
I was reading a thread on Facebook recently and ran across somebody who commented a couple of times about something that really made me step back and think. He was talking about how people complain about politicians who are currently in office but they offer no plan to fix whatever it was they were complaining about.
On the surface, I completely agree. If you’re going to complain about something, the least you can do is have some ideas on how to fix it. If you don’t have ideas on how to do that – or, if you are like a lot of social media arguments nowadays and you can’t even supply any reasons WHY you are complaining – you lose a lot of credibility.
For instance, say you reply to a Facebook post about hog farms and you do nothing but constantly complain about how much they stink while offering no solutions on how to fix the stink. In other words, based on your argument alone, you could have been commenting on a post about gas station bathrooms, spoiled milk, or most essential oils that show up in different little canisters and Scentsy’s and spray bottles around my house almost daily, and your argument would have been exactly the same. All of them stink and that’s your entire argument.
But how would you fix the problem? Where could the hog farms go? What could the hog farms do? If your plan is to get rid of them, where do the bacon, pork chops, pulled pork, and hot dogs come from? Would you come up with something ridiculous like moving them to floating offshore farms? If so, where does all the poop go? You didn’t really solve anything by complaining, now did you?
And the main reason is because you didn’t back up your argument with a plan to fix it. The guy was right, in other words. If you don’t have a plan, pack your mess up and leave. Or just shut up. If you can’t come armed with a specific plan to fix the mess, what good are you?
Unless. And this is a very specific “unless.” This is a made-for-the-US-in-2020-because-the-country’s-gone-mad “unless.” And this “unless” has to be preceded with a question and it definitely requires explanation. First, the question.
Does a politician have to have a plan for every political complaint they have when they are trying to join a legislative body whose opposing plans are chiseled in quartz, never to be altered or even discussed, much less negotiated or compromised on? Asked another way, when 170 people in Raleigh refuse to budge, what good is it for me to have a set “plan” when I might need to spend my entire term trying to figure out how to infiltrate the combat zone of this Hatfields versus McCoys legislature in hopes of finding a way just to encourage mature, unifying dialogue? Why in the world do I need a plan for that?
Let’s say I had decided to rejoin a political party and run for office with all the associated labels given to each. Sounds like as much fun as falling into those big rapids up near Buffalo, but I digress. If I had done that, however, I could actually run for office without a plan for any of my complaints because my party would have told me exactly what my plans were. And I wish I was joking. Regardless of which side I was on, I could have answered the title of this blog post in about two sentences. Like this:
Does a political candidate have to have a plan? Nope. The puppet masters who are actually in charge of your candidacy will guide you down the path they want you on, so there is no need for any plans of your own. And that goes for either party.
But what about for me, the guy running unaffiliated? Do I need to have a plan for every complaint I have? I’ve thought a LOT about it, and I get the same answer every single time: Absolutely not. And why not? Because as it currently works, the political right has their plans which the left hates and the left has their plans which the right hates. If I came strolling in with plans from the middle, guess who would like them? If I actually won this election and I rolled into that room of 120 representatives, I would be the only person in the room that liked my plans.
So that’s why the answer to this blog post is not just no, it is HELL no. A political candidate, especially one rebelling against the parties and running commando, does NOT need a definitive plan for every issue.
And that’s because I have something that will trample “plans” all day long. I have a head bursting with ideas and a willingness to change my mind or build on other’s ideas if it helps this state and country and all of its citizens flourish. It doesn’t matter what the topic is, I probably have an informed opinion, but I don’t just have an opinion, I have a very creative open mind and an opinion I’m willing to let change.
Shooting out of my head at any given minute like uncontrollable bottle rockets are ideas on how to make those opinions better and more inclusive and how to make them happen with less cost and less government and more compromise. I don’t wish a brain that can’t shut off on anybody because it is exhausting, but I am finally getting skilled at using this affliction for good. So if I actually win and anybody in Raleigh wants to talk ideas, I’ll be all over that opportunity. More than likely, however, I will need to take with me a pillow into which I will need to muffle the screams at adults who have no interest in doing so because “working together” is no longer in the legislative lexicon.
Think about two things that back up my argument for just a second. First, what happens in this state or country when someone from either party votes against a piece of legislation that their party sponsored? It’s a travesty, is it not? The members that did NOT challenge the legislation feel that this insubordinate radical needs to be metaphorically burned at the stake. Think about poor Mitt Romney when he went against Trump on the impeachment trial. You would think he had killed somebody. You are NOT allowed to have unique thoughts in Raleigh or Washington. You must do what the party wants you to do.
Second thing. Did you know that both the Republican party AND the Democratic party have these national organizations that could politely be called “bill mills” and more accurately be called corporate-backed, party-first think tanks that write legislation they want to see happen in every single state? In other words, most bills that you think your representative has written or co-sponsored were actually written by somebody in another state who was paid by corporations, lobbyists, or other such deep-pocketed benefactors, because if THEY write the legislation, they can insure that it is friendly to their pocketbooks. If they let the states write their own legislation, they have less control.
For the Republican party, that “bill mill” is called ALEC, the American Legislative Exchange Council. For the Democrats, their “bill mill” is called SiX, or the State Innovation Exchange. Nifty names, I guess, but I view them in the scary manner I think I should view them. They are trying to write state’s laws from a federal perch, and they are succeeding, meaning our laws are being written BY corporations FOR the benefit of corporations, and I just feel highly unrepresented in that legislative model.
It also means that party candidates in 2020 don’t need a plan for what they will do when they get into office. Their plan has already been decided for them. And it’s been decided on the federal level, no less, even if they are only running for state or county office. I don’t care what side of the aisle you are on, I want the people that live in North Carolina to develop, research, compromise on, and write the legislation that affects North Carolinians.
I’m all for making corporations strong because they employ America’s workers, but I don’t want them writing my laws. If you have never seen a perfectly drawn personification of a conflict of interest, that is it. I mean, think about it slightly differently. I’m willing to bet they don’t go out of their way to write laws that benefit their workers or the small businesses of the world. Neither of those would be good for their pocketbooks.
See? HEAVY conflict of interest. Look those two organizations up if you want to research them for yourself.
So feel free to vote for the party candidates this November whose plans are decided before they ever get to Raleigh or Washington, and you can be assured that their votes will be made so that they fall perfectly in line with their leaders, almost like they were not elected to be leaders themselves. They were almost elected to be robots.
Well I’m no robot. I have my own ideas, and I fully expect that I will piss off the ones who like their little status quo in Raleigh. To that, I say oh well. I anticipate a victory in this race means I will need to spend nearly every waking minute of my time in office battling those “plans” that benefit political parties more than North Carolinians. I will come armed with almost no plans but to be a representative that uses a brain bursting with ideas to make sure we ALL get to live the best lives we can in the most liberated nation on Earth.
I am so glad that I was momentarily distracted while driving yesterday, and took a wrong turn near the Food Lion (why does food always seem to be subconsciously encroaching on my mind, so much so, that it now controls my steering wheel?! Lol) where I saw your political sign on the back of the Finch Lee house. That led me to your blog, and now I’m a big FAN. Win or lose, please keep on writing!
Nicely written. I like the way you think.