Opinion: Is politics a beast or a system?

In her weekly column, Nancy Churchill asks if you want to ignore politics and just live your own life?

In her weekly column, Nancy Churchill asks if you want to ignore politics and just live your own life?

Nancy Churchill
Dangerous Rhetoric

Do you think of politics as an uncontrollable monster? Is it an unstoppable beast you have no hope of influencing? Is it a Goliath?

Do you want to ignore politics, and just live your own life? You may want to ignore politics, but politics is not ignoring you!

Nancy Churchill
Nancy Churchill

There is no aspect of modern life that is not constrained by laws, regulations, and rules. From food production to energy production, from home building to shipping, from banking to monetary policy — it’s ALL politics. And many of the people making the laws that control your life, your business, your job, your safety and your health do NOT have YOUR best interests in mind.

This was the same problem the Founding Fathers faced with King George. As they studied ancient political systems, the founders had a revolutionary idea. They realized government was a thing, and not a person. When you shift your concept of government and realize it’s a system with inputs and outputs, then you begin to understand it’s possible for everyday people to repair and upgrade the system.

If government is an “It” — like an airplane — you can start to take back your power. Airplanes have passengers, crew, and pilots. Up till now, you’ve probably been a political passenger. But before any plane can fly, it needs maintenance from mechanics. Our constitutional republic depends upon citizens who are empowered and engaged mechanics.

Anyone, including you, can develop the skills necessary to be an effective political mechanic. The time to start learning these skills is NOW, because the 2022 legislative session will begin Mon., Jan. 10, and it’s going to be a wild and crazy ride! The progressive Democrats have a supermajority in the legislature, so they’ll be up to no good. It’s very important for us to educate ourselves and work to influence the Democrats and persuade them to give up on some of their most toxic ideas.

I invite you to join a team of political mechanics and work together to Influence Olympia Effectively this 2022 legislative session. My friend, Ruth Peterson, and I have developed an online class titled Influencing Olympia Effectively.

This easy class is self-paced, and set up to allow you to choose to dive deep into the systems or just wade in the shallow end of the political pool. We aim to help you quickly figure out how to find bills by topic of interest or by number. We will help you figure out how to track a bill, from pre-file to committee to floor to cross over and back again. We’ll provide a comprehensive list of the bills we are most concerned about, and also give you our personal recommendations on how to have a greater impact on the movement of those bills.

At each step of the process through the lawmaking system, there is something you, the mechanic, can do to impact and influence the lawmakers as they consider the bills you are tracking. Find out what to do, how to do it, when to do it, and the best timing for each step of the lawmaking process.

If you’ve never tried to follow legislation and lawmaking, I highly recommend you focus your attention on one to five bills you really care about, and follow them every day of this session. It won’t take long, and you’ll come to look forward to figuring out how to have a greater impact on the issues that are important to you.

It’s fun to get involved in politics, and to understand the complex system of lawmaking. It’s empowering to take action, even when the results of that action are not always clear or obvious. Don’t get too hung up on results, like getting a reply or stopping a bill. We’re playing a long and complex game. The most important thing we can do is just get on the field, make the play, and support the team.

Build a local team of people who are willing to become Olympia Influencers. A small group of three to five people can accomplish a great deal! Many small groups can change this state for the better! Try to play the game of political mechanics every day. We have set up a Facebook group for you to join after you register for class so you can easily connect with other mechanics in your county.

This is the most important game you could possibly play, with the biggest impact. Play for yourself, your family, your community and your country. We need you to help us make America Great Again, one bill at a time. You do make a difference when you participate!

To register for our AWESOME class and become a political mechanic, please visit InfluencingOlympia.com. Next, click on “Start Now,” fill in the form, and check your email for your login credentials. We’re looking forward to working with you!

Nancy Churchill is the state committeewoman for the Ferry County Republican Party. She may be reached at DangerousRhetoric@pm.me. The opinions expressed in Dangerous Rhetoric are her own.

1 Comments

  1. Tom Gentry

    Many news outlets are reporting about the recent Supreme Court ruling allowing the public to know about former President Trump’s actual actions to block the overturn the election of Joe Biden. The following appears to be the most accurate:

    On Wednesday, January 19, by a vote of 8 to 1, the Supreme Court refused to block the National Archives and Records Administration (NARA) from releasing documents produced by the Trump White House to the House Select Committee to Investigate the January 6th Attack on the U.S. Capitol. Last night, NARA handed over hundreds of pages of documents to the committee. Today, Betsy Woodruff Swan at Politico published one of them.

    It was an unsigned executive order dated December 16, 2020, just two days after the false Trump electors in seven states executed documents falsely saying Trump had won the election in their states. The executive order charges that there is “evidence of international and foreign interference in the November 3, 2020, election.” It went on to echo the lies that the campaign peddled after Trump’s loss.

    Those complaints were used to justify using the National Guard to seize the nation’s election machines (ironically, the most intrusive possible federal interference in state elections from the leader of a party that just killed a voting rights bill on the alleged grounds it was federal overreach).

    The order told the secretary of defense to “seize, collect, retain and analyze all machines, equipment, electronically stored information, and material records” from the election. It gave the defense secretary power to call up the National Guard to support him and told the assistant secretary of defense for homeland security to provide support from the Department of Homeland Security.

    The secretary of defense had 60 days to provide an assessment to the Office of the Director of National Intelligence, suggesting that the process would continue after Inauguration Day.

    The executive order also provided for “[t]he appointment of a Special Counsel to oversee this operation and institute all criminal and civil proceedings as appropriate based on the evidence collected and provided all resources necessary to carry out her duties consistent with federal laws and the Constitution.”

    The document cites two National Security Presidential Memoranda—numbers 13 and 21—to justify the emergency powers Trump planned to assume. That citation revealed that this was no run-of-the-mill bananas proposition: the existence of Memorandum 21 was not publicly known. Its inclusion in this document suggests the author had access to sensitive government secrets. Tonight, Hugo Lowell of The Guardian noted that the National Security Council would not say anything about what National Security Presidential Memo 21 authorizes.

    The proposed special counsel was likely Trump attorney Sidney Powell, who was lobbying to become a special counsel at the time this executive order was drafted. Indeed, she may have had a hand in drafting it, although lawyer Rick Petree noted that the important role of the secretary of defense suggests that Trump loyalist Kash Patel might have been involved as well. After he lost the election, President Trump fired Secretary of Defense Mark Esper and replaced him with Acting Secretary of Defense Christopher Miller, making Patel Miller’s chief of staff where he exercised unusual authority.

    Washington reporter for Reuters Brad Heath noted that people close to Sidney Powell said President Trump authorized this executive order before his staff talked him out of it.
    Tonight, Trump lawyer Boris Epshteyn, who was subpoenaed by the January 6 committee on January 18 along with Trump lawyers Rudy Giuliani, Sidney Powell, and Jenna Ellis, told MSNBC’s Ari Melber that he and “the Trump legal team” were part of the plan to create the false electors. While he claimed that what they did was legal, he pushed responsibility for the plan onto Giuliani as the one in charge.

    And today the election threats task force in the Department of Justice launched its first case against a man accused of threatening lawmakers. Today, the FBI arrested 54-year-old Chad Christopher Stark of Leander, Texas, who posted a message on Craigslist on January 5, 2021, offering $10,000 to kill Georgia lawmakers. He wrote: “Georgia Patriots it’s time for us to take back our state from these Lawless treasonous traitors.” “[I]t’s time to put a bullet” into certain officials, because “[i]t’s our duty as American Patriots to put an end to the lives of these traitors and take back our country by force we can no longer wait on the corrupt law enforcement in the corrupt courts.” In language that echoes that of genocidal movements, he wrote: “If we want our country back we have to exterminate these people.”

    He concluded: “Remember one thing local law enforcement… we will find you oathbreakers and we’re going to pay your family to visit your mom your dad your brothers and sisters your children your wife… we’re going to make examples of traitors to our country… death to you and your communist friends.”

    Reply

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