The 2016 election concluded almost two months ago. While I did write an earlier article on my election reflections, which I still feel good about, there is something I have been reflecting on the past few months. Heck, I’ve been thinking about it for a while now. Why, as Americans, do we ask for change but continually vote either left wing or right wing? It’s been going on for almost the whole history of our country. We vote in a right wing president, and then after their time is up we usually move on to a left wing option. Sure we have had back to back presidents that have either been left or right wing, but we haven’t had three presidents of the same party in a row since the Harding, Coolidge, Hoover presidencies. Going back and forth isn’t true change. Does either party have the true answers? Is either side correct? How can we make true change and move away from the insanity? I will attempt to get you the answers.

We will start with the complaints. We need change, we need big business out of government, and we need our freedoms back. Both major parties seem to promise all of those things to us. They both say they are making the change to make this country better. In fact, every presidential candidate has said that for as long as anyone can remember. The Right, young and old, will probably tell you the last president that truly made change happen was Ronald Reagan. The Left’s older crowd will probably tell you John F. Kennedy. The young Leftists may even say Barack Obama. How are we all over the board like that? Because our political parties that we affiliate with are what determine your views. This election has been proof. Both parties’ candidates advocated for change. They expected you to believe it. We will see if the change comes. Another change that was addressed because of widespread frustration was about big business being involved in politics. Hillary Clinton is known for having big business help, and Donald Trump talked about that over and over again. Trump talked about how his campaign was run on his own money and he didn’t need big business help. Okay, Donald, but wasn’t your money made through a big real estate business? That argument by Trump is invalid as he, himself, is big business. In fact, he is now loading up his cabinet with big business men. So to keep big business out of government, Mr. Trump has decided to “drain the swamp” of people being influenced by big business and replacing them with the people who did the influencing. Right wingers talked about wanting big business out of government and here we are filling the holes with big businessmen. But the Right will tell you it is okay, because it is the person affiliated with their party. Now, before I go on I am not here to necessarily bash on Trump’s picks. I don’t know if they are good or not, I’m just simply stating a fact. I hope they do well, just like everyone in this country should be doing (which, unfortunately, is not the case).

We also have been expressing that we want our freedoms, as people, back. Both parties have given us the lip service about being free. They give us examples of the freedoms they will give us. There is a trend with these freedoms that I will point out.

Freedoms Democrats endorse:

• No Abortion Restrictions
• Legalize Gay Marriage
• Universal Health Care
• No Immigration Restrictions
• Drug Liberalization

Freedoms Republicans endorse:

• No Gun Control
• No Limiting Privately Financed Campaigns
• Capital Punishment

What they do agree on: They are against non-interventional foreign policy. So in other words, they not only like to restrict our freedoms in their own different ways and tell us there are certain things we can and can’t do without giving us a real choice, but they also like to intervene on other countries’ problems and predicaments and tell them what they can and can’t do (although, at times, intervention may be necessary to help humans in danger).

The length of these lists has nothing to do with the point I am making. The point I am making is they don’t agree on any of these policies, besides one that may restrict the freedoms of other countries. They pick and choose which ones they support as long as the other party doesn’t agree. In all reality, what do any of those policies hurt? Why do we regulate the person we can marry, the lifestyle choices we make when it comes to substances used, and why do we have to regulate the decision a woman makes about her body (If your answer is religion, what if their religion has no problem with abortion? That is an infringement on freedom of religion. Just because your beliefs don’t align with theirs, that doesn’t put them in the wrong). A flaw with supporting abortion but not the death penalty is if you believe the fetus is a person, then why are you killing a person who is already living and breathing? On the other side of it, why kill a fetus because it hasn’t been born yet but not someone who has killed a living, breathing human being? There is no rhyme or reason why there are differences with these policies and why there is such a gap in party platforms.

How can we make change if there is no middle ground? How can we cooperate with no way to compromise, according to their party platforms? We change from one end to the other. It is the equivalent to fixing being cold with setting yourself on fire, and fixing being hot by freezing yourself. Why not just turn the temperature up or down? Why do we have to try to align with one party, when both have great ideas and every human is different? It has just become a huge divide that our founding fathers warned us about.

George Washington was the first to warn us about such division. President Washington warned us about four things: permanent foreign alliances, that we must remain neutral, avoid sectionalist issues and political parties. All of these fears are prevalent today, and all of them may be viewed differently by the political parties themselves. About political parties, Washington said: “The common mischiefs of the spirit of the party are sufficient to make it the interest and duty of a wise people to discourage and restrain it.” Washington talks about parties serving their own interests and not being beneficial for those they serve to help, the people. He couldn’t have been more correct.

Political parties hurt our country more than help. They divide us as people. They give us no middle ground. They take one side or the other instead of finding a way to unite, and that is unacceptable. We are the UNITED States of America. Our leader should help UNITE us, not separate us. No matter which candidate you look at from the Right and the Left, you find a way they divide the people of our nation. Bernie Sanders dividing us into the rich and the poor, Barack Obama dividing us into Black and White, Hillary Clinton dividing us into men and women, Trump dividing us into attractive and ugly and all of the above making us feel bad about something that a lot of us can’t fix. Where’s the change? They’re all the same, but with different angles. They all divide us, they all have their own agendas to make them powerful and they all have a way of alienating a crowd (Trump: women, Blacks, the poor, Obama: Whites, Clinton: Men, Sanders: the rich, Stein: sane people, and all of them: the party they don’t agree with’s supporters.). While it may seem like I am picking on Trump, I don’t mean to. They are all alienating a group of people, making it impossible to truly unite and figure out the problems our country has. It is becoming a battle between parties who have an agenda for themselves and only certain people. They block the other from trying to help the one’s they alienate, when in reality we need people who want to help everyone, who has no emphasis but want there to be a well-balanced society that doesn’t help just some .We need to help all and have policies that make sense overall, not just for a person’s preference. Sure we need to help those who are more in need now, but why bring someone else down in the process. Bring them up to catch up, don’t bring someone else down to make it easier for the others. We also should not give unfair advantages to people. Why don’t we all get taxed the same percentage of our income? No one should be given a deliberate advantage by the government.

John Adams, the 2^nd president of the United States of America said this about the subject: “There is nothing which I dread so much as a division of the republic into two great political parties, each arranged under its leader, and concerting measures in opposition to each other. This, in my humble apprehension, is to be dreaded as the greatest political evil under our Constitution.

He is completely correct. Our founding fathers had a vision of a country united. Without being united, we would’ve never become independent, gotten the British off our back, or kept our country from permanently splitting. Unison is something that is extremely important, and we have let the gap between people in this country go on long enough. Why do we still associate as Republican and Democrat? So we can have labels like “Black”, “White”, “Rich”, “Poor”, “Christian”, “Atheist”, “Muslim”, “Gay”, “Straight”, or anything else that should only be an aspect of us, not define us as people? Why do we want to associate with a party that just wants to help certain people and not others? Are the others not important? Are we that selfish we only want the party to help us, and after that if it gives someone else the short end of the stick it’s fine? Is that where we are as a society? Why not agree with aspects of both sides? Why not have all of those freedoms I listed earlier legalized? What would it hurt? Do we align that much with our parties that we feel like the freedoms the other party says are wrong?

Those are all questions we should ask ourselves. We need to start making decisions by gathering knowledge, not listening to left or right wing commentators/activists (Tomi Lahren, Al Sharpton Ann Coulter, Anderson Cooper), news stations (CNN, Fox News) or those “news sources” we take as fact (Red Alert Politics, Occupy Democrats). If we listen to bias media, our facts and opinions get skewed. That should not be the case. The media has been another tool the Left and Right have used to divide us even further. While I am not a professional journalist, I learned that news should be reported objectively. News is meant to have the facts reported and the viewers decide how to make up their mind about it. Our Left and Right media do it for us on their networks, which is wrong. Now, before you tell me I’m doing things wrong by expecting you to listen to me after I just said journalism should be objective, I want to point out I am not reporting the news. When it comes to news items, our media outlets are failing us with reporting things in opinionated ways, to fit their agenda. I am simply stating ideas.

We are not doing anything to help ourselves by being Republicans or Democrats. The divide keeps getting bigger and bigger. That is scary. Left and Right is not the way we should be moving. The further you go in each direction, the closer you get to Communism (Left) and Fascism (Right). We don’t need a political spectrum that goes from the likes of Castro, Stalin and Lenin all the way over to Hitler and Mussolini. We need a more centralized society.

I may seem like I am rambling about the points I am making, but it is important to realize we cannot cure this country with insanity. Insanity is doing the same thing over and over again expecting a different result. How do we expect to change anything by switching back and forth from Republican to Democratic administrations, and vice versa? We need true change, and not a change from Left to Right, but to the center. If we become more tolerant of each other’s views, open our eyes about the divide and realize that neither Right nor Left is the answer, then we will be better as a country. Until then, keep arguing about how bad Tomi Lahren is while you are watching CNN talk about Donald Trump, or talking about how much you can’t stand Anderson Cooper while you watch an Ann Coulter guest spot on Fox News. We need moderation. We need centralized ideas. We need to help everyone in our nation, not just a few. We are all Americans, not just subgroups. Let’s start thinking that way, please. It is common sense. If common sense is too much to ask for in this country, please give me reasons why, because common sense doesn’t lie with the Left or the Right. It lies with free thinkers who don’t need a pre-made set of guidelines. Common sense lies with your judgement and not what a party, political figure, or news station tells you. If you truly want change, speak up and quit flying your Donkey and Elephant flags around. Admit you’re wrong when you’re wrong, find common ground and quit thinking one side is better than the other.

Think of it as a giant ice covered plank that is balancing like a seesaw. The only reason we have any sort of balance is because we are split almost equally on opposite ends so it doesn’t dip up or down. If too many people are on one side it will slant in that direction, which could cause everyone to tumble off and be susceptible to harm. If we all started equally coming towards the middle, the icy plank will stay balanced and no one will slip, and in the end we will all be together helping keep a balance instead of being balanced only because we are so far apart and we are trying to convince the other to come to our side and eventually make a dangerous tumble.

Please, if you haven’t taken away anything from this, just think of one question: why should we be divided by two imperfect ways of thinking when we can come together as one united way of thinking that has aspects of both? The parties have divided us and we need our united way of thinking back. We the people need to find a way to make change and the best way is to come together without parties, not convince someone to be a Republican or Democrat.

To drive that point home, I will quote one of our last great presidents, John F. Kennedy, who said: “Let us not seek the Republican answer or the Democratic answer, but the right answer. Let us not seek to fix the blame for the past. Let us accept our own responsibility for the future.”

The quote speaks for itself. Think about it, and let’s make change happen.