Our Future is too important to be Forgotten
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IL District 18 Interactive Map district info LINK ----- Rob Mellon Facebook Page
A Democrat's Quest
If were running for this seat as Rob Mellon is, I would give this speech.
"Something is wrong in America"
Something is wrong in America. We know it without being able to identify the problem or the solution. We in Central and Western Illinois suffer because of it. We know we live in an abundant land, yet a sense of unfocused fear hovers around us. We want to simply build lives that strengthen our families, yet we fear our future is eroding. Our citizens are not respected or treated with dignity for the work they do. The loss of the old values of honesty, community spirit, and individual character undermine the foundations of our lives.
Why are our resources wasted? Why are our schools so stressed? Why are our students not prepared for the jobs of the future? Why are so many of our citizens working hard, yet struggling to keep up? Why does it seem everyone is shouting and no one is listening?
There are millions of solutions in this country, thousands of solutions in this district, but there is one and only one problem. The problem in our nation and our district is our dysfunctional politics. Power and money have lobbied their way into the body politic like a cancer. As a cancer mutates and changes the very DNA of our bodies, the power brokers have changed our government. It is a new mutated politics. The influence of power makes our government ineffectual and inefficient; it is a strategy. Obstructing our representative government from promoting the general welfare and working towards shared values benefits powerful private interest. Money ball politics at the expense of the common good is seen as normal. Private powers are writing our laws and regulations; it is not questioned in the news. Our representative democracy has been perverted; our pragmatic American system has grown irrational without comment or whimper from our media.
The voices of the people of our nation are lost, unheard, and scattered by the cyclonic force of entrenched interests. The ideas that grow and are nourished by our good land are left to rot in the fields; only the backward looking protectors of private profit have access to shape legislation. Patrons of politicians and funders of reporting organizations control the news narrative. The muckrakers of irrationality use their tools with the skill of surgeons. Wedges of outrage, mistrust, misinformation, and prejudice are used to keep our people from finding common purpose. There is a treatment for our sick system of politics; it lies in our own hands. We can use the tools of the information age to dialog with each other in our congressional districts, and then we can vote. If we increase involvement even by small percentages, we can create an earthquake in the halls of Congress. Americans have always supported scientific reasoning, technical progress, assessing the cost, finding the best value, and paying the bills. We can once again be the nation that joins together to get things done. I ask you not for your money but for your mind. Vote for me; together we will unleash a revolution in our politics. The simple duty of citizens going to the polls will fire a silent shot heard round the world.
