The other day I was watching a "Town Hall" on CNN featuring Hilary Clinton. In the show the host, the audience, and Tumblr users sent in questions to Clinton about her political positions on certain matters. One young interviewer asked Clinton something along the lines of what she thinks about the polarization between Democrats and Republicans and another interviewer asked her what she thought about Australia's system of compulsory voting. Her answers were to me very enlightening of our political situation today, especially to young people. The answers were actually so compelling I decided to make it into my own essay on the matter.
The question is often posed by teenagers and young adults all across this country: why should I vote? Why should I follow what is going on in Congress or what the President is proposing or what all those idiots in Washington are doing on their spare time? It is a good question in light of the growing divide between Democrats and Republicans and in an era where Congress's approval rating clocks in at a glowing 11%. However there is something sinister in that view that allows government and the powers that be to grow further apart from the citizen.
How? Well, let's look at the definition of democracy. Democracy is a system of government through which the people of the state elect their own leaders. With fewer and fewer young people going to the polls and with voting turn outs going down, how can a democracy function properly? The answer is that it cannot. Or at least it cannot function the way a democracy should: in accordance with the will of the people. If the majority of people do not care to show up to the polls, we see a political phenomenon that we see today: politicians growing more radical toward the left or the right and a schism between the two parties which grows larger and larger day by day. That is because the majority of the common sense people that comprise America aren't going to the polls, leaving the door to the people who are more on the opposite sides of the spectrum. I promise you that America is not dominated by conservatives, yet conservatives dominate the voting demographics.
I'll give a specific example of this phenomenon which will take us back two decades. In 1994, midterm elections were in full swing. The voting turnout: only about 40% or so. What occurred that year was a massive Republican takeover facilitated by a minority of voters on the Religious Right and other conservative demographics. Republicans took the House and the Senate that year in what the media dubbed the "Republican Revolution". But how much of the general population actually facilitated this uprising? A little over 20 percent. That means, in other words, that Congress was dominated by people only 20 percent of Americans wanted in office. Is this really a democracy, but an oligarchy of politically active voters dominating the American nation?
I would say that it would be an oligarchy. But before you take up your pitchforks and revolt against our political overlords, know this: You can change it. How can you change it? By going to the polls every two years. By putting in people you like and that represent your views. Don't cynically thrust aside the idea of politics simply because our politicians now are mudslinging bastards. Elect new people. This is the basic and beautiful idea of American democracy: that the people of the United States of America get to say who they want to run their country. Don't complain of political partisanship and radicalism in both parties if you cannot back up your words with a ballot.
So I think that what Hilary Clinton said nailed on the head what is going on wrongly in America. We, the people, must take action to shape government in the form that we want it to be in. Anything less is not in the spirit of democracy. Many of our politicians love to talk about terrorists, North Korean nukes, and the other party as the enemies to our democracy, but none of those pose a threat to our spirit that has led us through the last 240+ years in which America has existed as a country. The biggest threat to our American democracy is apathy. If we refuse to care, if we refuse the ballot out of cynicism, we have laid the gravestone for our beloved democracy.
My whole point here is that no matter how screwed up the government seems, we cannot lose the democratic values that made this country one of the greatest on Earth. That means to every person who can, especially to young people out there: get politically active. Vote. Make a difference in the best way of all: the way of non-violent change- a little piece of paper known as a ballot.
