I would like to confess that I have not voted in a presidential election since George Bush in 2001. It is actually worse than that, I haven’t cared at all about any elected official since then either, until 2016 anyway and even than not enough to actually vote. My reason for not voting is that I feel completely overwhelmed by our entire government and I felt that I never knew enough to provide a beneficial opinion in something as important as a presidential race. What a mistake. One of the important lessons I have learned with this election is that every vote does really count and an uneducated vote is just as powerful as an educated vote.

I am a Republican. I am a Trump supporter. I am a conservative.

As of right now, they have not official called the election, but every update happening is leaning more and more to Joe Biden. I believe that they will soon name him president elect. I am worried about what that means for this country.

It seems like there has been real unrest for the entire Trump presidency and that concerns me greatly. It has caused a severe divide in the country, one that has been exacerbated with the use of social media and the untraditional journalism of the mainstream media. We have always had two sides in this country, no dispute there, but the extreme nature of what we have now is unique to today. The media, social and mainstream, have put a spotlight on the extreme views on both sides of the divide. It is dangerous and corrosive to the morality of our citizens and while it’s not unique to the United States, it impacts us very differently than it does other places.

We are a very large country with a large population made up of very different everything you can think of. What is good for metropolitan cities may not be good for rural counties. In this election you have almost 90% of a state’s rural counties voting for one candidate and their vision / policies and the smaller more densely populated areas voting for the other. The result being is the few cities with the denser population outnumbers the whole of the rural counties combined. Here is an example:

State of Nevada as of November 6, 2020 @ 21:53
Number of counties: 17
Counties won by Biden: 2
Counties won by Trump: 15
Total votes for state: 1,242,459
Total votes in Biden won counties: 1,074,022
Total votes in Trump won counties: 168,437
Total votes for Biden: 632,558
Total votes for Trump: 609,901

It is good to see that the 2 counties with the most voters are very close to 50/50, but 14 of the 15 other counties are greater than 65/35.

I wanted to show that to support this, which is an interesting result of COVID especially in metropolitan cities: more and more office workers are actually not commuting to big office buildings and in fact are forced to work from home, city / state rules and all, where they are realizing that they can live virtually anyplace, like low cost of living places. I was living in lower Manhattan until May 2020 and paying almost $4,000 a month in rent plus having to pay a lot of money to have groceries or prepared food delivered because everyplace was closed. The appeal of living near Wall Street in New York City quickly faded when I was stuck in my tiny studio apartment all day for 3 month.

I grew up in a rural small town in Florida. I lived there for almost 40 years before I moved to New York City. Things are different, what is important for them means nothing to us. Having a large reliable network of public transportation, that doesn’t even make sense in my little town. Have a lot of public services available to low income families, see those people considered low income in New York City are middle class in rural counties.

What I think will happen is that in 2024 we may see a major shift in how the county votes because I think the population may be more spread out. Those metropolitan cities may start to lose some of their influence on what is important to the entire country. Big cities depend on others to supply them with food and goods. There are no farms in the city, there are no factories in the city, they use the cheap labor of rural areas to support their life. The smaller rural communities DO NOT need big cities. If the rural areas could come together and try to be more self sufficient and not be controlled by the wants of larger cities we would all be better off. I believe this is the future President Trump wanted for the United States as it relates to how other countries suffocate our abilities to be self sufficient.

That is how I see this election: Big City / Big Government (Biden) vs Working Class / Less Government (Trump)

Social media has made it very easy for people to have a loud voice, a voice that reaches a huge number of people for very different reasons. You have a lot of people who put out material that is meant to be light and funny and all of the sudden they are voicing very strong opinions on political issues that they aren’t necessarily very educated on. It’s good that they have an opinion and they should be able to share that opinion anyway they wish, I am just saying that this is a unique situation that is causing a lot of misunderstanding and the quick wide spreading of misinformation. People post all kinds of videos on social media, videos that are violent, spread hate, show hate, show destruction, all of that without the understanding of what that does to the people viewing it, without the oversight or guidance of people who understand the importance of responsible reporting. They post it because they get money from views, there is a desire to be popular, or they honestly feel like they are doing a service by exposing things that are happening.

Mainstream media of today isn’t much better. Journalism is supposed to be unbiased. When was the last time you saw a story that was a fact based honest relaying of information? I do not care about a reporters opinions, just tell me information and not how you feel about it. The headlines for stories are a huge problem in our country too. Here is an example:

New York Post on September 24, 2020 @ 02:24
Woman arrested, tased for not wearing mask at middle school football game

Complete with a video, because we have a culture that every interaction that might be confrontation should absolutely be videoed and shared to show everyone how terrible everyone is. The problem with the headline of the story of course is that it implies the woman was tased and arrested just because she wasn’t wearing a mask when in reality she was breaking the rules of the venue by not wearing it, asked repeatedly to wear it, asked to leave since she didn’t want to wear it, refused and then resisted when the police officer was forced to manually remove her.

That headline instantly makes me think that that can’t be right. I am forced to dig to understand closer to the real story meanwhile headline readers are spreading misinformation because it is much easier. They say it is your responsibility to read more and understand but then they irresponsibly use headlines like that knowing that there will be people who see it and think cops are out of control!

I haven’t written a blog post in a while and this one took a lot out of me! It ended up being almost 1500 words total and took me a couple hours to complete. What has been happening with the election is making me want to be more involved in the entire process. I want to be a part but not be irresponsible and not be biased. I will still be what I am, but I want to try to help people see through the salaciousness of the current media. I want people to be more accountable for their own actions and worry less about other people’s actions, take responsibility for their actions and how their behavior impacts others. I do try hard to not impact other people in a negative way. I think a lot about things I do and say and I apologize a lot more than I should and in some cases not enough. I try to be considerate and see other people’s point of view and I try not to get too down when I think people are being the opposite of everything I just said.

My brother thinks I don’t believe change is worth trying because it’s so far off. I do believe change is good, I just see a whole complicated intertwined mess that is completely overwhelming to change.