The Forgotten Vote

The presidential election is speedily approaching as November draws nearer, and as usual around this time of the race, much attention is on the campaigns of the top candidates and their positions on the biggest issues that the country currently faces. I won't pretend to know very much about politics, but I do keep up to date just enough to have a general idea about what is going on. I know where the candidates stand and I know who I will vote for when the time comes. 

This isn't going to be about my opinion on the candidates or who I think is most suited to run the country because I believe the current scenario between Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump is a lose/ lose situation. Neither of them represents me, nor do I foresee the general population benefit much during either's tenure. The fact that there are only two legitimate options to choose from every election is very unsettling to me. How can the answers to our nation's most complex problems be so black and white? Why do we always have to settle for the lesser of two evils? I look at our two-party system, consisting of Republicans and Democrats, as merely opposite sides of the same coin. When simplified, these dominant parties are but two branches of the same party, and that is the party of big business corporations. The parties don't oppose each other on issues. They work together to compromise. I feel powerless in this system because I don't really have a say in anything that is going on. And when I say "I" here, I speak for all of us.

Many may disagree with me and bring up the fact that we do have a voice and the power to elect who we want by getting out and actually voting. I'm also aware that we have the opportunity to vote in primaries to elect the best suited candidates who then get the nomination and represent the parties on the ballet. That all sounds nice and democratic, but when it comes down to it, we are still being given a selection of who to choose from. By the time we get to go vote, the majority of the decision for the next president has been made already. That selection is usually based on the candidates who raise the most money for their campaigns and get the most media attention and spotlight.

Plain and simple, the media is a corporate business. If you think the media is all about giving you the best quality news that provides you with the most useful information for your daily life, you clearly don't understand what is going on. The same way that businesses are trying to sell you a product, the media is trying to sell you a story and you pay by tuning in. What kind of stories do you think sell the most, ones about the positive things going on, or the ones that are going to make you react emotionally? The stories that bring everyone together, or the ones that are going to split people up, force them to pick a side and cause controversy?

When I first heard Trump was running for president, I was outside of the country and I thought it was a joke. In my mind, there was no way he had a chance of ever getting into office. Fast forward to today, and that joke has potential to become a reality. My initial reaction to this was to assume that a large population of US citizens are really fucking stupid. Repeating "make America great again," and "I'm going to bring jobs back to America" over and over doesn't qualify you to run a country. How are you actually going to do that? Those are clearly just slogans.

But when I really thought about it and tried to make sense of how a huge Trump following could seriously be possible, I came to realize that the vast majority of people are living in a state of fear. That fear comes in many forms, whether it's the fear of terrorism, the fear of not being able to provide for your family, the fear of a total collapse of whatever ideas are being held onto, among many other fears. I believe that there is a direct correlation between these fears and the amount of negativity being pumped through our television and computer screens by the media. Everyday there's some new tragic story topping the headlines and if that's all you see every time you turn on the television, it's natural that you'll perceive the world to be a reflection of that. When you watch the news and hear story after story of all the bad things going on in the world, it's going to program you to be subconsciously in a fearful state all the time. When people are in fear, that leads to anger and anger leads to hate. Hate creates this "us vs. them" mentality. The people who support Trump are fearful of the current state of the world and look to Trump as the solution because he is catering to those fears in his campaign. 

Trump's entire campaign has been fueled by the media because it sells and he knows how to keep his name in the headlines. The ridiculous, racists remarks that he makes sells because it fires people up and gets them angry. The images of people protesting and rioting outside of his rallies sells. People want to tune in and find out what happened. By selling these types of stories that get people to react a certain way, it creates a divide. That divide keeps people focused on fighting over issues that are minuscule, like beliefs and cultural values, which allows for the bigger, more important affairs, like bills and laws that directly affect people, to be handled without any attention. In other words, it keeps people distracted from what's really going on.

When 90% of the total media in the United States is controlled by 6 mega-corporations, that is very problematic. That is too much power and influence by a small group over the masses. With that much power, you can manipulate people with your content. If you think about it, the media tells us what we should pay most attention to, not what is necessarily of most value to us. The stories the news puts out becomes important to the general population. That is control. One of the reasons I find social media so valuable is because it allows the people to share first hand accounts of what they experienced. When you dig past all the memes and selfies, you can actually find genuine content and information being shared among the people. To me, that's what the news should be all about. 

Now on the other hand, successful campaigns require a lot of money. It takes millions of dollars to run a campaign and that money has to come from somewhere. According to OpenSecrets.org, Clinton raised nearly $290 million dollars for her 2016 presidential campaign. Candidate committees aren't going door to door asking for donations. The vast majority of the money raised is coming from financial institutions, interest groups and corporations. They are backing the candidates that will support their own agendas and keep things in their favor, usually pouring money into both parties to ensure the best possible outcome. Corporations and financial institutes have a ton of resources so they can afford to spread themselves out and tackle multiple issues at a time through means such as hiring lobbyists, whose job is to try to influence legislators, in order to protect the entities who they work for from policy changes that may negatively affect them. 80 percent of lobbying expenditures can be accounted from businesses, which totals at about $2.6 billion dollars a year. Why would businesses be pouring that much money into something if it wasn't proven to be beneficial to them? Public interests groups that represent the taxpayers and consumers can't keep up with that. Of course politicians are going to have more of an open ear to those supporting their campaigns. Not to mention, if the majority of the information that politicians receive is being backed up by one side of an issue, it only makes sense that they'll lean toward supporting that. I won't even get into the connections between some of the people who hold positions in office and their affiliation with corporations because it is a deep rabbit hole. In my opinion, it is big business that is actually running the country, not the people and our votes.

There are other parties that exist, like the Green Party, the Libertarian party and the Constitution Party, but you hardly ever hear about them in the media, which is the major source of information among the general population. Unless I do some research on my own, I don't really know what these parties are about or what they represent. How can you support or even become informed on something that you know nothing about? What if these parties actually had some plans and solutions that work to make the country a better place? Any third party is completely shut out by the media or portrayed to look extreme, which upholds dominance on the current system, thus keeping the debate narrowed down and the current establishment controlled. 

So if we, the people, really aren't having any say in who runs our government, the government that is supposed to be working for us, then how can we take back control in order to bring about the changes that we want to see? I believe that the answer to this lies in our pockets. In all of our pockets. Money. What I mean is much easier and more realistic than donating your hard earned money to campaigns or the candidates you believe in. I'm talking about where and how we spend our money on a day to day basis. When it comes down to it, it is our spending money that is feeding into the pockets of these institutions and corporations, making them rich, and in turn, giving them the power that they currently have, which allows them to do what they want to. 

I've changed the way that I look at money and how I spend it. To me, with each dollar I spend, I am essentially casting a vote. When you go out and buy something, you are in effect saying "I support this" and you exchange your money for the product, which in turn allows the company to continue their business. If a company isn't selling any products, they obviously aren't going to stay in business or they will make the changes necessary in order to please the consumer. Business only cares about one thing: profit. Money equals speech. When the money stops flowing in, corporations will listen. 

So with this philosophy in mind, if your money has the power to make a vote, then only spend it on things that you truly support. And I think that what you support should reciprocate that support back to you. I'll use food as an example because it is a major expense and we all have to eat. One of the things I support the most are natural, organic foods. I will spend extra to eat organic fruits and vegetables because I can be assured that these foods are being grown the way that they are supposed to and not filled with chemicals or genetically modified, which will cause me harm. Why would I give my money to a company that doesn't care about my health and well being and cuts corners in order to produce a product at a cheaper expense to increase their profit? I clearly don't matter to them. The potential adverse health effects, such as cancer, birth defects and infertility are not important to these companies or the stores that sell these products, so why would I give them my money to help them get richer?

So how does this tie back into politics and voting? It's simple. Become a more conscious consumer and stop giving your hard earned money to these corporations and big businesses that don't care about you and use the money you support them with, against you. Instead, support the local, independently owned businesses. By supporting your local businesses, you're keeping the money in your community. When big business chains move into your neighborhood, they aren't putting money back into it. They're taking it away. Profits go to the company headquarters, which is based somewhere outside of our communities. Tax dollars are being wasted on infrastructure and maintenance for big businesses, by building huge parking lots or plowing large areas of land for construction, money that could go toward other things more important. Small businesses are owned by people who are apart of the community, just like you. They know you. They listen to you. They are interested in learning how to serve you. Your voice is heard by local business owners. Not to mention, it is the local businesses that make our communities unique. Big chains all look the same and sell the same products. When big businesses take over neighborhoods, they all begin to look the same, no matter what city or state you are in. It is the uniqueness of a place that draws attention, brings in people from other neighborhoods and tourists, which further continues the strengthening of the local economy.

Becoming a conscious consumer is no easy feat. It takes much effort and discipline to stay aware of how you spend your money, as well as what you feed your attention to. It is not a change that you can just make overnight. It will take time but it is a process that can be done gradually. Stop watching these biased media outlets with their own personal agendas and turn to alternatives that will give you different perspective. Cut back on always relying on big store chains and begin to shop more at local, independent businesses. You can't create change from the top. You must start from the bottom and build up. That means each person doing their part, making changes independently, which leads to a community effort, which then leads to entire cities making adjustments and so on and so forth until that momentum is collectively propelled to a national and even global level. 

 Our current system in society is set up like a big pyramid. The bottom contains the majority of people who do all the work that supports the tiny minority at the top and that tiny group reaps all the benefits at the bottom's expense. As the majority, we can take our collective power and put control back into our own hands by redirecting where our money is going to. Essentially, I believe that we as a population, have become too passive. We live our lives like we are victims of circumstances that are out of our control. We see ourselves as being just one person and when you think about making a difference from that angle, obviously the challenge seems impossible. Of course, a company isn't going to go out of business because one person decided to not support them anymore. But that is literally the beginning of what it takes. One person over here decides to make a change and then another person over there does the same thing and so on and so forth until the next thing you know, you have an entire movement of people all supporting a cause. You have to start by being the example that you want to see.