What is Politics?

September 25, 2022

Jessica Sapp

 

Generally speaking, the best way to summarize politics is a number of decisions that are made in agreement by a group of individuals through a process of opinions, discussion and voting. Citizens elect people to represent the general public. Those that are elected are done so through a majority vote so the hope is that elected officials are making decisions for the majority or the greater good. While you may hear some say that they do not like “politics”, politics is actually pretty essential for our foundation and necessary so that citizens can understand laws and their due process rights. Politics determine our daily processes, from the taxes we pay and what those taxes are used for, all the way to freedom of speech, abortion laws and gun control. But without politics, we would have no controls and no due process rights so our political framework is intended to be in place to look our for citizens.  Ultimately, politics gives people a platform to provide their ideas and opinions.

Have you ever heard the phrase that two minds are better than one? We all have and there is something to be said of that. Because we are in the United States and we are a Republic and because we are structured in a way to have three branches of government outlined in the Constitution, decisions that are made in the United States are what we would call groupthink discussion. Groupthink is when a group of individuals have a topic or issue to discuss or make a decision on and they strive to come to a conscious. We all use groupthink likely on a daily basis. This can occur while working on school projects with a group, during assignments at work and even in your own home within your nuclear family. When engaging in groupthink, while there will always be someone, or more than one person who may dissent or not see things exactly as the leader, those individuals bring valuable discussion to the table. It is normal for an individual who leads a discussion to begin as narrow minded or only see things through their lens. But it is important to be open minded to all opinions because it will allow the leader to see things in a different light and adjust their own opinion or idea in a way that will bring a greater benefit to a greater range of individuals who they are making decisions for.

An example of this I can speak to is the rollout of the initial administration of the COVID-19 vaccination. When the vaccine first became available, it was limited, and the quantities were being sent to individual states from the national stockpile. When Florida received their first allocation of the vaccine, as with many states, it was not enough to cover the entire population. Government officials had to engage in workgroups and utilize the groupthink methodology to decide how the allocation would be distributed and who it would be distributed to. This required a great deal of effort, and many factors were considered. You can imagine a such a topic and those decisions were not easy to come to but with utilizing groupthink and having a number of qualified individuals engaging in those discussions, a group decision was made that best benefited the citizens of Florida as a whole.

Civil liberties play such an important role in our rights and how decisions are made. In the example above I gave on the COVID-19 vaccine distribution, freedom of speech was allowed and accepted so that all ideas, thoughts and opinions were considered. Every individual has their strength and weaknesses and when freedom of speech is allowed and groupthink is utilized, better decisions can be made to benefit the greater good. It should be common knowledge that even with groupthink decisions, this will not make every single citizen happy. That will never be possible. But it is important for groups of individuals to use each other’s strengths and weaknesses to make the best decisions that will have a positive impact of the greatest number of citizens as a whole.

Politics are built into our foundation and while its not uncommon for individuals to not fully understand the positive impact politics can play in our everyday lives, it could be easy to focus on the negative. Instead, learn what role you play and how you can make an impact. Politics start out small and individual impact is how you can make a difference.