(Part I interview continued) Zeke: “…To borrow an excellent, if not totally accurate, lyric from the Avett Brothers, “your life doesn’t change with the man that’s elected.” Obviously, some presidential/congressional candidates have radical policies that do affect people’s lives, but for the vast majority of us I think the lyric holds true.”

Barrett: “I’ve done it both ways: a huge election-type party where we watch the results in real time, and also going to bed early and waking up to see the results. Cheering for someone is pretty fun, it feels like cheering for my favorite sports team. But living in that heightened emotional state doesn’t seem to make my body happy, whether I get a big high from “winning” or a real low from “losing”, going that far from my emotional ground-zero usually wrecks my next few days. With the gap furthering between the political right and left, how important is it for you to be politically informed before you vote?”

Zeke: “I think it’s important to be an informed voter. I think it’s important to think critically about the policy proposals. I think it’s important to see how influenced candidates are by the electorate and/or funding interests. I think it’s all important, but I also think that it’s giving Caesar what’s his. Which is to say, my faith should influence my politics but my politics shouldn’t influence my faith. There should be an order there that makes the expression of my faith more important than the expression of my politics.

In other words, I think it’s more important to know who my neighbor is than to know who they voted for.” 

Barrett: “I think being informed is really important, but I also think, “Don’t kid yourself.” I may think I really understand an issue and the right solution, but I’m ultimately going to have to trust someone else to tell me the path forward. Someone who is on the ground level interacting with the people and studying the problem. Having smart, balanced, loving public servants feels at least as important as being politically informed. To ask about “your life doesn’t change with the man that’s elected,” do you think national elections have become a cop-out for making the world a better place? Does casting a ballot have the impact we think it does?”

Zeke: “I think it matters less than it used to, which is a preposterous thing to say as someone who has been eligible to vote for less than half their life. I work in the nonprofit world and have witnessed how little the past two administrations have actually influenced the wellbeing of the people that I work with. 

The reality that I’ve seen has a lot of need that is independent of who’s butt is in which seat. People are still hungry, people are still lonely, people are still unclothed, people are still sick, and people are still in prison, all without the ability to take care of themselves. If I truly cared about a lot of the things that I say I value in voting, I would probably be more present in those places. But it goes back to what I was saying above, the order of my faith and my politics isn’t always correct.”

Barrett: “Tell me 2 things you have genuinely learned about yourself through voting and/or politics.”

Zeke: 

“1. I am not nearly as knowledgeable as I would like to believe about the policies and offices that make a difference. It’s humbling to be in the voting booth and be surprised that I’m voting for “Railroad Commissioner” or something like that. I don’t know what it means or why it’s important, and that’s ok. I’m just a small person in a big country with a lot of other people voting.

2. I am so so so susceptible to negative messaging about people that vote for whichever candidate. I have to tune out so much of the actual election season coverage because I begin to think ill of others so easily.”