Well, remember that you asked for clarification. Here are 430 words.
The governance of our country is by elected officials. Theoretically, elections give the people power because the politicians who want to keep or want to earn a post in government must please the people.
In the current iteration of our representative democracy, there is collusion and cooperation among social and economic parties that should not assume close ties. That is, the well being of the people depends on a separation of the economic entities from health and safety protections for the people. (“The people” include those persons in the economic entities because they are voters, too.)
When the people see their legislatures, courts, and executive offices behaving in a way that is contrary to the people’s pursuit of happiness, there are two options to consider that the public can use to influence the government — protest from outside and use their votes to put sympathetic candidates into office.
Activism is most visible as a force that is outside the system of government. It can have great impact. Legislators seem to want their jobs, so a threat to removing them from office can influence their policy practices.
The other option available to the people is to put themselves into the system of governance. This means they would select from among themselves a sympathetic candidate and support their election.
As an observation from a distance, the motions of activism can look like a circus act. It is redundant and develops nothing new to solve an issue. The intent of the demonstrations is understood in advance by the public officer and the demonstrators. So the protest can be seen as just keeping a promise to show up. It is not necessarily an accurate representation of the majority of voters, and everyone knows it. The demonstrators hope that the size of the demonstration will reflect the bigger pool of voter’s position, implying a threat to the security of the public officer’s post. The target of a demonstration and all people can discount the demonstration as just a fractional voice.
The power that is most potent in our government is the choices made by the public officers. The biggest and best opportunity to create change is to put officers in place rather than march around their office building chanting a slogan or initiating a mail, phone, or email storm.
To make the most profound change as quickly as possible (in years), we need candidates more than we need noise.
You can save our country if you’ll just stand up and run for office, any office.
