Hello, Indy Texans. My name is Zeb and I’m an independent from Maine. Ingrid requested that I come over as a guest blogger. She and Linda are doing a great job here. My blog can be found here, Inside Zebster, where I write about independent issues, social and political issues.
Following is a piece I wrote several weeks ago that I feel represents what many of us want in our government and what we, especially as independents, can do to help put government more back into our hands. I hope you enjoy it. If so, I’ll be more than happy to post the second part of it later. Thanks for having me.
We all can make a difference, one person at a time, an increasingly louder drum beat of involved, informed citizens who demand again a representative government. Our elected officials will not change unless we make them change. We all have to get involved and stay involved…let them know we will no longer tolerate anything short of accountability. What can you do? Most importantly we must be informed, informed regarding the issues and informed regarding how those we elect vote on those issues and why they vote the way they do. You can write editorials in your local newspaper; you can call politician’s offices; you can even blog. But most importantly you must vote, and don’t throw away your vote because you always vote for your party or your total source of information is through political ads. Be informed, be involved. Let’s get together, red and blue and purple, and have some civilized discourse regarding the issues. Politicians know if they can polarize us, they can conquer us. The left and right are much closer on most issues than they realize; but our elected officials have been successful in making us think the other side is crazy and irrational…that every Democrat believes in the radical left and every Republican believes in the radical right. Actually, the vast majority of us are moderates and centrists. So let’s open the channels of communication amongst ourselves; let’s cut out the middle man who’s telling us what the other side thinks. Did you know the reelection rate in this country hovers around 98%?! How is that possible? One reason is due to the shameless reorganizing and gerrymandering of districts so that in all but the most rural states each district is heavily red or heavily blue. Also, all the special interest money, be it corporate or social or what have you, knows that statistic and will put their money being the incumbent. Let’s show them this fall what a waste of money that was; that the power of an informed citizenry is stronger than special interest money. We are to blame for the current state of our government. We haven’t been involved; we haven’t been informed; we haven’t demanded change; we’ve voted party lines over and over again regardless of the issues; we’ve listened to and believed the clever sound bites that roar from both sides of the aisle. Politicians, political parties and organizations, election experts all know how to feed on our fears, on our herd mentality, on our laziness and that we are a sound-bite, knee-jerk, rush-to-pick-sides public. So look around at the scandalous activities on both sides of the aisle. It’s a feeding frenzy of greed, ego and comfortability. I hope we’re proud of ourselves…we allowed this to happen. And we will send a message loud and clear that we don’t mind these activities, that in fact we support them if we don’t get involved and do something about it.
Zeb