My trip into the Political Arena, lessons learned.

I have always loved Politics. In high school it was arguably the only subject I not only stayed awake for, but paid close attention to.
I absolutely love to debate and I am good at bringing the hammer down. I have a strong sense of justice and am fearless so I thought with the massive corruption in today's Politics I would stop running my mouth, and step into the Political Arena.
It seemed to start out good, with the typical support of friends, most are people who have encouraged me to run for as long as I have known them.
things changed quickly and people are of course fickle (I Know you are reading this so take heed) and soon I found the first big hurtle, one I could not surpass.
The number one problem I found, at least in Montana is the amount of Signatures needed simply to be placed on the Ballot. I would need to gather some 15k signatures as a independent simply to appear on a ballot, be it write in or otherwise. Now if you have party Support that changes to 5000, the party of course can supply those signatures. To make it even more difficult, those signatures need to be physical and electronic do not count.
Why Montana makes this so hard is beyond me as in Texas for instance one only needs 500 signatures to run for US congress, considering the sheer amount of population in Texas vs Montana that makes that task easier in every sense. The 15k signatures may as well have been 15 million, comparing population it seems to be about right.
In order to gather signatures this is where I needed those friends and well little happened. To have a successful campaign one needs volunteers, willing to push and help you with a cause you share. It seemed with the exception of a couple, I was alone.
Politics is difficult, which takes connections and elbow rubbing to make anything happen. I hoped that I could maybe go viral, but I learned fairly quickly in order to make something go viral, you have to spend money. The more money you spend the greater the audience who see's your post.
With whatever money is left over from my pay check I would put in a few dollars here and there, only able to gain the attention of a few hundred people at a time. Considering my main opponent is not only backed by a political party, but is worth several hundred million dollars, I may as well have been pissing on a California wildfire.
I also found that people need constant stimulation, merely presenting facts is not enough and I am arguably not someone great at selling himself. I am a factual person who is borderline boring and I realize that, it is just hard to correct. I am one who thinks hisotry needs to be pure as are facts, but people want otherwise.
IF we take the Republican Party they use nothing but low information tag lines "Socialists bad, guns and god good" which really if you boil it down is about all you get from them.
The Democratic party is only marginally better however having isolated their voting base with apparently "Rednecks are stupid you all need us to hold your hand" Mantra it is easy to see why they are struggling right now.
God is a powerful word which those of us raised in Judeo Christian America (That was never the intention of those who founded this country) are accustomed to. It states power and many people gravitate to it regardless if it is correct or not.
So this is where I lose out on reality. I am a Deist so I need facts before all in order to function, to me it is impossible to see the world otherwise.
So where does that leave me?
Well knowing I need to be more appealing and probably to stick to my writing. Where I fall short in person, despite having a sense of humor which can keep anyone on the floor laughing, I seem to make up in my ability to write.
I am not done yet, I have a couple more Idea's to present myself in the Political Arena, but right now I realize I am trying to climb up a muddy sslope dodging boulders in the meantime.
I will focus more on my writing, read more about marketing and see what I can do.
That is all I can do at this point.
Someone whom I have learned to value as a friend from the online world stated something else which one needs "To get money out of Politics" That person is undoubtedly reading now and I want him to know how much his fervent support has meant to me over this past year.
He is an example of someone who's political beliefs are not always the same as mine, but who's respect I gained through fierce debates and finding a common ground.
If only more would stop and think as he did, we would be able to accomplish far more in this country.
I fear that is lost as we are polarized to black and white with little gray.
Extremes of both parties dominate and it will take something great to provide interference to make the common mans voice heard again.