Let's play two truths and a lie... ready?
1) I wear a size 2 in kids shoes.
2) I am 22 and I have never voted.
3) I have never been on the roller coaster.
Yup it's number 2. I'll admit it, I am 22 and I have never voted (yes my feet are dwarfishly small and yes I'm petrified of heights). I haven't voted even for an election even on a small scale.
It isn't because I have never been exposed to intellectual political debates before; my family is actually (nauseatingly) all about political discussions. My dad, mom and brothers discuss it regularly at dinners, holidays, and in general everyday discussion. I had never really caught on, there are a lot of topics to keep track of and the verbiage gets very confusing to stay on top of. So I never felt that I knew the topics, or my opinion, enough to make a decision that I was comfortable with. So, I chose not to.
Which I will tell you my professors and parents were shocked (not in a good way) about. But I don't think that I am the minority when I say that.
Politics is two-fold. It is hard to understand and hard to keep a grasp of. You really have to familiarize yourself with the background information about, topics and people even during the "off" season. Then you have to know yourself, well enough to say "I stand for this... because" and have facts and figures to back you up.
This presidential election I really wanted to vote, and feel confident when I made my decision. So I made the pact to read and educate myself on politics.
I like to read, and I am willing to sit down and research, but a lot of the political mumbo jumbo that is out there feels impossible to tackle. Frequently the journalists use terms that are not so user friendly so it scares the average reader (me) away. It's frustrating to try to read a few articles when every three or four sentences you have to reference an outside source to look up definitions.
How am I supposed to make an educated decision, when I don't even understand what you are saying?
Then you lose your train of thought, you have no idea what your stance or mindset was and then you end up clicking loft.com and start shopping because you're aggravated and a little retail therapy sounds nice.
It's easier to read about why Lance Armstrong is being stripped of his seven Tour De France titles. You read it once, click out of it, and you feel like you learned something. No hyperlinks, no referring, no feeling totally lost.
So then after a few weeks I felt a pang like I was giving up on my pact to myself and I tried to find another outlet to refer to. I began to watch the news on the TV and try to form my opinions that way. Well watching politics on TV feels (and sounds) like your listening to organized (but not even always organized) arguing. I understand the passion and that they are trying to prove a point, but 5 minutes in you start to feel like you're at a Sunday night dinner with the cast of the Jersey Shore.
To which you (at least I do) start thinking...I mean if I wanted to listen to yelling I could be watching Around the Horn or Keeping Up With the Kardashians, at least I understand what they are screaming about.
Maybe it's the ADD in me and the fact that a lot of the news I read is sound bites, but that unfortunately, is how news is sent out these days. If you're point hasn't been made in the first 140 characters or 3 seconds of the piece you are posting, you're getting the big X click.
How is it that you keep up with the elections? I'd like to be able to change my lie into a truth when I play in December. However, unless I find some outlet to read or listen to politics that isn't as cumbersome to understand it looks like never voting will continue to be my turn to lie.
At least it always sparks a debate.