I’m Tired of Keeping My Mouth Shut 

Here I go again. 

I’ve been way too quite for way too long. I’m tired of seeing radical opinions from both sides. I’m tired of the co-opting of the English language by people who want to say something bad about someone else. I’m tired of the flim-flam and the misdirection. I’m tired of the lies and the liars. 

I’m an independent because I make up my own mind on every candidate and issue when I vote. I don’t care if they’re a democrat or a republican - and yes, I made those lower case on purpose – I’m not of the opinion that either party has stayed true to their historical claim of what they stood for. When I first started voting, it was the Republicans who felt they had to watch out for the marginalized, the people of color, and the poor. At that time, Dixiecrats were the party of States Rights who were segregationists. They didn’t like the idea that Truman, a Democrat, ordered the military to integrate. They wanted to retain the Jim Crow laws and promote white supremacy. Does this ring a bell about some of the Republicans today? 

At the time, most ‘blacks’ (and remember if you had the slightest trace of African blood, you were called black and worse) were disenfranchised by the Dixiecrats and were members of the Republican party. As people of color migrated to the North and the West, they found the Democrats in those areas more accepting. 

When I started voting, the word conservative meant you were careful about making radical change or spending what you couldn’t pay. Now it seems to have taken on additional meanings like bigotry and trying to disenfranchise the poor, the minorities, the elderly and claiming that anything said by anyone else to be fake or a lie simply because they don’t agree. 

Here's my advice to everyone who thinks they can’t do anything about the ‘politics as usual’ – VOTE, and do it in every election. 

If you don’t like laws that prevent a woman from standing up for her own body for whatever reason, then vote for candidates who want to change those laws 

If you don’t like that people find ways around security and psychology checks and are able to buy arsenals of weapons, and laws that say they must be allowed to do this, until and only until, they take those weapons to a public place and shoot innocent citizens and children, then get out and vote for candidates who will change the laws. (Read the second amendment carefully and then decide yourself what it says and what it doesn’t say). 

Yes, I’m an independent, that means I don’t take the word of other people to make my decisions. I read the source material; I check the candidate's voting record. Then I make up my mind. 

If you don’t vote, don’t cry about who got elected, you could have made a difference. 

-Ben Firetag