I loathe politics
I hate how emotional people get about their political beliefs, in either direction. What people forget is that politics is a popularity vote. It’s salesmanship: convincing people, getting them to side with you. Add the commercialization, and the money that buys influence, and I can’t stand it.
Independent by default
For most of my life I didn’t really know what Republican and Democrat, conservative and liberal, actually meant. When I first registered to vote, I registered as an independent. I’d looked at the parties and didn’t wholly agree with either one, and I wasn’t going to blindly side with anyone. I only changed when I realized independents couldn’t vote in the primaries. Now I switch my registration to whichever primary has the person I think is right. I’ve voted as a Democrat, and I’ve voted as a Republican. What I’m looking for, whether it’s a candidate or a judge, is the person most likely to succeed who lines up with my morals and with where I think this country should go.
Voting is an obligation
I don’t recall either of my parents ever voting. I think they disdained politics so much they didn’t want to know. I see it the other way. A lot of countries don’t have the privilege of choosing their leaders, and here that privilege is really an obligation: understand who’s running your state and your country, and if you have an opinion, put it in writing. That’s what elections are for. Either do the research and vote intelligently, or don’t vote at all. But if you don’t vote, keep your mouth shut, because you don’t have a say.
What government is for
Government’s first job is to protect its citizens: their safety, their finances, their ability to live their lives. That means more control in some places and less in others. It should step in when someone is harming other people, citizens or visitors alike. And in some gray areas, like suicide, it should be able to protect people from themselves.
This country was founded on Christian principles. Until the country as a whole decides otherwise, I think we should be proud of that heritage and support it. I don’t want to get preachy about it, but I believe government’s job is to uphold those core moral values and make its own citizens its first priority.
And part of government needs to be run like a business. There’s a military arm and a safety arm, but someone has to look after the country’s financial health, and that’s a fiduciary responsibility. It isn’t about any one person. It’s a duty every country has.
Whose picture is on the wall
Serving taught me that it doesn’t matter whose picture is on the wall. Whoever the commander-in-chief is, your job doesn’t change and your life doesn’t change. Who wins an election matters, but the person in that chair doesn’t make or break a country. When I left the Marine Corps, I stopped owning a television, and I’ve filtered out the news ever since. My parents watched it religiously; I’d rather not. The rest of that story is on my service page.
Where it went too far
The vaccine mandates were the government overstepping. My objection isn’t to mandates themselves; there have been times, like polio, when the government knew enough, or the situation was dire enough, to step in. My objection is scientific. I’ve watched how long drugs normally take to get through trials and approval, and we know from thalidomide and AZT what rushing a drug can mean. These vaccines moved faster than anything I’d seen, without the trials that tell you the side effects and how well it works. Mandating something without that evidence is wrong.
Keeping people from working and firing them is where we crossed the line. There were other ways: separating people, different work arrangements, even curfews and stay-at-home orders, which I think would have been safer and done more good.
Read the message, not the author
I still recommend Midas Touch, by Donald Trump and Robert Kiyosaki, and I don’t care who wrote it. It doesn’t just look at why people succeed; it looks at why they fail, and that’s the critical part. It’s about how to be effective, where to focus, knowing your limits, and when to walk away. None of that is politics.