If there is something I know about myself, it's that I can be a very silly person but, it comes with people not always taking me super seriously. With that being said, I am being serious with you right now.
When I was in elementary and middle school, I loved to talk about politics, the presidential elections, and how the government works. That sentence may surprise a lot of you who know me well. I am probably the last person you would think would want to talk about any real-world things as early as eight-years-old. Well, as I have gotten more mature, I have learned to dread talking about politics. I dread big family dinners where all the adults talk is politics. I tune out the news when my parents pick the radio station because all it's politics. My brother has even started to ask permission if he can bring up politics because I get annoyed when that's all people talk about. This article is not a place for me to talk about my political views, or who/what I think people should believe. Everyone is open to their own beliefs. These are the reasons a young girl who liked to talk about politics and grew up to not ever wanting to talk about it.
It's always the same old thing.
Believe it or not, the peak of my politics enjoyment was when I was in 7th grade. Yup, that right. A 4'7", brace face pre-teen was keeping up with the Mitt Romney-Barack Obama election. I was fully engaged, watching every speech, debate, and more. Not only did I follow it, I loved talking about it with people and having conversations about what was going on. Now a days, I feel like people aren't even talking about issues anymore. Rather people are just trying to prove their point. From people running for office to average people like me, I feel that everyone is just worried about proving their point and not listening to one another. Now, it is okay to debate different issues whether you are a candidate running for something or an average citizen, but it starts to frustrate me when people don't listen to one another and get caught up in their own opinions.
We aren't "satisfied" with anyone.
This personal opinion comes from the most recent election: Clinton versus Trump 2016. This election was actually the main cause of not wanting to ever talk about politics (keep in mind this is all from my experience during the election). I am not going to get into nitty-gritty details because if you can't tell, I don't like to talk about these issues anymore. What I felt during this election is that if one person was unhappy with one candidate, they weren't any happier with the other. To me, it felt like everyone was deciding between and lesser of two evils. Even after finding something about one candidate that someone liked, there was always something else about them that caused people to not want to vote for them. Then the same thing happened with the other candidate. I felt like people were trapped in a cycle of just nitpicking each candidate for an excuse to be unhappy.
Not being satisfied lead people not to vote.
My next reason leads to one of the most frustrating points. When people aren't satisfied, people don't vote. This happened in the previous Clinton-Trump election. It was commonly known that so many people did not go out and vote in the election because they could not decide on a candidate. Even when you think that there won't be many other people not voting, other people are thinking the same thing. Voting is so important because it determines so much for so many people. Being eligible to vote, I understand how it can be hard to find a candidate that you are confident in for doing such a hard job, but throwing your vote away because you cannot decide on someone or can't find a person you like 100% affects more than people realize.
People still complain after not even voting.
This point is more of a pet peeve when it comes to politics that is a ripple effect from people not voting. If people decide to not vote for some reason, that is one thing. When the people who didn't vote start complaining about the person who won is where I get most annoyed. If they did not vote for someone in the first place, why should they be allowed to complain about the candidate who won? If they are complaining, then they should have gone out to vote so they could make an impact on who won.
It is crazy to think that a girl who used to be so engaged in talking about politics has become completely turned off from hearing anything about it. There are times where I still talk about it, but when it starts getting repetitive and frustrating is when it gets and for me to listen to people ramble about the same issues. Even though I started to not like talking about politics, I still believe that it is super important to vote and follow each candidate's values.
