Stats & Infographics
Politics & Economy of Small Town America
Sure, you do vote for your freedoms. Sure, you do vote for what is right. Sure….
I will buy that the day that I can afford a Lamborghini on my Wyoming working three-jobs budget! People vote for, well about 90% of the population anyways, how they are swayed with propaganda. If you truly were in an isolated room and had to read about each candidate, or wait reading, is that a thing anymore? Anyways…being an informed voter and not swayed by friends, and memes, and social media, and media in general, I think politics would look a lot different today.
It starts at local levels all the way up to national ones. It is apparent here in my small hometown of Cody, WY. Let’s think about this for a minute. You sit at lunch or after work at the local bar for a drink. You start talking about your sheriff or county commissioners and all their younger days of law breaking. You chuckle. You shrug. Then you say we need someone new. You go with that idea for about a split second before two or three people disagree, then you go quiet.
You show up that November at the voting booth and just like clockwork you fill in the bubbles next to those names of people you know break the law. You know because you have reported them, but you still vote for them because maybe you will catch a break if they “hear” you support them.
Wake up small town America!
The reason the country has gone the way you feared it would is because somewhere all those politicians were born, then raised, then they became your show pieces in Congress. All from the “Greatest Generations” prior to us. The country is broken because the cradle is broken. That is plain and simple. You become what you are as a country based on how the youth of the country is raised. We didn’t get to the Gen Z’ers walking out on jobs in what we coin now the “Great Resignation” because they just “felt” like it. They were entitled to it by how they were educated and raised.
Why are young women becoming bold and forceful?
Well let’s start with the pay gap and the fact that four in ten women in the workforce are crying out at the inequality according to Pew Research results from 2020, and the problem is only getting worse. To top off the inequality in pay is the fact that 33% more of the time women are past over for a job promotion that would ensure a pay increase more so than men. That alone does not help the political satire and air around issues when the polls are open.
Is it any wonder that when good help and hard work is not rewarded that it reflects in the polls on an emotional binge voting spree hoping the next person promising the next best thing gets into office? I might live in a RED state, but for the underlings holding up all this small-town hierarchy we are anything but RED. The Libertarian current runs deep here and is growing. We have gone right past the liberal BLUE balancing mindset to an all-out push for equality back and we want it back now!
We want diversity and we want it now! From another article in Pew Research, the silent generation as a voting strong hold was recorded to be 79% white whereas the millennial generation, my generation, is now 40% nonwhite and growing in the transition from the Obama administration to the Trump one. A change is needed, but sadly are we misguided in that change?
I still live in a small town where you have a hard time finding diversity; it is an oddity. I personally am a single mom working full-time, part-time, and multiple freelance contracts on the side to make ends meet. In a time where inflation if it continues will hit 10% by the year-end is something that is not sustainable physically for me. That inflation projection is historically at an all-time high for us middle-class Americans.
And why is it that I sit at a job for 9 years of faithful service to be passed over for a promotion after another promotion. And others are hired in and I only get a raise because of the new hire in level is a higher pay bracket then what I was currently making? Not because of my hard work I have poured in you tell me but because we need to keep the newbies silent!?
I vote for freedom every time I step up to the polls! And I write in better candidates if this state refuses to offer me new options and better ones at that.
What do you really vote for?
It isn’t really what I vote for because I am still imprisoned in this vicious cycle that you only give lip service to changing when you have enough liquid courage it seems.
References
Barroso, Amanda and Brown, Anna. May 25, 2021. Gender Pay gap in U.S. held study in 2020. Retrieved from website: https://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2021/05/25/gender-pay-gap-facts/
Kolakowski, Mark. March 10, 2022. Inflation Accelerates Again in February 2022. Retrieved from website: https://www.investopedia.com/inflation-accelerates-again-in-february-2022-5221744#:~:text=In%20February%202022%2C%20the%20Consumer,compound%20annualized%20rate%20of%2010.0%25.
Pew Research Center. March 1, 2018. The Generation Gapin American Politics. Retrieved from website: https://www.pewresearch.org/politics/2018/03/01/the-generation-gap-in-american-politics/