Dearest American Democracy,

I am writing this letter so you can understand the depth of my love. Where to start, there are many things about you that evokes my love. It’s your inherent racism in the justice department, how you attempt to deny women the right to choose, but what I love most about you, is your ability to destroy our environment. I never truly knew what love was until your perfection was exposed over time, as I became more aware of your excellence. 

The racism embedded in your justice department sends sparks through me. The way you seek to imprison African American’s at an astonishingly higher rate. How you let the President define your sentencing of federal crimes, like obstruction of congress. 

You say you offer equal representation, yet one senator from Iowa has 12.5348542459 times more power. 

  Your ability to restrict rights as you have grown is unwavering, and that is one aspect of you that I love. Your attempt to restrict a women’s right to choose, is inspiring. I hope one day I too have the audacity to tell other people what to do with their bodies.

All these things I love about you are insignificant to the thing I love most. Your ability to destroy our environment. Starting in industrialized agriculture, with pesticides in the crops. Reducing the clean water act, allowing farmers to dump EVEN MORE waste into our oceans, is something that I will always cherish in my heart. I love how you not only allow, but promote big businesses to use coal, oil, and other natural resources.

America, I could go on and on about all the things I love about you, but all the things that I have stated stem from your one trait that is so incredibly attractive, your ignorance.

With Love,

Aidan

This year is not only my first year of voting, but a presidential election year. Upon witnessing the development of our government, I have become more engaged in politics. Often, I am engulfed by the Washington Post, The New York Times, CNN, NBC, or any other news outlet. As I sit here, hours before the caucus, I feel I should share who I am caucusing for, why, and my predictions for both my caucus location, and the entire state of Iowa.

When I was choosing a candidate, I wanted to find the issues that mattered to me the most, and align my ideas with a candidate. I could dive into the candidates and each of their policies, however, I will do the three issues that are both important and have defining differences. As the candidates began to spread, I was interested in their environment policies. The candidates I agreed with were Elizabeth Warren, Beto O’rourke, and Pete Buttigieg. The issue second on my list was immigration. The importance of immigrants of all colors, not just the white ones are essential to our growing economy. Because of this, I agreed with the open borders ideas proposed by Bernie Sanders, Elizabeth Warren andBeto O’rourke. Third is medicare. I agree that medicare is a right for all people, but I also believe the medicare system should continue to perform at a high level. I support Pete Buttigieg’s “Medicare for all who want it.” This provides medicare for people who cannot afford private healthcare. We see countries like England or Canada that have medicare for all, and we think, “Why can’t we have the same system as them?” I asked my dad this question, and he responded, that the quality of  medicare provided through their government is low, and to get a higher quality, they end up paying, not as much as US citizens, but a lot. He also supports Pete Buttigieg, and he said, doing a “for those who want it” system can raise the base level of medicare provided by the government, without spending excessive amounts of money. After reading all of the candidates’ policies, it seemed that there would six candidates (at the time) I aligned with almost universally, Pete Buttigieg, Bernie Sanders, Kamala Harris, Andrew Yang, Amy Klobachar, and Beto O’rourke. 

As the Nation has continued to polarize, I wanted a president that could bring the nation closer together. I read into each candidate’s history and their general personality. As I did research, a clear ranking developed, O’rourke, Harris, Buttigieg, Klobachar, Sanders, then Yang. Going into October, Beto began to slip in the polls, and Harris stopped growing, I found myself engrossed in all the candidates, not able to find someone to support.

Over the past couple months, I have used rallys, Q and As, and other presidential candidate’s events to find a candidate that inspires me to support and caucus for them. On December 6th, Pete Buttigieg held an event at the Harris Center. Going into this, I was leaning towards Pete, but didn’t have a clear decision. He addressed issues that were important to me, specifically, environmental stability, both in rural America, and in cities. It was the first event I attended, where the candidate answered questions and didn’t just talk. Beyond this, he handled the negativity at this event with poise, inspiring unification over admonition. This inspired me to commit to Pete. Since then, I have canvassed three times, and have talked to people, most of which are undecided.

Since tonight is caucus night, I believe I should share my brief predictions. Living in the North side of Grinnell, it is predominantly older, upper middle class, and white. Like many people, I am glued to polls, and know the candidates’ supporter’s demographic. Bernie (1st), Biden (2nd), Buttigieg (3rd), Warren will end 4th. Across Iowa, I believe that the results will end as, Bernie (1st), Biden (2nd), Warren (3rd), and Buttigieg (4th). 

After attending the caucus my predictions for my precinct were way off. My precinct offers seventeen delegates, and the results were as follows, Warren with six delegates, Klobechar with four, Sanders with four, and Buttigieg with three.

To describe my caucus in detail: there were 328 people, making the 15% threshold 50 people. As we lined up, it was clear Warren and Bernie had strong support, easily making the threshold. In the Buttigieg line, I could tell it was going to be close. As we got into lines of ten, we heard the Klobuchar people cheer, cementing their threshold number. The total of the Buttigieg supporters was 49, making them 6 short of the threshold. After counting, members of the Pete campaign, spoke to people in the undecided, and those that are aligned with unviable candidates. I went to the Biden line, attempting to have them realign with Pete. At first, they were unwilling to change, but when their number ended at 26, they realized they had to change to their second candidate. After the end of the second round, Pete was able to get people from the Biden, Yang, and undecided to boost their number to 55 people, making them eligible. 

I attended the 2016 caucus, and this caucus was much different for the North precinct. In the previous caucus, there were two candidates, making it much more black and white, where this one had four viable candidates, creating a more interesting process. Candidate leaders had to use more strategy to have their candidate read the threshold.

My favorite event of the night was when two people wrote in “Jimmy Carter” during round one, so they wouldn’t end up undecided after the first round.

Before my first caucus, in 2016, my mom would say, “The caucus is a relic of the past.” I would respond saying I agree, but I enjoy watching the caucus, because it is fun. However, after the “shitshow” Monday, my mother’s ideology, shared by much of America, was confirmed. 

After the caucus, like many others, I immediately layed in bed with my mom and turned on CNN, expecting to see the results. As more and more locations failed to send in the results, we were beginning to feel frustrated. My mom reiterated what she has been saying for four years, “The caucus is a relic of the past.” To understand what my mother meant by this, I asked her to describe the weaknesses of having the Iowa caucus go first. She believes the caucus is undemocratic. Some people don’t feel comfortable publicizing their political beliefs. She says in the constitution we have the right to a private ballot (which refers to the presidential ballot), so she questions why we can’t for the nominations as well. She also believes having Iowa go first gives an advantage to specific candidates. Iowa’s demographics are not representative of the whole nation’s, so when a candidate has low support from specific communities, the votes could be skewed in Iowa.

The concept of careful listening is a concept foregn to many American households. People are raised in a household with one viewpoint, believing that their view of politics is “correct” and the other view is “wrong”. The intake of one view, whether it’s from the media, or family, creates a polarized view on politics. In the article, Evan Mandery states the biggest threat to democracy is the polarizing politics caused by a lack of listening.

During the Thanksgiving holidays, there are always those viral videos of family arguments about politics, much of which we see and laugh at. However, these arguments highlight a deeper rooted issue in America: the lack of listening to and understanding the differing political parties. Families with clashing views are unable to understand the other’s view. During my Thanksgiving, my family does not have political debates. In the past, Thanksgiving has been spent with family friends, many of whom have democratic political beliefs. This year, I spent Thanksgiving with family in California, and similarly, there is an overdominant liberal belief. 

However, when it is just my family eating dinner, whether that is at Relish, Prairie Canary, or in Des Moines, we often have little political debates. Because my Mother was raised in single viewpoint household, she has strong liberal beliefs, and doesn’t particularly listen to any other view. My father, however, was raised in a republican household, but moved to California, where he was exposed to more liberal beliefs. Because of this exposure, he understands both viewpoints, but still has a strong sense of fiscally republican views.

With the exposure to more divisive and polarizing decisions by the state and national government, debates are often started over the dinner table between my mother’s liberal views, my father’s conservative views, and my liberal views. The main topic of our debates tends to be about the general state of our government. Where my mother believes the Electoral College and Senate is “f-d up,” my father believes it provides influence from the often overlooked ranchers in Montana. Having these debates, where my mother doesn’t listen to my father, and my father doesn’t listen to my mother, has shown me the importance of listening and understanding. Seeing each side of many debates, from gun control to the economy, I have a deep understanding of the parties’ views in our politics. 

Every person has to fill out a bubble when registering to vote, identifying a political party. Parties narrow the opportunity of people to truly have the choice of a commander in chief. For example, a Republican in Iowa may want to register as such, but caucus for Pete Buttigieg. However, this cannot be done because filling out those little bubbles defines who you must caucus for. In my opinion, we should not have any parties at all. George Washington once said, “However [political parties] may now and then answer popular ends, they are likely in the course of time and things, to become potent engines, by which cunning, ambitious, and unprincipled men will be enabled to subvert the power of the people and to usurp for themselves the reins of government, destroying afterwards the very engines which have lifted them to unjust dominion.” Washington was also against parties, he believed political parties would divide the government and unjustly rule it. 

Those privileged actually tend to worsen the political polarization. The privilege of knowledge tends to make people believe they are correct. Being privileged, it is our duty to understand people’s opinions. To do this, each person must use resources beyond what they might usually use to access political information, it may just be reading a Fox News article instead of CNN or vise versa. Being knowledgeable about politics, is the duty of every voting citizen. Not just knowledgeable about one party, but about all parties. Using the privilege of education to make the United States a more understanding and accepting place.

I am Aidan Brownell, a 17 year old straight, white male, my pronouns are he/him/his, as they have been since birth. I include all this information because I am a PERFECT example of what privilege is. This blog will be focused on political issues, and what people in a position of privilege can do engage in politics in a meaningful way. I am a registered Democrat, but I would consider myself a member of the Green Party, but for voting sake, registering as a Democrat simplifies the process. 

I believe in being a straight white male, it is my job, and those similar to me, to assist those that don’t have the platform to express their concerns and wishes of the government.

To introduce my politics, you must first understand where I come from. I was raised in a very liberal household. To many, this is a surprise, as my father was president of the NRA just two years ago and is a registered Republican. If my household is split, how can it be a “very liberal household”? Not only was my dad the president of the NRA, but he runs a large gun parts distribution business. Because of his busy schedule, he was not home during a large portion of my political growth, so my mothers liberal views greatly influenced my understanding of politics. However, my dad’s republican views, allows me to have calm and understanding political discussions. 

To summarize my perspective on politics, both socially and fiscally, I am liberal.