Everything in Your Life is About Politics

Why do we continue to say we shouldn't politicize the very things that are a result of politics? Every aspect of your life is controlled by politics. Your salary, your home, your taxes, your food—all of it is the result of politics. Your commute, your career, your favorite beer/wine/spirit—boom, politics. Your clothes, your favorite restaurant...you get the picture. So when something like a mass shooting occurs and people cry out for the government to do something, why is the first reply "now isn't the time to talk about politics?"

But it is. It's always about politics.

There have been more than 250 mass shootings in America in just 216 days of 2019. Two of the deadliest occurred on the same day in El Paso and Dayton. And it is always the first thing a politician says in order to evade doing their job. Your job, as a politician, is to politicize everything, to ensure that the politics that got us to this point continue to evolve to point your community in a new direction. Your job is to console your community, yes, but it's also to serve it, and you can't serve it by sticking your head in the sand and hoping the short attention span of humans in 2019 will continue. It's the only job in the country in which you can simply exist and not put forth any effort and continue to take home a paycheck.

Politics isn't rocket science, even if they would have you believe it. You don't have be the smartest person in the room in order to understand how the government works. You don't have to be a policy expert if you surround yourself with people who are. You just have to care about the end result and the people more than you care about the paycheck and extra money to be made from lobbies and powerful organizations. Unfortunately for most of the people in these positions of power, the latter is more important.

People want to be heard. At the end of the day, they need to feel as if they and their thoughts matter. Everyone wants what's best for their families. So it's time to put an end to the cliche 'no one should talk about politics' especially when something abhorrent happens. Nothing divides us more than dismissing the feelings of another.

Oh and by the way, mass shooters are terrorists and hate speech shouldn't be protected.