An election is an opportunity to learn.

It isn’t a function of the result. It’s a function of the reality emanating from the result.

Political parties must identify better candidates. When 65% of voters don’t like either candidate it signals the current process isn’t working. Instead of selecting based on name recognition, money, seniority, or potential electoral votes why not a job description emphasizing:

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• Ability to execute an interview/debate without requiring questions in advance or notes,
• Ability to stand in front of the podium and talk to us; without a teleprompter, correctly utilizing the English language,
• Sufficient education to understand business, economics, history, and foreign policy. It’s hard to understand what business requires if you’ve never hired, motivated or meet a payroll,
• Demonstrated empathy, manners, good taste, ability to negotiate, compromise and collaborate.

Parties need to realize we don’t care what someone did as a teenager or college student. Doing so eliminates good people. We were all stupid then.

The election reinforced political realities. Most politicians aren’t willing to subordinate their ego to the needs of constituency or country. State and national political parties prefer to sandbag candidate choice by endorsing one prior to primaries rather than seeking our input. When bringing in celebrities, a party admits their campaign isn’t surviving on its own merits and assumes we’re shallow and influenced by such.

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It’s our personal responsibility to demand input and competent candidates.

Political parties’ main legislative motivation is to buy votes. It’s common strategy to identify a group with an issue, develop legislation benefiting them and generate votes. Candidates often flip-flop their opinion on an issue. It can be a sign of maturity or learning, but when occurring repeatedly it’s disingenuously signifying a need to buy votes; think college debt forgiveness, or immigration.

A geographic aspect can’t be denied. Democrats dominate large urban areas where governmental organizations and corporations with union members are the largest employers. Republicans dominate less densely populated areas where small business and corporate management abide. Trump won 87% of the counties: 2,523 to 376. It explains why rural areas feel they aren’t getting a fair shake because urban areas possess more legislators. They don’t relate to legislation detrimental to rural areas. It’s a conflict between those who walk on cement and those who live on dirt.

We must take surveys, polls, and statistics with a grain of salt. They are consistently inaccurate. They can be developed substantiating whatever is desired. Those designing them will always create one proving whatever those paying the bill seek.

People change their mind when their circumstances change. With jobs and immigration their top two priorities, 36% more Latinos voted for Trump than 2020. They have jobs, work hard, see their kids being educated, developing a vested interest in our country. They see their welfare and the country’s welfare intertwined. They realize additional immigration, from whatever source, only serves to dilute both resources and opportunity.

Trust and accountability are important. When a mistake occurs, we have a large capacity to forgive, but not when those involved won’t accept responsibility. Consequently, when Democrats refused to take responsibility for infusing $6 trillion into the economy and the resultant inflation negatively affecting everyone’s cost of living, it didn’t sit well. Their saying “we will lower prices” was hypocritical and indicated they didn’t have a plan.

Not admitting that immigration was an economic, safety, and legal issue besides a humanitarian one was refusing accountability. We understand the reality that open borders have facilitated foreign criminals and terrorists threatening our individual and country-wide safety. Many violating our immigration laws don’t have our best interests at heart. Laws provide our foundation. We can’t choose which to enforce. The majority didn’t trust anything would change.

It’s hard to trust when they choose to not include food, energy, and housing in the inflation rate when that’s 60% of the family budget. It’s hard to trust when they only report job gains each month and not laid-off or terminated positions. They seldom mention 30-plus percent of gains are governmental jobs, increasing payroll when population growth is stagnant.

The unemployment percentage is understated because it doesn’t include those not looking for work this week, those having multiple part-time jobs and seek full-time work or independent contractors losing clients.

The election proved issues are the issue. Saying it’s a function of racial or gender bias is only a rationalization, not a truth. In the 2000s over 60% said they would vote for Margaret Thatcher for President if she was a citizen. A majority of Colorado legislators are women. Find the woman with the characteristics mentioned earlier and they are more than electable.

We still believe in God, or the inherent values associated there in. Our currency doesn’t say “In God We Trust” by accident. At a Harris rally, when someone yelled “Jesus is Lord.”  Her response, “You’re at the wrong rally,” destroyed anything she had previously said about her beliefs and values. It wasn’t received well.

To lessen political extremism, we must realize when Jesus said “Love your neighbor” he knew they would look, behave and be different from you. That’s the point.

It’s a hard truth, but it’s our responsibility to realize political extremism will only decrease when we accept this reality. When we vote for a candidate because of their race, gender, religion, or sexual orientation we are just as racist as when we don’t vote for someone for the same reason.

Bryan Whiting feels most of our issues are best solved by personal responsibility and an understanding of non-partisan economics rather than government intervention. Comments and column suggestions to: bwpersonalresponsibility@gmail.com.