Here’s a few of the many reasons I will die an unaffiliated voter, candidate, and anti-partisan advocate. When I read back over this list, it feels like common sense. When I look at the world through the many lenses and mediums we’re allowed to peer through on a daily basis, I know it’s not. But this is who I am, and I like being this way. These are in no particular order. Just as they came to me.
1. I don’t need a political party to tell me we owe our children the best education we can give them. There absolutely should be conversation about the best way to deliver that, but as parents and as a society, we owe them a chance to learn, and we owe them the best possible teachers to teach them. I don’t need a party to tell me that my children are that important to me.
2. I don’t need a political party to tell me that we are all vastly different while at the same time being remarkably identical.
3. I don’t need a political party to tell me that we have rules because we have freedom, not because we want to punish people. Rules protect our freedom, and if they are broken, people should be punished in such a way that they are extremely discouraged from repeating their transgression.
4. I don’t need a political party to tell me that adoption is a hell of a lot better than abortion, but I also don’t need a party to tell me that desperate women can make decisions for which nobody but themselves can make. A hundred times out of a hundred, I wish they chose adoption, but if they don’t – or can’t – we owe them compassion rather than condemnation.
5. I don’t need a political party to tell me that we are required to equitably contribute to the things for which we as a society collectively use. We pay for those things with taxes, and if we do it right, taxation will never be theft in the United States. Fair and equitable taxation should be the goal, and I will be the first to admit that I do not have all the answers for how that happens.
6. I don’t need a political party to tell me that public money must be budgeted economically and efficiently, and for nineteen years in a row now, our government has spent more than it has taken in. I don’t need a political party to tell me that is a disgrace.
7. I don’t need a political party to tell me that education is the foundation of our society. It has direct impacts on welfare, prison population, the strength of our workforce, our economy, and even our ability (or willingness) to be propagandized by politicians.
8. I don’t need a political party to tell me that people who chronically lie should never be trusted to tell the truth. Not ever.
9. I don’t need a political party to tell me that there is one major problem with education in 2020 that doesn’t get nearly the attention it deserves. We are fully entrenched in an epidemic among an entire generation of young people who we are enabling to develop as addicts from a very young age. The human brain doesn’t fully develop until the age of 25. We’re letting them become addicts to phones and technology as young as toddlers. What is this doing to their brain? And because addiction is progressive, what is this doing to their futures as functioning adults?
10. I don’t need a political party to tell me white people are not the dominant race. That’s effing stupid to even suggest, and if that statement costs me a vote, I’m HAPPY to lose it.
11. I don’t need a political party to tell me that anything pertaining to climate change or global warming can be summed up in two simple sentences. Since it’s the only place our species will probably ever live, we should be good stewards of the Earth while we’re here; if we’re not doing that, we should move in that direction as quickly and efficiently as possible. If we do that, we can trust that whatever cyclical changes happen have probably happened regardless of our impact.
12. I don’t need a political party to tell me that there are literally millions of ways of interpreting the Bible, and there are equally millions of ways of disputing it. Because of this fact, we can’t ask people in a free society to obey laws based on the interpretations of a few. It is also the reason we can’t ask people in a free society to obey the laws of one religion when we have given our citizens the freedom to worship any religion they choose. This is precisely the reason we have a separation of church and state.
13. I don’t need a political party to tell me that to be pro-life means that a person is required to value all of it, even the nasty undocumented kid who sits at your kid’s kindergarten table with shit-stained pants and can’t speak a lick of English.
14. I don’t need a political party to tell me that we should have many more options for our young people than the three or four paths we currently give them to graduate high school. I know of two very talented students who came from poverty who ended up quitting school because of math. It wasn’t their talent. They had many more. We owe it to them to nurture their talents and not let them quit because of their struggles.
15. I don’t need a political party to tell me that taxpayer waste – in the form of ANYTHING a majority of citizens would consider excess – should stop NOW.
16. I don’t need a political party to tell me that all human beings need adequate health care, but I also don’t need a political party to tell me how we can all afford that. Because one thing is for absolute certain. Nobody in politics has a damn clue either, and they won’t sit at any bipartisan table to discuss legitimate options until big corporate lobbyists get out of their pockets.
17. I don’t need a political party to help me believe that whoever I want to get naked with is my own damn business. I don’t need a political party to tell me that government should have no say in blocking the intrinsic emotions of human beings in a free society.
18. I don’t need a political party to tell me that every human being has troubles and insecurities, and it is NEVER my job to punch down at their struggles. It is my job to lift them up whenever possible.
19. I don’t need a political party to tell me that it is also our job as co-occupants of a free society to have certain expectations of our fellow man. Personal responsibility, integrity, hard work, effort, and gratitude – among countless others – may require a form of tough love if society has decided we have given enough grace in their absence.
20. I don’t need a political party to tell me that socialism is not going to work, it has NEVER worked, and I will fight against it under one condition. That is the condition that we ALWAYS have a means to help those people who are incapable of helping themselves. There are many other layers to that under the topic of who we may need to help, but that is for a society to decide. But in America, we must help those who are incapable of helping themselves.
21. I don’t need a political party to tell me that political propaganda should be reworded and simply called, “This is our way of lying to the public.” Stop all political lies. Simple as that. Total honesty or shut up.
22. I don’t need a political party to force me to question my own integrity, because I know that if I stay independent, I never will. I like how I sleep at night.
23. I don’t need a political party to tell me when I should be offended by someone or somebody. If we are able to fully understand the freedoms afforded us in the Constitution, the only offense we should take is when someone fails to honor our own use of those freedoms.
24. I don’t need a political party to tell me that I will fight equally for every freedom afforded us in the Constitution, even if that means I have to let somebody worship a God that doesn’t look like mine. Because I will sure as hell defend my own freedom to worship MY god, too.
25. I don’t need a political party to decide on a platform of ideals that they would like for me to abide by in the coming presidential election year. I assure you, no matter what both platforms say, the extremes of both will make the most noise, and I want no part of that platform.
26. I don’t need a political party to tell me that the use of labels and extremes and propaganda and the lack of empathy and compromise and humanity is creating a society unaware of what is even true or real anymore.
27. I don’t need a political party to tell me that greed should never influence the laws of people who will never benefit from that greed.
28. I don’t need a political party to tell me that one of the greatest signs of maturity is the ability to admit when you are wrong. Likewise, the ability to admit you don’t have all the answers is the precursor to a government that has the capability to come to the table in hopes of a reconciliation of differences.
29. I don’t need a political party to tell me that we have always had two parties because the ebbs and flows of the people in a free society will keep government pretty close to the center. I also don’t need a political party to tell me that I’m wrong for attempting to understand the other side enough that the fair response is one of compromise.
I guess that’s enough. This seems destined for a Part 2, though. Maybe in that part, I’ll try to convince my readers that this party-shunning, unaffiliated campaign can actually lead to victory. Ha!! Happy New Year, everybody.
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