Independent

Hello again blog world. This is the second post of “Vote Independent!”. If you are new to this blog and you would like to read part 1 (I highly suggest it) you can either scroll down or click the link above. Enjoy!

“The Whitewash Effect”? Alright, yes, I did just make it up off of the top of my head but it still holds a lot of merit. Why?

People like to stereotype.

It is extremely easy for all of us to stereotype, especially in politics. In politics people love to stereotype. All you need to say is:

I’m a Republican. (greedy heartless corporate dealer who hates the common man)

I’m a Democrat. (lazy poor person manipulating the system with their nanny state)

I’m a Libertarian. (unrealistic crack pot stuck a couple hundred years in the past)

And so on.

A lot of people won’t spend the time to understand your views if they are not Republican/Democrat/etc. It’s too much work and, more importantly, they think they already know you after hearing your political party. This is the reason “No Political Affiliation” should be the most common description of the Congress’ political views. This is part of the problem that political parties pose. You will always get “whitewashed” by many voters just for your political affiliation. Unless you fit the stereotype perfectly then you will be misrepresented in people’s minds, especially the opposing side’s mind. And why would you want that? Your chances with the opposing side are already bad enough, you need to trim down on the misrepresentation as much as you possibly can.

Now imagine you see a male politician and that man is running as an Independent. Well that just made our job, the voters’ job, a lot more difficult! We have to actually listen to what this man says in order to decide if we like him or not. Astounding! Granted, some people will be lazy and won’t bother, but usually those aren’t the people who are voting. So what happens when people listen to you? Well, hopefully you’re talking about your policies and what type of contributions you would make to the government and America and yada yada yada… Hearing your policies is the biggest thing. You don’t have a whitewashed label for people to stereotype you into but you do have policies that people will either agree or disagree with. You might have the fiscal policies of a conservative while having the social policies of a liberal and the same adherence to the Constitution as a Libertarian. And you know what? That’s a good thing. People should mix and match views! Because Conservatism is not the answer to the world’s problems. Neither is Liberalism! If everything was absolute then we wouldn’t be witnessing partisan warfare today because we’d just use the one size fits all method and go with that. But instead we have both sides thinking they have the only solution which obviously creates something even more inefficient than a temporary one party control. At least something gets done when one party does something… Hardly anything gets done when both sides try to ruin each other. And this will continue until the polarization decreases.

Part 3, which will probably be the final part of this “Vote Independent!” sequence, will be about corruption and other unfortunate side effects of parties. Stay tuned!

Can eating egg yolks be as bad as smoking? http://expertscolumn.com/content/eating-egg-yolk-dangerous-smoking