Politics. Many say that football is our country’s favorite blood sport, I strongly disagree. It is without a doubt, politics. Both parties, yes both, spend millions of dollars demonizing anyone who dares not participate as being being anti-American, and when you do join, they spend millions more demonizing those that do not know everything about anything. Breaking news, this is coming from a political scientist.

This Tuesday, November 8th, is another election. Yes, this is probably one of the most important elections in our lifetimes. Yes, we heard that during the Trump/Biden blood match. Guess what, until we can learn to ask “how might we…”, every election from now on will probably be the most important of our lifetime. It will get old, this is coming from a former paid political operative too.

So as a chronic patient, why vote and participate in the process??? After all, most of the major political parties are just corporate drones anyway. You are not wrong. This country’s campaign finance laws are a joke. In order for a good person challenger to have a chance against an incumbent, they need money. When I say money, even a local Idaho candidate needs to raise upwards of $50,000 in order to get into the game, its probably closer to $75-$100,000 for candidates in a city of any significant size. Sure, a candidate can overcome a money gap by knocking on doors. Most research shows that to get the “average person” (not really sure what average person means to be perfectly honest) a candidate will have to contact that person 4-6 times. Long story short, even if a good person candidate was going to knock on doors to overcome a lack luster fundraising operation, they will probably have to have enough personal money to campaign full-time. Our campaign finance laws make it so only very small portion of our population can afford to run and hopefully legislate in our current system. As usual, thanks for coming to Big Al’s Ted Talk on campaign finance laws.

Ok Alan, you are three paragraphs in and all you have done is reenforced my belief that voting doesn’t matter. What the hell, I thought you wanted to go the other way with this post.

I do want you to vote and participate in elections, and here is why.

First, and most importantly, as chronic patients we have all become excellent storytellers. Whether it's with our medical teams, caregivers, or family and friends, we know how to share in order to get our point across. As much as I supported now (thankfully) President Biden over Trump, candidate Biden and his team did not have the time or resources to listen to my particular chronic pain story. They need to listen all chronic pain patient stories in order to win a national election. Local candidates are the complete opposite. They can and more often than not, do have the time and resources to get to know us on an individual level. Also, most rules/laws written by state legislatures are dealing with specific subjects like opiate use, funding for dental/eye care, or woman’s health. Local elected officials don’t have the authority to change the nations healthcare system as a whole, they can only modify it to the wishes of their particular state which gives patients like me more opportunity to affect change.

Case in point. Natalie MacLachian (https://natalie4idaho.com) a candidate for District 22 Idaho House of Representatives, came to my door in late August. This was the first candidate to ever knock on my door. Natalie is the democrat running on a platform of anti-extremism. In our 10 minute conversation, I was able to learn about her position on things like education, abortion, and how scary Idaho’s politics have become due to the GOP’s run (I would argue they are sprinting) to the far right. I mean criminalizing librarians for promoting reading, if that is not far right extremism I don’t know what is. In addition to learning about her positions, I was also able to share some of my experience as a chronic pain patient. She was both articulate and sympathetic. To put it another way, not only did she win my vote but I have donated to her campaign and have helped out some on social media (I would have volunteered more time but I need to get my current flare under control first). If/when she is elected, I would feel perfectly comfortable contacting her turning Idaho’s next legislative session if an issues were to come up that affects how chronic pain patients like me receive healthcare. I have the upmost confidence that Representative Natalie MacLachian would take my call too.

Quick side bar. If you have any spare change please consider a donation to Natalie’s campaign. Even a small donation of $20 can buy one more thank you pizza for her volunteer team which is huge. Here is her site again if you can help:

https://natalie4idaho.com. Thank you!

Let's take a moment and talk about the 2 major political ideologies in our politics today. By most anyone’s definition, I’m a political nerd. For example, I can talk about how the conservative party wants to privatize social security and thus risk grandma/grandpa’s retirement income. I can talk about why the liberal party wants socialized medicine while conservatives want to eliminate more regulations in the hopes of giving business more freedom to come up with healthcare solutions. Attention all single girls, I know this will be hard to believe but even with all this knowledge I’m still single, please feel free to email me at alanbrewington@yahoo.com if you are attracted to political nerds like me :)

Thanks to this nerdomn, I have been working on my own personal theory on the major difference between the parties. This theory is based on each ideologies belief in the human soul. Republicans believe all issues can be solved through the prism of conservative ideology while liberals believe that every individual is unique and thus try to create policy that captures this uniqueness. To put it another way, their ideas/policy prescriptions are going to be based on tradition or a political ideology 101 textbook versus liberals who are ore likely to use innovation to answer the question what do we need to make tomorrow better.

Please explain more Alan. While a political science student, I remember reading some study that stated that if the United State’s stalled out (economically, fiscally, innovation wise, and militarily) for 100 years, we would still be more advanced than most developing countries around the world. In a conservative’s eyes, that means our way of life (both economically and culturally) is correct and other countries are wrong. They are likely to believe that if every other country fallowed the United State’s model they to0 would become a world leader like us. The more like us another country is, the more likelihood of strong economic ties and counties that do business with each other don’t shoot at each other. Tradition shows we are correct, despite any faults like say systemic racism or near absolute hatred of LGBTQ persons.

Liberals, whether it's the unfinished pyramid under the eye of providence on the back of our one dollar bill or the phrase “a more perfect union” (more being the key word), think our country is meant to be a constant work in progress. For example, the United States traditionally ranks in the 15 to 20th range in most educational categories. Often, countries like Sweden or Finland score higher than us in things like reading, math, science. A liberal has no fear in asking why is that and can we (the country) steal something from Sweden in order to improve our own education system. They are more likely to accept that love is love and thus be ok with things like gay marriage or respecting a transgenders choice of pronouns. At the risk of sounding like a Ted Talk, if there is one constant about the human condition is that there is no constant. There is no way to measure the love between 2 women or a man and wife with 2.5 soccer kids for example so we should accept all love as love.

As a chronic pain patient, I have to rely on innovation almost daily in order to continue with a quality of life that I want. For example, I utilize Door Dash frequently otherwise I would probably not eat. If I’m a 7 out of 10 on the pain scale due to my rheumatoid arthritis, the last thing I want to do is come home after work and cook dinner. Many of you reading this probably but on your socks and shoes without even thinking. On bad pain days I have to modify my movements because my joints do not want to allow me to put on my shoes like a “normal” person. I also have had to change how I pick parking spaces due to my neck pain. This is probably why I favor liberal policies. Tradition is fine, if you feel good, but I don’t feel good most of the time. I know what it is like to have to wait for business to innovate so I can receive basic care because I could not afford it. Politics should be about people, not ideology.

Ok Alan, I follow your argument on a high level but you still haven’t convinced me to participate in local elections. Why should I participate in the election process considering the participants do almost everything possible to prevent me from participating? Simply put, until we (chronic and acute patients) decide to formally play the game all we ever will be able to accomplish is cool social media posts, medical conference inspiration porn, and some amazing books and powerpoint presentations. We need our fellow patients to share their stories to candidates like Natalie so she has the knowledge and resources to start to change the system when she gets on some Health and Welfare legislative committee. We need chronic patients to run for office so they can work with Medicaid Directors so real change can happen. As a political consigliere, I can help get fellow patients elected and trained to become the legislators our community needs. So why should you vote, simple, without your vote we lose all opportunity to ask “how might we…”.

If you need any help making a plan to vote on Tuesday, please feel free to reach out to me directly. If you have voted already, please leave a comment (especially if you are a chronic patient). Let's show them that we are participating and its time to pay more attention to us because we are organized and energized.

GO VOTE!!!!!!!!!!!!!!