The government doesn’t care about me.
Every day in Alabama, I hear this sentiment, expressed in one form or another, from average citizens. The government, they believe, doesn’t listen to their concerns. It doesn’t address their concerns. It doesn’t do the things they want it to do.
And then, many of those same citizens go to the polls and vote for a party.
Not a candidate. Not an idea. Not even a single issue.
But a whole party.
The following day, they wake up, look around and wonder why nothing has changed. Never, apparently, considering the person staring back at them in the mirror.
This is not how American government is supposed to operate. We are a country very much built on compromise—agonizing, difficult, yell-at-each-other compromise. And we are supposed to have a government to match.
That’s how this whole representative government thing is supposed to work. Your and the people near you get together and elect a person to look out for your interests and do the things you want done. And all the other groups of people around the state get together and elect their people to represent them and do the things they want. And then those people go to Montgomery and fight about it until they reach a compromise on the most important things.
It’s a perfectly imperfect system of governance that actually works quite well.
It keeps the crazy leftists from getting out of control and it keeps the crazy right-wing nuts relatively under control. And it ends up giving us results that are somewhere in the middle and hopefully something that appeases the masses and works out well for the overwhelming majority.
Except that stops working when entire groups of people stop voting for what’s best for them and instead simply vote for a team.
That’s where we are in Alabama today.
That’s where we were in Alabama yesterday.
It’s why Alabama has rarely had a government that worked well for the majority of its citizenry. It’s why we’ve consistently been last in things that are deemed good for the average person and first in things bad for the average person. Because this has always been a one-party government operating in service to the deep-pocketed benefactors who can fund their next campaigns and help them avoid a serious primary challenge, instead of fearing the voters who should hold the power.
It doesn’t matter if that one party is Democratic or Republican. It fails either way for the average citizen.
Because the average citizen doesn’t have the means to contribute to a campaign in any way that might affect an election’s outcome. And by voting for party over candidate, the citizenry relinquishes their only thing of value. The only thing that would lead an elected official to fearing the average voters.
That’s why these people keep doing the bidding of the Big Mules and seem wholly unconcerned with how mad you get.
In the last session alone, the folks in the party you vote for overturned the overtime tax exemption, killed off hemp products and shuttered thousands of small businesses and failed for the umpteenth time to advance a lottery-gaming bill that would allow the citizens to vote on the issue. On top of that, they pulled some $180 million annually from public schools to give to private businesses so rich families could get a better education. And they still haven’t managed to get medical marijuana to the patients.
They did all of that heading into an election year.
Because they don’t fear you. They don’t care about you, because you have given up the only power you have.
I mean, so what if you’re ticked off that the 5-percent pay bump you received when they stopped taxing overtime pay has been revoked. It’s not like you’re going to vote for the Democratic challenger who’s promising to reimplement that tax cut. And so long as the big businesses who might fund a primary challenger are happy with that sellout, why should I care about what you don’t like?
This has to stop.
Look, I’m a bleeding heart liberal with compassion and empathy who thinks lifting from the bottom is always best. But I’d never, not in a million years, say that I’d never vote for a Republican. Because somewhere down the line, there might be a Republican with great ideas that benefit me and address the issues I care most about in a manner that’s simply better than the Democratic opponent. And I’ll vote for that Republican. And be happy to do so.
Because that’s how our government is supposed to work. That’s how it works best for all of us.
Until we kill off straight-ticket voting—and this team politics mindset—Alabama will never get better. Its government will never put the people first. Its elected officials will never listen to you.
And the government will never care about you.
