together to create the adult working class of tomorrow. We didn’t get to the Gen Z’ers walking out on jobs in what we’ve coined the “Great Resignation” because they just “felt” like it. They were entitled to it by how they were educated and raised.

Why are young women becoming bold and forceful?

Well let’s start with the pay gap. The fact that four in ten women in the workforce are crying out at the inequality according to Pew Research results from 2020, and the problem is only getting worse. To top off the inequality in pay, is the fact that 33% more of the time women are passed over for a job promotion that would ensure a pay increase more so than men. That alone does not help the political satire and air around issues when the polls are open.

Is it any wonder that when good help and hard work is not rewarded that it reflects in the polls on an emotional binge voting spree hoping the next person promising the next best thing gets into office? I might have lived in a RED state before the recent presidential election in 2024, but for the underlings holding up all this small-town hierarchy we are anything but RED. The Libertarian current runs deep and is growing. We have gone right past the liberal BLUE balancing mindset to an all-out push for equality. And, we want equality back now in the middle class!

We want diversity and we want it now! From another article in Pew Research the silent generation as a voting stronghold. It was recorded to be 79% white whereas the millennial generation, my generation, is now 40% nonwhite and growing in the transition from the Obama administration to the Trump one. A change is needed, but sadly are we misguided in that change?

I lived in a small town where you have a hard time finding diversity; it is an oddity. Personally, I am a single mom. I worked a full-time job, a part-time job, and multiple freelance projects on the cue to make ends meet. It was not a sustainable way of life. Not a healthy one anyways.

In a time where inflation if it continues will hit 8% by the yearend, there needs to be a change. That inflation projection is historically at an all-time high for us middle-class Americans. What do we do when you work hard and still the bank is calling telling you there is still another $400 owed?

Why is it that I sat at a job for 9 years of faithful service to be passed over for promotion after promotion? Others are hired in. Others are promoted and paid a higher salary because of the climate they are working in nowadays. As if I did not live in that financial present day with them, but I stayed locked in to show loyalty, loyalty is rewarded with a smile nothing more. My hard work poured into the job. I was told because we need to keep the newbies I need to just sacrifice pay because we need to entice people to work now. It is not like when you were hired.

I vote for freedom every time I step up to the polls! I write in better candidates if ballots refuse to offer me new options and better ones at time of voting. I have moved over 1200 miles to find work that pays, to find education that is equal in benefit for my son, and to find peace in that I do not have to work 18 hours a day in order to hopefully only burn the candle at both ends 60% of the time.

What do you really vote for?

The ballot in the past is not a true representation of what I really vote for because I am still imprisoned in this vicious cycle that lip service to change is all that is offered 90% of the time. When people have enough liquid or smoke courage they talk a big game. Small town Americans are drowning in the “what-could-have-been's” in favor of what is and just let it roll. That is not voting diplomatically. That is voting emotion, and fear. Do you truly believe what you vote for? Or, do you vote complacently to post it on your social media to fit the mold of the passive-aggressive people saying they are making change, but doing little to effect change in their daily lives?

References

Barroso, Amanda and Brown, Anna. May 25, 2021. Gender Pay gap in U.S. held study in 2020. Retrieved from website: https://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2021/05/25/gender-pay-gap-facts/

Kolakowski, Mark. March 10, 2022. Inflation Accelerates Again in February 2022. Retrieved from website: https://www.investopedia.com/inflation-accelerates-again-in-february-2022-5221744#:~:text=In%20February%202022%2C%20the%20Consumer,compound%20annualized%20rate%20of%2010.0%25.

Pew Research Center. March 1, 2018. The Generation Gapin American Politics. Retrieved from website: https://www.pewresearch.org/politics/2018/03/01/the-generation-gap-in-american-politics/