Politics – It Is Not What It Seems

Both in my personal life, and in this blog, I try to remain non-political. It seems with all of the people driven to vocalize their opinions on topics that they know little about, that adding my voice to the conversation would do little to bring any clarity to the topic.

With that said, I do have an opinion on one political topic that I feel will be beneficial to some. It’s an opinion not based in fact, but rather solely on observation. I’ll be the first to admit that I my statement is an assumption, and worse yet an assumption that entirely void of any factual evidence. But I believe it as much as anything I know.

Politicians get along more than they’d like for us to believe.

If you compare the levels of angst that politicians from opposite parties hold for each other to the animosity that voters from the same competing parties hold, its no contest. Voters have more distain.

I base this opinion from years of closely observing politicians and the actions of voters. Especially in this election, we hear stories of families and friendships being torn apart simply because of different political views. Mothers who won’t talk to sons. Fathers who threaten to “block” texts from daughters. As voters, we’re often conditioned to look at things in a binary fashion. “You’re either for me, or against me”. This leads to associating politics with an ideology. And this blinding faith only benefits one group of people: politicians.

Comparatively, politicians seem to have learned that while passion wins the race in the short sprint, collaboration wins the marathon. We often hear stories of politicians from different parties getting together for drinks after the election. We see the comradery ex-Presidents share once they’ve left office. It’s as if they know something we don’t know …. that perhaps they don’t want us to know. Simply put – it’s going to be alright.

So as we wrap up a long election evening, and wake with some more answers than we had the night before, let’s not take things more seriously than the politicians who are running for office. After all, that’s what we’re electing them to do!