Random Reflections & Pondering about Pro-Military Election Campaigning
As election season rolls around again I had a new insight about political campaigning.
A candidate I’ll probably be voting for has a photo of them in an Army shirt and Veteran hat. Of course… I thank them for their service, and I thank all veterans for their service…
But it got me thinking how important words are and images (speaking a thousand words) are – (image above is not the photo used, nor will I mention candidate by name).
In a time of daily public or mass shootings, do we really want politicians leading mostly with their military skills and background? Does this make for a good politician?
This seems like a horrible strategy (to me).
Isn’t military training focused on winning at all costs including might, violence, and destruction if/when needed? Isn’t it based on those with the biggest or most destructive weapons, the largest cache pile of weapons, and the most power, the ones who win a conflict? Isn’t that where a huge part our our country pride comes from – being the biggest superpower in the world and intimidating and instilling fear in all others.
Is that what we want from politicians? I certainly DO NOT. We already have too much of this and pure corruption in politics.
Seems to me we should be presenting the exact opposite.
If our kids get a whiff of this, is it wrong to think this is how they are supposed to act? Overpower your opponent at all cost including death? I remember growing up on movies like Rambo, Red Dawn, and Full Metal Jacket. They set a tone and attitude in my life.
The US Military does some good for the country, other countries and for the people who are trained. In all honesty, I am not trying to bash the military, but rather open our minds to new ways to seeing a story. I understand one story is honor, respect, and commitment and overcoming adversity. All great things. However, do children or even adults get some other conditioning through these messages? Does it in any way normalize guns and violence?
Maybe we need to rethink our political campaigning strategies if we want real change. This is so important too, because sadly at least half of a politician’s elected term is focused on campaigning instead of doing the work they were elected to do – “serving us”. Serving us, like they all say they’ll do in their promotional material if elected or reelected.
What Random Off-Topic Thought Made Me Reflect On This Campaign Promotion Differently?
Costa Rica, Peace, and Blue Zones, huh?
Last night I was watching Gene Levy’s show on travel and he went to Costa Rica. The show is called THE RELUCTANT TRAVELER. It makes we wonder if we are reluctant to explore any topic that may minimize public shootings and violence in the states. Anyhow, stick with me on this.
An interesting fact that I was unaware of is that Costa Rica was deemed a country of peace in 1948 after the military was abolished following a 44-day civil war. As a result the military budget was allotted to improving the country’s security education, and culture.
It is the most peaceful country in Latin America. (parts of this paragraph were pulled from Play For Peace website)
Beyond this they are also a Blue Zone which is a place with the happiest and healthiest people on the planet. It seems they leaned into relationships with family, friends, and community. Because family is so important, they offer programming to help educate mothers (and kids of course). The educated moms have fewer kids that are better educated, healthier and grow up to be more productive, better parents and make better voting decisions so the next generation can be even better. Hmmm… voter campaigning thoughts come to mind.
Anyhow, that’s what I call investing in your people.
However, in America we seem to NOT care about our people or our future if it means we have to give up power and wealth right now. I know this seems harsh and negative, but the healthcare system and poverty support seem to continually get worse and a depleting middle-class seem to be accelerating at a mind boggling speed.
Hell, right now there is an attack on public education and a focus on banning books and on we seem to even have an anti-intellectual crusade happening in the states. We’re actually focused on dummying down our citizens and feeding them inadequate and whitewashed history.
But let me get back to it…
People in these few Blue Zone areas around the world are living longer than the average lifespans in other “normal” places like the US, as well as they seem to have a better quality of life. Isn’t that something we all want?
Reflecting on This Campaign Promo That Started this Article and Exploration…
In the photo above it reminds us that the “abuse of power comes as no surprise” however, it continues to surprise me time-and-time again. Now I am NOT saying the candidate with the promotion that kicked off my thought here, abuses power. I totally DO NOT think that is the case.
I DO however wonder if our ignorance or just playing the game as we always have may causing harm. I mean does pro-military political campaigning lead to acceptance of or normalization of gun use and striving for power? …and are those things perpetuating our current public gun and violence issues?
How can we do better? Should we look deeper into our political campaigning?
In all honesty by not having these conversations we are as guilty as any politician and weak political campaigning (in my opinion). I guess what I’m saying is…
As I read the bullet-points to win my vote it shows…
- How out of touch the politician may be, or how easily swayed they are by their marketing team pushing this messaging who is also either out of touch or doesn’t care but wants to win at all cost.
- How out of touch WE as a society might be… to buy into these bullshit bullet-points that although seemingly “good”… they may actually be attitudes that got us in the situation we are in right now. If we educated ourselves on why, bullet-points like this actually look harmful and should be a sign to place our vote elsewhere (if there was a better opportunity, or maybe running ourselves if the other options are not good and so we could do things different).
- Although politicians might originally get in the game to change things in a positive way, it seems they are soon swallowed up by the machine and playing the game they were trying to fix.
Friends…
Can I tell you something?
Voting alone is NOT enough!
Voting alone is NOT enough.
5 years ago I would have been all yippee ki-yay MFer, let’s do this… and blindly back this person without questioning any of this.
What changed?
What Changed ME To Think This Way and How I Get More Engaged In The System Without Running For Office
Bernie Sanders loosing speech changed me forever. Remember Bernie Sanders? Remember his loosing speech? Either way, it changed my mind about politics forever. He said… “If you are unable with the way things are… get involved.”
Now I loved this and was inspired however what I was not inspired to do was run for office. Beyond running, how could you or I “get involved”? Here’s what I did to get more involved – I got educated, I searched for ways to use my personal skills to help others and try to make positive change in the world and in my community.
Let me share what I did, but know these are not the only solutions but some ideas that might help you find your own walk to do more than vote. Why is this important? Well, because I think candidates need our support and engagement to make REAL change.
I started Reading - A LOT!
Well, one thing that changed was I started reading like crazy – roughly a hundred books each of the last 5 years. I read books on politics, books on nonviolence, books on love, and a ton of books to work on myself and be a better person. I also read books on community and culture and why we do what we do.
A few books to explore could be…
- Change Your Thoughts, Change Your Life
- The Five Dysfunctions of a Team
- How The South Won The Civil War
- The More Beautiful World Our Hearts Know Is Possible
- How To Be An Antiracist
- The War For Kindness
- The Healing of America
- Finding Freedom
- Allow Me To Retort
- Where Do We Go From Here
- The Book of Joy
- Kindness and Wonder
- Atlas of the Heart
- Marx in 90 Minutes
- Letter from The Birmingham Jail
- On the Duty of Civil Disobedience
- The Evolving Peacemaker
- Healing Resistance
- Mindset
- Peaceful Neighbor
- The Purpose of Power
- The Theory of Human Motivation
- Creating a World Without Poverty
- Gandhi the Man
- The Burnout Generation
- The Home Front: Life in America During World War II
- Utopia for Realists
- Siddhartha
- A Return to Love
- All About Love
- Principles
- Our Revolution
- Start With WHY
- The Four Purposes in Life
- The Heart of the Buddha’s Teachings
- Man’s Search for Meaning
Asking Yourself… "How Could I Change the Things I Struggle With in Society?"
I also started thinking A LOT about what I could do to change the negative things I hated in our culture without having to run for politics. So I started a mindfulness, wellness, resilience training company (Hellagood Life if you didn’t know. Ha!). I started working to build a supportive community and safe-space because this is much needed and our country failed at supporting so many.
I’m also trying to lead by example because talking about your families safety and neighborhood safety in my military shirt seems a bit disjointed. I’ve been trying to be more neighborly and an engaged neighbor instead of disconnected from my neighbors and neighborhood like I had been for decades. Ignoring the neighborhood and sharing platitudes only are both disjointed and harmful.
The old saying It Takes A Village needs to be explored and deeply reflected on and then acted on. We ARE truly Better Together. It’ll take all of us pulling together doing our part instead of us sitting back and blaming politicians for doing a shitty job. Which I also used to do but trying to change.
Final Thoughts…
I’m not saying the US should abolish it’s military or that being in the military is bad, but I am saying we need leaders that lead by example by making their family and community stronger my helping and supporting those who are struggling and in need.
We’re only as strong as our weakest link, let’s strengthen up all links instead of just praising the military.
Look…
We’ve built a reactive and profit based medical system instead of a pro-active or preventative approach to caring for ALL citizens.
We are NOT investing in our people.
We need to find a better way.
I think A LOT seeking a solution to gun violence and violence in general, and HOW I contribute to the problem, and also how I MIGHT be able to move the needle towards fixing this problem.
I also realized politicians ARE NOT the heroes I once saw them as.
You know…
the right vote,
creates the right person in office,
who’ll get to work to fix all the problems in society.
That doesn’t seem to work any more (maybe it never did).
Currently, we just seem to be holding up a house of cards of the status quo while politicians and corporations profit on the back of our citizens. Things don’t seem to be working in my opinion.
You see I was burnt out and felt let down, time and time again, for 3 decades of my votes feeling like it didn’t count, or matter. What I realized was voting alone will not fix a broken system and THAT I needed to DO something to improve the broken system. I read like crazy and using my (as of Saturday) 24 years of entrepreneurial skills I got started DOING something. Leveraging my skillset, knowledge and experience. I recommend you do the same AND vote.
Now you may not be able or willing to read a hundred books a year. I felt that way too, however most of you CAN (could) read a book a month or at least 3-4 books a year. You might be surprised what you could learn by starting down this path.
We need educated voters.
Educate yourself.
Learn why the system is broke (or intentionally rigged and who benefits from it).
Then apply the knowledge you are learning to DO something.
Use whatever skillset you have – cooking, cleaning, financial planning, painting, music, fund raising, yoga, whatever and find a way to help improve society.
Hell, run for office if you think you can take the machine down from the inside, but do something bigger than just voting because sadly in 3 decades of voting – I see very little glimmer of hope for ANY positive change when a supposedly progressive ad campaign is using bullet-points that feel like the came from Ronnie Reagan’s how to win elections playbook.
I’m not picking on conservatives here as I think we’ve been duped by both parties. In the last 5-7 years, I’ve seen many Dems doing shady shit to try to disrupt the crazy we’ve had in politics. We cannot lie, cheat, and steal to save society from liars, cheaters, and thieves. The same is true for hate, anger, and violence. If we want less of those things we cannot promote or act with those things.
If you want real POSITIVE change…
Start by changing yourself and your beliefs. Maybe we’re asking too little of ourself.
Maybe if we each did a little more, got a little more engaged, and showed up a little better we’d slowly BE the change we want to see in the world and squash the status quo system that no longer truly serves us (if you agree).
If ya need help getting started join the Hope & Inspiration Book Club or another book club to start reading more or different books that might stretch you and discuss them in a community.
If ya really want more support to grow yourself, grow your leadership capacities and skills, join the Change Makers Academy. This is a membership I’m working on to help people work on themselves and each other, together… and work on making positive impact in the world.
I’m trying to offer programming I use to work on myself and continue adding as I grow and learn more.
The Change Makers Academy is an education platform and I’m working on building a supportive community because all this stuff taps into what Blue Zones offer – better health, better community, better relationships, and a happier, longer life.
So try it out and help me, help you, and let’s find positive work we can do together to change the world in a positive way. Here are some of the changes I want to make.
This is an ongoing work in progress, but progress over perfection and ya know what? I’m DOING something beyond voting to try to make positive change. You do your thing or join me on my thing and let’s do something amazing together!!!
Thanks for reading. Share your thoughts in the comments.
Am I on to something or just delusional?
Thanks friends, here’s the link to Change Makers Academy. I’ll see some of you in the community and in the lessons. Changing you and your mindset will help change the world and prove you lead by example.
Don’t just complain,
DO something.
Invest in yourself.
Invest in your community.
Lean in to relationships!
We ARE…
Better Together!
