For a country that prides itself on the judicial process, the United States lacks adequate justice for people holding power. With hard mandatory minimums for common criminals and soft punishments for predominantly white collar crimes, citizens cannot help but feel they drew the short straw in the game of political spheres.

Other major world powers, surprisingly, maintain cleaner hands than that of politicians in Washington, D.C. The current United States administration serves as a prime example of everything wrong with the way the country operates. On a seemingly weekly basis, Donald Trump’s name plastered with deplorable comments makes headlines. Insulting other world leaders and threatening nuclear war, Trump threatens world peace, not just American politics.

The President of the United States spent an entire campaign insulting Hillary Clinton and contradicted his own arguments using “fake news.” Whether due to influence or because of immediate power over other aspects of people’s lives, politicians and members of influential families seem unscathed by the justice system.

Jokes galore made about “senator’s sons” or people in power and their families in songs and media prove the point of how power helps a person pursue goals and helps a person weasel their way out of sticky situations. In Creedence Clearwater’s song “Fortunate Son,” the music group critiques an anonymous senator’s son for staying out of the draft into the war, highlighting the eternal political strife.

Similar to the senator’s son argument, wealthy sons of politicians manage to weasel their way out of conflict. Famously, Donald Trump opted out of the draft from the Vietnam War once because of “terrible bone spurs,” even though when later asked about his debilitating condition, he could not remember which foot it formed in. He escaped the draft three other times due to college enrollment.

Ironically, Trump now holds the title of head of state and manages to maintain his record breaking amount of criminal charges. How a man involved in 3,500 legal actions either as the plaintiff or defendant, including a whopping 100 based around himself and or the Trump Organization, managed to become the President of the United States baffles anyone with eyes.

Politicians in the United States, unlike the rest of the world, manage to hold themselves below the expectations of the general population by cheating their way through campaigns through bribery, collusion, and continued lying. The most upsetting part, however, stands as the fact that citizens accept and even turn a blind eye to corruption alongside politics instead of pushing for the truth.   

Citizens expecting transparency, the truth, and genuine people to represent the population needs to hold importance over everything but their actual political belief. Voices of the powerful need to represent the weak, politicians must not further their own personal agendas. When Trump signed off on an executive order to build the Dakota Pipeline because he invested in it, taking no regard for what the rest of America felt. The criminal government we live under needs to change.

Morgan Brown

Change arrives through a new and transformed way of looking at politics and holding candidates to the same moral standard as one would their own neighbor. Presidents and presidential candidates held to a higher standard, practically of human perfection, strive to achieve this perfection because of the expectations put on them and their work  by their constituents. The President stands as the talking head of the nation and a representative of the entire population so he/she (wishful thinking) must listen to their constituents and work in their best interest.

In a perfect world, the job of the voter would rely on their willingness to change the system and put forth the effort in doing so. In this world, holding those accountable who hold power over your life should hold precedent above just voting for a candidate because of the belief that your vote does not matter.