More often than not, a candidate’s stances on trivial problems are what gets him elected president, because this country has a one-track mind. When it comes to thinking hard about the real underlying issues that we have, we turn the other cheek and continue bashing one another for our political affiliations. Instead of working for meaningful change, we simply bandage the wounds and hope for the best. We, as a nation, have to step up and shift course, because if we don’t, our democratic republic won’t last.
However unfortunate it may be, it has often been the case that politicians need to make backroom deals in order to compromise on certain issues. This is something that is known to most in the political sphere and, regrettably, it is often necessary in order to achieve even the smallest bit of progress. But, even this tiny crumb of hope is dwindling, thanks to the new political philosophy which makes absolutely no room for compromise—even behind closed doors. On top of this, the media promotes whichever narrative sees more ratings or reinforces their particular ideology. Because of this, we see petty disputes directing public discourse and determining elections, rather than important issues holding our focus. But, if we want to see more progress, then we cannot allow the big issues to go unnoticed.
We have to demand that our politicians strive for the betterment of society, rather than pleasing corporate interests and worrying about election cycles. Rather than lowering the difficulty of exams in school so that students can pass, we need to take steps to ensure that those students better understand the material. Rather than gripe about how politicians and government do nothing for the American people, about how Congress is a useless shell of what it once was, we must demand transparency, accountability and integrity from those leading the country. We must get money out of politics. We must abolish the laughable two-party system and replace it with a debate stage, not operated by private groups, that allows all candidates to speak to the public. We must stop the American war machine. We must find a way to eliminate and change our debt-creating monetary system. We must demand better, because we deserve better.
True, meaningful change will take more than harsh words and frantic cries of the failures and corruptions of politicians and powerful men. It will take an idea, a real activist movement, which sees a united effort to derail the systemic problems which hinder progress and afflict the commonplace with ignorance. A peaceful, highly informed and passionate movement, deeply embedded in the psyche of everyday Americans, will be the revolution to lift the veil of illusions and bring us into the future. Not these small, arbitrary issues that everyone wants to focus on.
“We must become bigger than we have been: more courageous, greater in spirit, larger in outlook,” Haile Selassie, a former Emperor of Ethiopia once declared, “We must become members of a new race, overcoming petty prejudice, owing our ultimate allegiance not to nations but to our fellow men within the human community.”
