What do we see when we get to the core?

I had planned on writing a different entry than the one you are reading, but after my experience last night, I have bumped that subject matter to the next time.

Last night I went with Sheldon Schafer to the Chief's game and worked at passing out his campaign flyers. He took the big entrance, I took the small entrance. Overall we passed out by my reckoning anywhere from 300-400 flyers. Assuming Sheldon's experience was like my own, we ran across a great many interested individuals. They'd smile, ask what we were "selling", take the flyer, sound interested, and start reading it as they walk away. Thankfully this was quite a large percentage of the people I ran into ...up to 30% seemed like they'd give it at least one more look before it went thru the washer because they forgot they left it in their back pocket.

I am thankful for those people because doing the sidewalk-cold-call like that is tough, and their interest and potential engagement makes it worth it. But now it's time for this writing to take the first of two dark turns.

The reality of any cold-call-like activity is that, if you have a worthy "product", you can expect a conversion rate of 1%-3% (depending on many things). So Sheldon and I were out there for a couple hours, even rained on, albeit minimally, to get 3 or 4 votes or maybe up to 12.

The silver lining on the cloud over this first dark turn is that this is EXACTLY the type of man we need to be supporting. Someone working hard, meeting the people WHEREEVER they are ...a man brave enough to square off against the establishment with funding currently at less than half of one percent of his biggest competition (Schock).

But let's remember as we leave this turn on our journey that 12 votes earned a night, even if it were every single night between now and November 4th would add up to 804 votes. The last election in this district was won "by a margin of 147,108 (67%) to 71,106 (33%)"source. Even if the vote split close to evenly three ways, that's still a good 75,000 votes Sheldon would need to win ...804 votes is just a hair over 1% of that.

And now on to the second, darker turn. Though I met a lot of nice/engaged people last night, I met almost as many people that were, well, we'll say discouraging to me. I got quite a few "No Thanks" and just outright ignorings. These were ok, though. The ones that saddened my heart were those who said things like "I'm a democrat" or "I'm a republican" or "Green Party?! ...here take this back, I don't want this !#@$@". ...and a few responses I'll just categorize as subversively "angry".

What has happened to this country? We were founded by thinkers, debaters, and conscientious individuals who knew we needed to live on in a similar manner ...it is IMPERATIVE that we stop rigorously defining ourselves by these broad groups. Especially when, in this blogger's humble opinion, the two biggest groups of consequence in this case (democrats and republicans) have abandoned us quite some time ago. PEOPLE! LISTEN! We need to STOP BEING, and START UNDERSTANDING ...we need to vote for INDIVIDUALS not parties ...the parties had their chance and they are failing ...we need an INDIVIDUAL who knows he is one and is committed to representing the other INDIVUDUALs in his district. I only see one candidate in the 18th that I believe is ready for that responsibility.

There is no silver lining on the cloud around this second turn. It only gets worse because we have to recognize that those "negative", "I'm not gonna understand, I'm gonna be", and otherwise disenfranchised people I ran into are not to blame entirely. If we extrapolate from my experience from last night, this group is a very large one ...in fact there's more of "them" (be-ers) than there are of "us" (understand-ers). And worse, we can't write them off but instead, for each one of them out there, their responsibility and burden must be seen as being shifted onto the shoulders of those who would count themselves among the understand-ers.

There's an overused plot device here that comes to mind. In the movie, our protagonist has worked to uncover the hidden truth involving the evil or problem or whatever, and as the movie climaxes and he gets to the "core" of the problem, he discovers a mirror. Now, if the be-ers were each to set out on that mission they'd discover a mirror ...but the truth is they aren't gonna go on that mission ...by definition of how they identify themselves. So what we (the understand-ers) need to do is look in our own mirrors, and not just see ourselves, but see the vast army of be-ers sitting atop our shoulders. We need to remember that imagery and redouble our efforts to get people in this country back to being engaged thinkers rather than sheep. We are walking around with their burdens on our shoulders ...and we need to remember that we're responsible for them for now, whether we like it or not.

So think about the state of the world around you, and decide if you want a change. And if you do ...look in the mirror and see the thousands of others who are relying on you to do something about it.