Vote! It’s Our Civic Duty
When I turned 18 in September of 1981, I was excited to vote for the first time that coming November. I remember vividly making sure I had all the information I needed before heading down to the county administration building to get my name added to the voter rolls in my neighborhood.
Two months went by and on a brisk fall Tuesday morning, I dragged my hungover a$$ to my assigned polling place and cast my ballot. My initial zeal had turned to apathy. I didn’t do any work to understand the positions of local and regional politicians. I voted, but did not do my civic duty.
During my 20s and early 30s, things weren’t much better. My primary focus was on completing my education, building a business, and providing for a growing family. Yes, I would periodically go to the polls, but I was woefully underinformed because I didn’t put much, if any, effort into how I felt about the political issues of the day.
I regret not taking politics more seriously in my younger years. Specifically, I regret the failure to uphold my obligation to engage with the democratic process as a citizen of the United States of America.
The purpose of this brief Muse is to ask my colleagues, friends, and supporters for two things. First, act as a mentor to those who are younger than you to help them see the value in getting educated and engaged in the political process. Second, if you’re not currently engaged, please read the following recommendations and do your civic duty. The future of our democracy depends on you—me—all of us.
As always, here are some constructive recommendations to consider as election day approaches. It drives me nuts when people throw stones in glass houses and don’t offer any kind of constructive solution to the issue they’re railing against. I’d also like to stress that I’m not telling you which way to vote.
Get informed, but not completely immersed. Get information on political issues from a variety of sources to avoid getting trapped in an echo chamber. Unfortunately, political echo chambers are everywhere as there are entertainment channels posing as “news” that unabashedly lean to the left or right. Bias is everywhere. Visit Vote411.org for non-partisan information on national, regional, and local candidates. Take everything you read or watch in the media with a grain of salt and triangulate across sources. Be curious and ask “why.”
Pay specific attention to social media. Its algorithms will create an echo chamber for you. A few clicks on right or left-leaning posts, follow a few influencers that lean in a given direction, and voilà! Your feed will now be filled with similar posts. I recommend against complete immersion in political discourse because it’s really easy to get sucked in and find yourself doom scrolling the latest gossip and mudslinging at all hours of the day. Our mental health depends on creating and maintaining balance between the political arena and daily life. Anger, frustration, and stress are everywhere. Attack ads and political narratives that play on fear, doom, and suspicion only serve to exacerbate those feelings.
There are times when the anger is unavoidable. Some issues are so sensitive and pressing that direct action must be taken. When taking action, be sure to make “good trouble.” Violence is not the answer.
Develop your own policy position statement. I’ve found the process of writing down the issues that matter to me and periodically updating that document for my latest thinking. As an example, this past February, I posted my political leanings in this forum. It’s not the norm to make your political feelings known to the world, and in most cases, this document will be deeply personal and should be kept in a private journal. However, before engaging in the process of developing a policy position statement, I strongly recommend starting at square one, which is the construction of your statement of personal purpose. In a few weeks, we’ll be publishing a formal personal planning guidebook as a free download on this site. Until then, see my Muse from March 5, 2022 that will get you started.
It is essential to start with defining your own personal purpose before delving into how you feel about the political landscape. Going about it from the other direction means that you’ll likely be acting on influence from others to formulate opinions. There’s nothing wrong with taking the advice of influencers, but start with you first.
I would also avoid relegating your political positions to that of an alliance with one political party or another. Joining a political party should be the result of your personal purpose and political policy journey. Again, going at it from the other direction means that you’re likely abdicating agency for political decision-making to others. To put this issue plainly, I would recommend staying “independent” until your own personal discovery process has had time to coalesce. Remember, there’s nothing in the Constitution that says you must align with blue or red.
Let ethics, logic, reason, and a long-term view be your guide. There’s so much hype, drama, misinformation, and downright lies that get tossed around in the political arena that it’s easy to let emotion get the best of you. It’s difficult, but do your best to stay objective when making decisions about which boxes to check on election day.
Our democracy is all about “We the People,” not a single personality or a set of short-term policy decisions or reactions to economic shocks. The rhetoric that a single person or cabal is responsible for gas prices, inflation, recession, crime rates, etc., is just plain silly when you take a step back and look at issues through a longer lens than a 30 second attack ad during the evening news. For example, inflation in the U.S. is running at 8.2 percent as I write this, but inflation in the U.K., Italy, and Germany are running at 10.1 percent, 8.9 percent, and 10 percent respectively. Global economic interrelationships are far too complex for one piece of legislation or one person to be the culprit.
Look for candidates who will make rational decisions that promote long-term economic, societal, and environmental stability. While chaos may pay off for the top 0.5% of the population (the societal elite), stability and peace are better for the rest of us. History has taught us this lesson over and over again.
We are in this together for the long run. We all live on the same tiny pale blue dot that orbits an unremarkable star in an unremarkable corner of our galaxy (thanks, Carl Sagan). Candidates with a local-only “I can’t or won’t see beyond my own backyard” view may say that they’re looking out for you, but what good are low gas prices and short-term economic wins if we’re continually rebuilding from ever more powerful weather events, retreating from rising seas, and breathing air filled with carcinogenic material from fires that rage year round from extreme drought. Anyone who promises a quick fix is selling you a bill of goods…
We can rise above, we can make a difference, but only if we move forward together. I believe in the promise of democracy and the power of the diversity of the human race. Let’s do this. Let’s uphold our civic duty to be educated citizens and vote.
