A New Year’s resolution: be informed, be open-minded

 

Over at the Independent Voter Network, they are admirably advocating that voters make a New Year’s resolution to stay informed, be open-minded, and don’t get sucked into election year talking points by politicians or nonsense portrayed as campaign news by the media.
IVN laments that 2014, like every election year, will be dominated by mudslinging, finger pointing and gaffes by candidates that are inflated into “issues” that linger for days.  This is what writer Michael Austinrefers to as the Great American Outrage Machine.

The author of the IVN piece, Shawn M. Griffiths, makes a compelling case for voters in 2014 to stay focused and reject the usual bloviating from commentators and campaign rhetoric from candidates. Too many voters and political junkies, he wrote, are people who are comfortable in their own bubble, where the world is exactly how they perceive it to be and refuse to look at the larger picture.”

Here is the heart of Griffiths proposal:

“Let us, together, make a commitment to see the bigger picture. The only way we are going to find pragmatic solutions that go beyond partisan agendas is a willingness to understand how people we disagree with see the issue. Perhaps we missed something. Perhaps there is more to the issue than we once thought. We will never know unless we are willing to explore different perspectives. We shouldn’t be afraid of knowledge.

“This commitment should not just be a New Year’s resolution to be cast aside in a week. It should be a promise we make to ourselves. We should promise to work within our means to become a little more informed. We should make a promise not to feed the Great American Outrage Machine. We should make a promise to look beyond the distractions and focus on what matters. If for nothing else, we should make these promises for our own benefit, because knowledge is a rewarding pursuit.”

In a separate piece, Griffiths essentially argues that only voters with an independent streak can break the cycle of the blame game that permeates the nation’s capital. An electorate that is pragmatic and demands a fairer system which is not so closely tied to primaries can demolish the emerging process in which a sliver of the voting population is targeted by candidates.

“… Lawmakers never truly get out of election mode,” Griffiths wrote.

“… It is all about what lawmakers can tell their constituents when they return to the campaign trail. In most states, this means the smallest of ideological bases. Most lawmakers don’t care about the electorate as a whole — just (the) 5 percent or less they need to appease to get past the primaries, because they know that is all they need.”