Government is a Team Sport: A Primary Perspective

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THIS JUST IN: HUMANITY IS RUN BY HUMANS. Also newsworthy: different humans have different approaches to running humanity. Also, in case you didn't know: humans are imperfect beings who don't always have the answers to life. 

So why do we seem to have a double-standard to expect our politicians to have the perfect answer to everything? 

The hate online has been excessive during this primary season, as it always is in elections. But in an era where we're starting to accept that self-care isn't a luxury anymore, that it's essential to survival and living, where we're learning to forgive ourselves, we don't provide that same standard to our politicians. ​

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​We expel vitriol and we start choosing our candidates by process of elimination: I can only vote for my candidate because the other candidates made this mistake, made that mistake, etc. Also, I'm ignoring the mistakes my candidate made, or I'm rationalizing those mistakes as "not as harmful" to our government/humanity/etc. 

I'm not blaming people for having this reaction, though. I think it's a response to post-traumatic stress. It is a fear-based response. We're so used to having to choose between bad and worse that we're still evaluating a pool full of awesome candidates--brilliant ideas and flaws and all--by purity tests instead of looking at all the ways they work well together. But we don't have to this time around. We have a bunch of good candidates, all of whom would bring something different to the stage, flaws and all. 

Remember: government is a team sport. We're all in this together. Cue High School Musical theme.
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