Political Apathy

Why have I cared so little about politics until the last presidential election. And now that I care, why do I feel that I have so little say about what happens? The questions, when posed side by side, seem to yield the obvious that I should have cared all along if state and local governments mattered more. The better question is why don’t I still care enough about who is elected mayor, representative, senator, or governor? Because too much power is vested in Washington. Federal bureaucracy controls so much of what should be decided locally and the farther removed the decisions are from those they affect, the less we the people are represented in what’s decided and the less we know about it. It’s almost as if we know that one-size-fits-all solutions have to screw someone over and that hopefully it’s not always the same people getting screwed. In a represenative government, we’re never going to make everyone happy. But it’s easier to move to another town or state than another country if we don’t like a decision. We need to shift our focus away from red or blue states to red or blue counties and better yet red or blue towns by decentralizing federal power. If that happened we’d be far more interested because our voices would be far more relevant. We might even see more colors besides red or blue, yet another cause for apathy.