Politics: the art of making it look like you are actually helping those that you represent in a government organization while actually creating more problems and blaming them on other so you can get reelected
“Mix carefully truth and deceit, you have politics.” -Bangambiki Habyarimana
We are ignorant. We truly are. No matter what type of government you’re under, you’re blind. No matter who you support or what you believe in, you’re going to blindly follow that ideal into a grave you dug yourself. I’m going to try to stay away from the election because it’s over. We cannot change what has happened in the last 24 hours.
I took a 2 month hiatus from Twitter and I finally logged back on to catch up with what my generation was saying about the election. Safe to say, what I saw was expected but I was still disappointed. I understand the anger, grief, and denial but at what point does it stop? Yes, I shed tears myself, but I realized that I was crying for something that I cannot change.
Our generation needs to wake up and really be woke. The result of this election was NOT the end of the world. When that thought came to me I started wondering why my generation was even complaining to begin with. I understood it was because we’re ignorant. I bet no matter how “woke” we think we are, most of us can’t explain how the electoral college actually works. We couldn’t list all ten of the Bill of Rights or who wrote them. We couldn’t pin point that, although this is a low point in American history, is certainly not the lowest.
Therefore, I switched my attention from the lost cause to the new cause: educating my own generation. Getting them to understand that this government– no matter how “equal” it claims to be– truly isn’t. We have to understand that even if our vote “doesn’t matter” we still have the right to do so, and then fix what we don’t like.
I went to the National Museum of African American History and Culture yesterday. I looked at the artifacts recovered from hundreds of years ago. I saw how even after the Emancipation Proclamation, the Civil Rights Act, and the election of Barack Obama, how we were still treated less than human. When I got home and waited out the election I saw how many people in my generation were cowards. Before the reality of that election, I joked about moving to Canada, now I don’t. My ancestors shed blood for this country without so much as a thank you so who would I be to leave? A coward.
My message to my generation is this: Stop complaining and start educating yourself because we have a lot of work to do.