The Importance of Knowing Your Vote

Educate yourself, especially on the local stuff

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So as I mentioned in my last post I have begun reading the book Everything I Want to Do is Illegal: War Stories From the Local Food Front by Joel Salatin. Salatin is a traditionalist small scale farmer and in his book he shares several stories about his struggles with unequal enforcement of ambigious laws. One of these stories is about how one day a state bureacrat knokced on his door saying that the his beef that was hanging in the local slaughterhouse had been impounded because there was suspicion that he was selling "uninspected beef" and the required inspection could take at least six months. Of course Salatin's beef had already been slaughtered and would spoil in a week if not sold and at the time one third of his family's income came from that beef Salatin could not afford to loose his beef, but the bureacrat didn't care about any of that.

Salatin of course had to fight this in order to continue providing for his family, so he called up as many elected oficials that he could and ultimately his senator along with other local oficials helped him clear everything up by the end of the week and Salatin was able to sell his beef and continue to provide for his family. After reading that story I have been thinking about the importance of making sure we have people in office that have our backs who we can call upon like Salatin did. Salatin also told a story about having to do something similar to protect his chicken operation from bureaucrats and while he was successful he knew many people who lacked the connections that he did whose chicken operations did not survive.

Do you know what is on your ballot?

I don't imagine that there are many farmers reading this, but we all can learn from Salatin's reliance on local politicians. This election has been said to be "The most important election of our lives" and everywhere we look we can find all sorts of facts and propaganda about the two major Presidential candidates. But what about all the other names under other sections of your ballot? All the local people? Depending on where you live there could be dozens of names on your ballot, and while the President of the United States is undoubtably among the most powerful men in the world, your local politicians have more direct power over your individual lives than he ever will. These are also the people who you can turn to when you need the kind of help Salatin needed.

So I'll ask again, do you know anything about the other names on your ballot? According to this article there is currently an "Anti-police 'satanist'" running for sheriff in a New Hampsire county as the Republican nominee for that office. (They got this nomination because nobody else was seeking it) I have never met a Republican that would support the stuff that this individual supports and yet this individual will likely get a lot of Republican votes simply because their name has an R next to it. If you happen to be a liberal reading this and laughing, you shouldn't be, there may very well be someone on your ballot whom you completely dissagree with hiding on your ballot with a D next to their name, will you get caught voting for them? Will they have your back?

How we actually make change in our comunities

Our government was established to give people the power and contrary to popular belief we still do have power, it just needs to be used properly. For example, in the town where I currently live there are a handful of stoplights where the signal for the left-turn only lane will go from red to a brief three-second flashing yellow then straight to a standard three second solid yellow and then back to red. When you take into acount the average human reaction time of realising the switch to a flashing yellow, the amount of time it takes to ensure that you will be safe turning during said flashing yellow, the amount of time it takes for a driver to take their foot off the brake and move it to the gas, and the fact that it can be rather difficult to imediatley tell when a light turns from flashing yellow to solid a driver could easily find themselves in the middle of an inersection two seconds into a three second solid yellow light without meaning to cut it that close. This is of course dangerous, especially when the road is slick in the winter.

This is the sort of problem that the average citizen can easily help fix. It is not done by tweeting, "@realDonaldTrump plz fix my trafik lights #MAGA" because the President will never see that tweet and even if he did that sort of thing isn't what the President is meant to be spending much time on. You also don't get the trafic lights fixed by organizing some sort of protest about it, because while we do have the right to peaceful protest, the message that many protesters these days end up getting across is not the one which they intended to send. The way which you bring attention to problems like these in a way which will most likely get them fixed is to write a letter to your local officals explaining the problem and to encourage your friends to do the same. Granted you have elected local oficials who will have your back, they will get to work solving your problem.

It is important to become informed on local elections when they show up on your ballot (states have differing numbers of officals which the people must elect). The Illuminati decided months ago who will win the Presidential election, but they could care less about who sits on your city council. (The Illuminati thing was a joke of course please vote for a good Presidnet) I remember when I was in high school there were a handful of local elections in neighboring towns whose outcomes had to be decided by drawing cards becasue many people left those fields in their ballots blank and the results came back with ties. Don't leave the fate of your community up to chance. Don't go to the ballot box without knowing what you are voting for. Educate yourself, and vote for the people who will have your back.