Low Balling Our Priorities

I was walking out of my building with a friend of mine and we were discussing the recent events surrounding the Occupy Wall Street movement. I expressed my own personal views on the matter, and she in turn immediately asked if I was a conservative or a liberal.

Doesn’t that bother you too? What does my views on a movement have anything to do with my political identity.

I’ve decided that we now live in a world known as the “File Cabinet” World. Our society as freaked itself out so much to the point where we need to know where everything goes- we need to know what everything is, how it works, and where we ourselves fit into everything. People like a sense of identity with an opinion, and to know that there are other people who share that opinion. …Is it just me, or does that sound limiting?

With the Republican primaries well on their way, the American public looks on to see which candidates express the ideals and values that are shared with the voter themselves. This is such a controlled environment of forming opinions: we are seriously restricted by the 2 party system.

With the 2 party system, we tend to vote for the candidate that best fits our wardrobe based on our own values and beliefs. But even more so, we need to shrink our ideas to FIT our CANDIDATE. It’s a shame that sometimes we have to cut down our wants and needs to fit a candidate. Suppose a conservative voter also believes in pro-choice, in our present system, that person has to sacrifice their opinion on that matter, since majority of their other values are supported by one party. But by doing so, issues and opinions are never heard or represented in the White House or government. We then turn into a society of dropped matter and indifference. This is where our “my opinion doesn’t matter anyway” disease comes from, because society doesn’t believe in their candidate due to missing representation of ideas that actually hold some merit.

Another way to look at this is to say that we form our ideas based on what is available. If Mr. Jones wants to see a reform in education, but no candidate seems to pay attention to it and rather supports health care reform, how are is Mr. Jones going to fight for his voice to be heard on the importance of educational reform? Probably not too much, since his candidates don’t give his idea that much validity, and that in turn diminishes the importance of the subject until a candidate can actually represent it for Mr. Jones. But until then, Mr. Jones will patiently wait, and settle for someone with any small interest in his belief.

We have a large society in the country, and it is made up of ideas and values of every single American. It’s a shame that we have to limit our priorities simply based on what candidates are available to us. Personally, I’d love to vote for Adam West as president, but until then I will wait patiently for my opinions to be fairly represented in a presidential election.