Tag Archives: opinion

news-commentary, random musings

Voting with the house

Confession: I’m kind of addicted to the show Big Brother. Call it a summertime guilty pleasure.

Not enough to purchase the live feeds (though I do recall one year somehow having the live feeds, and that was bad news because my productivity died that summer) but I have a separate column in TweetDeck for it, and if you open my browser and type in the letter “H” it autofills in with “Hamsterwatch” these days. So. Suffice to say, I’m pretty hooked.

There’s a phenomenon in this show, though, that’s happened pretty much since day one: voting with the house.

When house guests vote to evict a player, that person GENERALLY already knows they’re going. Eviction days are only fun when there’s a big blindside, but those are pretty rare. But it drives me crazy how often people will want Person A out, but they vote out Person B just because “that’s what the house wants.”

Expect the unexpected… I think Big Brother should add the twist that house guests are not allowed to discuss who they are voting out. I suppose then they’d have nothing to talk about. But once, just once, I’d love to see an eviction day happen in which NO ONE knows what’s coming. They all vote based on their personal feelings and games.

I’ve been chewing on this a lot lately, especially given its an election year. How often do people “vote with the house” in the real world?

This election year, something I hear a LOT is, “Voting for the lesser of two evils.” I saw a great post that disagreed with this sentiment stating that voting for the lesser of two evils is still voting for evil. That really set me back on my heels a bit. What a way to look at it!

A friend recently posted to Facebook that they were considering voting third party this year, and a few of the comments really got to me. People saying this person might as well not vote at all, “Because it won’t matter anyway.”

Hmmm… excuse me, but it does matter. It always matters.

I remember back in elementary school learning about the voting process and how voting is done privately. You vote knowing you will not be persecuted for that vote, and that’s the beauty of a democracy: having a voice.

But in recent years, I’ve not felt that way as much. I’ve felt the pressure to “vote with the house.” I saw a very insightful post regarding this year’s election, and the very first response was, “But you didn’t say who you were voting for…”  They don’t HAVE to tell anyone. If they choose to share that information, that’s their prerogative.

Otherwise, I feel we should all stand for what we believe individually. Vote what you feel in your heart, not what your neighbor bullies you to vote. Study the issues. Weigh them in your heart and against your life and needs. Vote smart, not scared.

news-commentary, politics

Some thoughts on shutdown

2 Comments

I don’t talk politics much. It’s a deeply personal subject for most people, but within that very few are fully versed on political topics. I’ll readily admit, I don’t know all the details of every political move made. I only know three things for sure:

1 – I don’t consider myself Republican nor Democrat. I vote based on the individual and their stance, not based on their political party.

2 – I consider myself a conservative. But I’m probably one of the most liberal conservatives you’ll find in that I acknowledge others have different beliefs/wants/needs than I do, and I respect that. I only ask others respect my feelings in return.

3 – I think a multiparty system is crucial. You may be staunchly one party or the other, but you gotta admit you need a check-and-balance brought from the other side.

All that being said, I’ve always felt very thankful to live in a democratic country. “Government of the people, by the people, for the people, shall not perish from the Earth.” (Abraham Lincoln) However, as the American public has asked for more laws on one topic or another be made, I’ve slowly felt like our democratic society has started to fade a little. And that fact has scared me.

And I sit here today a solid mix of scared and angry, as our lawmakers refuse to find a compromise on budgets, health care, and who knows what all else (because lets face it, every law passed these days has half a dozen non-associated things attached), leaving our country at a standstill in so many ways. I’m scared of the repercussions of this — things we may not find out about for days, months or even years down the road. I am angry that the country has become so divided. I sometimes wonder if this is how people felt in the time of the civil war, as friends and family sit on opposite sides of the issues. One person is screaming the Republicans are evil. The next screaming the President has become a dictator. And while we bicker amongst each other over what “they” are doing, those in office are treating this whole shutdown like its some sort of game to win. Treating one another like parents with a child throwing a tantrum.

Meanwhile its the American public — the ones who put our politicians into place and who are the ones that our politicians are supposed to be working FOR — that suffers. Families are left wondering how they are going to put food on the table, as government employees are put on furlough. (Meanwhile, Congress still gets paid.)  Others who have saved and dreamed of a vacation to a national park or monument find those dreams and that money go to waste as they are told, “No.” by federal security people. (Except for those who give a proverbial middle finger to barricades. These guys are my heros.) Even worse, those kicked out of their homes because they sit on federal land. Still others, who are in clinical trials are left without medicine. Don’t even get me started on our military not getting to celebrate mass nor having death benefits during the shut down.

The only “positive” spin I could possibly put on this is that at least now we realize how much we rely on our government. And that realization is more than a little bit scary. But perhaps its time we rely on our government less and more on each other.  The Bloggess wrote an amazing blog on this point last week. Perhaps we’ve come to expect too much of “those guys & gals in office” who often seem to be more worried about how they look to fellow politicians and less about how they look to “the people.” They forget its “the people” who gave them their jobs. It’s “the people” being used as a pawn in this game. It’s “the people” who are suffering.

I wish this could be like in the movies, and some one up in office would sit down and read the news and then the constitution and suddenly be inspired to swoop in and fix everything. But this isn’t Hollywood.  I’m not Sandra Bullock and you’re not George Clooney. (Unless you really are, and if you are — hey thanks for reading!) This is America, and there are no special effects nor a script to read.

So what do we do? We help each other. And we think long and hard about who we put in office next. We pray for this shutdown to end soon.

I’ve read more news articles and editorials for and against both sides than I can fully digest. At the end of them all, I can only surmise what I already felt: they’re all wrong. (And I don’t want to hear either side defended in comments, because dammit in the end they are supposed to be leaders… and leaders bring people together not rip them apart.)

I don’t want to hear neither President Obama nor House Speaker John Boehner point fingers any more. I’m tired of hearing, “I’ll negotiate, but only if…” from both sides. I want to scream/cry/beg them all to grow up and work together. Stop being like a bunch of eight-year-olds bickering over who gets the ball first in a big game of HORSE. Because that ball is the lives of Americans, and we’re all getting scared and angry as a whole.

We the People of the United States, in Order to form a more perfect Union, establish Justice, insure domestic Tranquility, provide for the common defence, promote the general Welfare, and secure the Blessings of Liberty to ourselves and our Posterity, do ordain and establish this Constitution for the United States of America.