Growing up, my parents did a pretty good job of keeping their political opinions away from my still developing mind. That paired with the fact that our public school system doesn't go too in-depth about our government until High School has caused me to feel rather in the dark in regard to all goings-on with the upcoming Presidential election.
I've been interested, but I've had no inkling of where to start. That's how I found myself watching the Republican Primaries on Fox News this week. I figured the easiest way for me to go about it was to sit and watch everything having to do with anything from here on out, and here's what I've noticed so far.
Some of the things that people want to know don't really help voters to make a solid descision. How do questions beginning with "Given what you know now..." warrant a response that truly shows us how someone will run our nation? Of course they're going to give the proper answer of how to handle a situation for their party when they have the ability to base it off of what the outcome was. Just because you can look back on something and find the mistake, doesn't mean that you can keep yourself from making mistakes during your term.
Some candidates just twist and manipulate any and every question so that they can talk about an issue that they consider to be prominent and important. I don't understand how some of the questions asked ended up being about completely unrelated social justice issues. I honestly thought that I was scrolling through Tumblr with the way the discussion could move from something like national debt to abortion to our Lord in a matter of seconds.
Supporters have selective hearing. For the most part, your personal favorite can do or say something that is totally against their campaign and you won't give it a second thought. It's kind of like being in love, I guess, where you only see the best in that person. However, I'm a strong advocate for consistency, so I now know that whoever I chose to vote for will have to have their stuff together a bit more than others appear to at this point.
All in all, though, what has struck me the most is that it's extremely difficult to form an opinion when you really don't have a clue about what has been going on politically for the past 19 years. Maybe that's because my parents didn't want to force their opinions on me, or maybe it's because I never really cared until now. All I know is that the list of hot political topics that I could give you at this point in my life includes: war, Marijuana, and the LGBT+ community, and that's not a lot.
Here's to the future. Here's to young adults knowing what's going on in the country that they live in. And here's to teaching our youth more about our government because I don't want my kid to be as confused as I am right now.
