The Iowa Caucuses start the 2016 presidential race in just about a week. Needless to say, politics are upon us.

"Uggggghhhhh," you're groaning already. "I hate politics. Why are you talking about politics?"

Because I’ve been in this scenario way too many times:

I’m sitting with a friend around my age (anywhere from 18 to 30 years old) and inevitably, (because for some reason I can’t seem to avoid it) the conversation makes its way right on over to politics.

“…and that’s why I think [insert candidate/politician here] is going to do a great job with [issue that led us to politics in the first place],” I conclude. “I mean, honestly, that makes the most sense, right?”

The stare I get from my friend is usually one of utter disbelief–like they’re floored that I have an opinion at all. “Honestly, I don’t even care. None of that stuff affects me. I’m probably not even going to vote anyway; I didn’t in the last election.”

Every time, every single time I get that phrase, it hits me like a ton of bricks. I should be used to it by now but it never fails to surprise me. How can somebody think this way? Like, honestly, what has happened [or not happened] in their lives to lead them to think that in this country, in the United States of America, where we choose our representatives to govern us and we have the power to put people into and remove people from office, it’s cool for them to be complacent and let other people decide who makes the rules?

Here’s the deal: in this country, if the people don’t decide, there’s nobody else left to do it but the government itself, and history has proven that this doesn’t turn out well for the people. And we are the people. So you do the math.

Hopefully by now you can see why this is such an important thing.

No? Okay then, let’s make a couple of simple, yet important, observations:

In our government, the people hold the power. The United States is both a republic and a democracy at the same time. This means that as a republic, we elect representatives to govern us in our legislature [a.k.a. government]. As a democracy, we, as citizens, are able to participate in government more freely than citizens of countries that use different kinds of government. We, the people, get to decide who’s in charge of telling us what and what not to do. In return, we get to tell them what and what not to do. It’s a nice balance of power.

Millennials outnumber Baby Boomers. People in my generation, we’re Millennials, if you didn’t know. That’s anybody born from 1982 to 1994 [well, technically. But we’ll include anybody born up to 1998 because they’ll all be 18 and able to vote by next November]. Our population is bigger than the Baby Boomers (the generation that exploded the population almost exponentially due to ‘excessive celebration’ of the victory in World War 2 during the late 1940s and early 1950s [if you know what I mean]). Think about it–the entire nation ‘excessively celebrates’ all at once and that next generation they produce literally doubles the nation’s population. Quite a few people, if you ask me. Millennials? Yeah, we even outnumber them. Today, there are around seventy-four million Baby Boomers and seventy-five million Millennials. Say that five times fast. Granted, we’re only up a single million, but as time goes on and baby boomers pass away, that gap has nowhere to go but up. Our voting power as a generation is ridiculously stronger than we like to think it is.

Government actually affects our lives, big time. I feel like I’m gonna have to prove this one to you, but that’s fine. Most people don’t understand the weight of this one at all so we kind of have to start from scratch. Check out this excerpt from governmentisgood.com that shows this point pretty well:

9:00 a.m. While at work, your rights and wellbeing are constantly protected by a wide-ranging network of federal and state laws. The Occupation Safety and Health Act works to protect you from unsafe and unhealthy work conditions. Federal law protects you from workplace discrimination based on race, gender, religion, national origin, or disability. State laws may also require your employer to purchase worker’s compensation insurance so that you are covered in case you are injured on the job.
12:45 p.m. After lunch, you walk to a nearby ATM and get some cash out of your account – and your money is actually there. That wasn’t always true during the economic depression of the 1930s when many banks failed. But your money is safe — as it was during the recent financial and banking crisis — because the government guarantees your deposits. In addition, those pieces of paper you put in your wallet are only worth something thanks to the federal government. Our monetary system is entirely a government creation, and the value of money is only maintained because the government regulates the money supply and protects it from counterfeiters. Quite an important service, really.

It’s not hard to see how much government really affects us–at every level. Although the Federal government seems huge and far away and kind of illusionary as far as practicality goes, it’s not. It decides many things for the country as a whole, and whatever state we live in, we’re still in that same country.

We Choose Who Makes Those Regulations and How They Do It. Like I said earlier, the USA is a democracy and a republic at the same time. People in the country (that’s us) get to choose how things go. But there are over 300 million Americans, so getting us all in the same room to make decisions is kind of a problem, so we elect representatives to go for us and represent our ideas and values in the government (that’s how we’re a republic). Do you know what happens when the government gets free reign to have offices filled by whomever it wants and is allowed to do whatever it wants? This:

In these nations (Nazi Germany, Fascist North Korea, and Communist China), the government has supreme and total power. Nobody tells them what to do, and as a result they get to do whatever the heck they want. Honestly, I don’t know why anybody would want to live in a place where life is like this. Sure, the government could be benevolent and lead in good ways, that possibility isn’t off the table, but history has proven that this has virtually never ever happened. Ever.

So here’s the deal: in the last midterm election, only 19% of voters ages 18-24 voted. That’s ridiculous. We outnumber any other generation in our country and we have the most power to see what we want happen yet we’re the least represented in the polls, and it’s nobody’s fault but our own.

So when the next election rolls around in November of 2016, and we all get together to figure out who’s going to lead us next, get up off your butts and join us (I've included some resources at the bottom of this article to help you get started. If we don’t, and if we make not voting a habit, then we’re all headed for a bright and fun future (not).

RESOURCES:

Register to Vote online (only accepted in 23 states)

Find out which candidate most closely shares your views

GOP Primary Elections:

Democrat Primary Elections:

Now get up off your butt and go vote!!