  sometimes it isn't enough to say you believe in something. sometimes it isn't enough to identify yourself with a certain kind of belief system. sometimes it isn't enough to see yourself through your own critical eye. sometimes it isn't enough to put labels on yourself. sometimes you actually have to be what you believe. i've heard a lot of people lately claiming to be something. claiming to hold certain values, be certain things, fight for certain causes, but in all truth they are not nearly what they claim to be. they are not, in any way, beholden to that belief system. they are what they are because they say they are it, not because the actually are in the eyes of the community.
we get this spin all the time. presidents and others who hold office say that they work for the people, but we all know special interests and lobbyists hold greater sway that the united voice of the american people. but, that is an obvious problem for politicians, no matter what the party affiliation. what is more upsetting to me is the claim elected officials make about representing the whole of the population, the population that elected them to their offices. this country does not rule by unanimity. there is no election in this country that only stands if the election is unanimous. instead, we elect and rule by majority, which means that any elected official only represents a percentage, a fraction, a piece of the community. no elected official rules my unanimity. that simply does not exist in our country, and most likely in our world.
what is also troubling is the identification people have with particular political parties or schools of thought. since my days in grad school i have been troubled with people (males and females alike) who dub themselves feminist because they criticize the patriarchy in research papers. i am troubled with people who identify themselves as conservative because they were upset with bill clinton, or those who identify themselves as liberals because they do not like george bush. these kinds of mentalities are simple, closed, unenlightened. people seem to think that because you are not ONE thing, you must, by default, be exactly the opposite.
people seem to think that because you say something once, you must wholeheartedly belong to a particular group and be representative of that entire ideology. this is reduction at is very worst. it is the populace reducing itself to simple set, simple belief systems based upon individual assumptions of association. it is not, i fear, a true nation of people representing different ideologies, but instead ideologies representing people. we have become: women who are feminists; men who are conservatives; people who are liberal; dissenters who are socialist. instead of making the ideology living and breathing, instead of adding fire to the flame of belief, we use the beliefs as simple nametags, as check boxes on our personal inventories, as bumper stickers on our rusty-bodied selves.
we do not stand for the belief, the belief stands for us, and especially only when it is convenient for it to do so. we have become weak because those ideologies we believe in, we only believe in by association itself. we are not what we believe. what we believe is no longer us. instead, we are what it is most advantageous to believe at any given time. we are fly-by-night faithfuls who bathe in the ganges one day, lift our arms to christ on the second, and on the third profess our secular independence, all in a week's time representing all that we think we might kind of believe, all for the sake of saying we are part of something. 
