My Political Journey and the Growth it has Given Me
By Jana L. Ellis
November 17, 2022
I registered for the first time to vote when I was 18 years old. The year was 1982. The first president I voted for was Ronald Reagan. It was a vote I was proud of and Reagan helped mold me into the thriving successful adult that my parents never could or would.
Back then, all my decisions were based upon the environment I grew up and around in. You see, my parents were unapologetically abusive and literally did nothing to support the growing woman I was meant to become. I had only a handful of decent role models to garner even a glimpse of right and wrong to emulate. Fortunately, one of those role models was God and religion in my life to help reinforce the difference between good and bad. The other role model was my grandmother, who introduced me to God and encouraged me through example to keep praying and believing. I didn’t recognize the strength of the hold religion had on me back then because it was so hard to see it through the haze of just trying to survive every day.
When I turned 18, the weight of what I survived growing up came crashing down on me. It wasn’t as if everything miraculously became easy and the skies opened up to make my life perfect. Upon reflection, it was probably the knowledge that my parents no longer had the say or control in any decision pertaining to my life anymore. I really can’t pinpoint what or when it was but due to the abuse being so bad growing up, it was at that time that God and I had a falling out. Maybe it was the fact that I had my now husband in my life and I was able to finally breathe without the yolk of my family’s neglect weighing me down in shame and quiet suffering, but for whatever reason the anger I bottled up all the years growing up came out and was primarily aimed at God. Don’t worry, our heavenly father had great patience with me by allowing me to reflect upon my soul, giving me the time to expel that pent up anger and we eventually found our way back to each other. Prayer can be a powerful endeavor and it took me years to recognize that God sent me my husband as a means to help heal me and provide me with the love I was denied.
What does this brief explanation about my upbringing have to do with my opening statement? It was because of my family that I made every decision, since my childhood, by asking two questions; one, what would my parents do and two, what did my parents do? After contemplating those questions my choice was always to do the opposite. Those two questions guided me in my marriage and through raising my children. It was because of those two questions that I became a Republican.
At first, living by those two rules I set was a struggle. A lifetime of being exposed to a certain mentality and way of life does play on a person’s consciousness, as well as health. I wasn’t very educated back then, having come out of the California Public School system and newly transplanted into the heartland of America. So the first order of business was to scrape off the ugliness of the California educational system and begin the education process pretty much from scratch. I thank God that he did provide me with a brain and life’s hard lessons to lean on, so this process was tedious but not impossible.
I read everything I could get my hands on back then while staying on top of the local and national news. We didn’t have the 24/7 news that we do today nor the internet, so actual effort was required on my part to find the answers I was looking for. We only had the alphabet news which my newly educated and informed mind was beginning to become suspicious of. Fortunately, there were still some written news outlets that had integrity and were allowed to actually do research then report on the findings. For as naive as I was in my late teens and early 20s, even I could see and feel that what we were being fed wasn’t always on the up and up. Reagan had also taught me to trust but verify, so I did.
I lovingly laugh today at my mother in-law because she is just as conservative as I am now, but when my husband and I first were married she was a bit liberal. When we talk politics, which is often, she gets so frustrated with what she’s seeing and she will often comment about how she hopes she wasn’t as bad as the liberals are today when I first met her. God bless her, she is a firecracker now and completely involved in the political process. She’s proof that even if you are older or a past liberal, you can still evolve if you keep your mind open and question everything. Unfortunately, where my family is concerned, they have dug in their heels and have taken on the extremist yolk of the socialist side of the Democrat Party, without even recognizing the socialist ideology they embrace. Some people never wake up or grow.
Back in the early days of my political growth, I originally believed that experience in a politician was necessary. I believed we needed people in office that understood the ins and outs of the country or world to keep our best interests at heart and only educated lawyers were qualified to hold office. What I didn’t recognize at that time was that Reagan wasn’t a career politician and he did what was right for America only after he had done his duty through military service and having a successful career in the real world. This realization didn’t hit me until many many elections later, even before Trump. It was through my own re-educational process that I began to see that there are a lot of educated idiots out there and a person with actual life or military experiences are actually more qualified to run this country than any lawyer or judge.
Maybe it was the evolution of 24/7 news that began opening my eyes to this epiphany over time. To be honest, the 24/7 news stations didn’t interest me at their inception. I was too busy raising my family and building my career to have time for such programs. It wasn’t until 9/11 that I became focused on the concept of the constant news cycles. I remember where I was and what I was doing at the time our country was attacked. I also remember sitting at home that night searching for any station that would give me what I wanted and needed to hear about those events. That’s when I came across Fox News.
Back then, Fox News was exactly what I was looking for in news. Today, not so much. Even Fox has succumbed to the pressures and popularity of pop culture in their decision making at times. It was my new found respect for the media, again at the time 9/11 happened, that helped me become even more educated about the world and how it affected us. How could that event not open anyone’s eyes to what was going on around the world. We were no longer insulted by situations happening in other countries.
That’s when I started recognizing how much more corrupt our politicians had become. Sure I became completely disgusted with the Democrats when Senator Bob Kerry made his middle of the night vote in support of a pay raise for Congress. I remember his words when he tried to explain himself, “Even though my constituents called my office and asked me to vote against it, in the end I had to vote with my Party.” That was the first proof I needed to realize that the Democrat politicians didn’t really care about the people they represented, they only cared about their Party. Up until then, most people tried to make me feel like I was nuts for seeing through all the sleaziness of Bill Clinton and how he smoozed out one side of his mouth while doing something the exact opposite out the other. My upbringing taught me how to be very cautious of smooth talking sleazy men, and Bill Clinton fit that bill to the tee. I had also learned to pay attention to people who said one thing and did another, such as a politician who has sworn to represent the people who voted for them then doesn’t. Those people are never to be trusted.
I remember back in the early 1990s when my husband and I were at a party, and our host’s sister started spewing her democrat beliefs for everyone to hear. At that point in my life I believed that religion, welfare and politics were subjects that were off limits in polite public company. Even when it is brought up, you inconspicuously change the subject for a safer topic. Unfortunately, this woman wouldn’t have any part of it and I remember being sick of it so I joined in her conversation with facts about what the Democrat Party has done to date and how it was turning towards Socialism with the trajectory it was taking. She was appalled with my assessment and stormed out of the room we were all in. I looked around after that and saw a bunch of smiles on the faces of those remaining. Well, my assessment back in the early 1990s was correct, the Democrat Party has become the Party of Socialism and even several members of Congress have admitted to being Socialists registered as either Independent or Democrats.
Fast forward to current days, the Democrat Party has become so corrupt they don’t even attempt to hide how they are controlling the laws in this country, or other countries. It’s frustration knowing that every decision our career politicians make is only to benefit them personally. How we as an educated society could have allowed the Left to manipulate our educational system and laws to convert the mindset of so many to comply with their desire to destroy the foundation of what our country was built on, baffles me. What’s even more infuriating is that the media and universities have followed lock-step behind them.
Now, my belief regarding the need for experience to hold a political office has changed. It’s due to those career politicians that we have the severe problems today which are plaguing us. Any politician that has spent more than two years in office no longer represents us, they now represent their special interests and change their stance on issues based upon how the financial winds blow. Biden is a prime example of that. Serving your country or community used to be an honor. The pay was never very high, but it was enough to live comfortably and you were left with a feeling of having to accomplished something great. Now, serving your country is a means to a wealthy end. It has become all about what a politician can receive in exchange to present and make a law. It’s about how much of the money for a project they will earmark for a project that will come back to them. It’s all about the money and power. Every politician campaigns on the need for a better infrastructure, then votes for funds once they are elected, yet our infrastructure never improves. If you logically think about this, if every cent Congress has approved for infrastructure was actually spent on infrastructure, then our roads and highways would be paved in gold. Instead, that money is spent and our politicians become multi-millionaires while in office. You put two and two together.
Passing laws and relying on the courts to protect us no longer exists. Judges are now an arm of whichever political party put them in office. In the case of the Judges who have to be elected by the people, they too are now activists. DAs no longer care about the rule of law, they only care about the latest political agenda. The further left their agenda, the more facetime they receive from the media. Many chiefs in the police forces are now hired based upon their political beliefs. Even our Department of Justice and Federal Bureau of Investigations has become political. The two arms of the federal government we used to be able to trust and rely on no longer exists. The more an activist destroys society, lives and businesses, the more the Left now honors and celebrates them. The Left is more interested in other countries’ borders, due to the money, then they are the United States borders. Even the media has chosen to ignore the disaster the Left has made of this country.
When a politician tells 18 to 24 year old college students the reason why they need to live in dorms in college is because they are too stupid to make decisions for themselves, then turns around and attempts to convince us that 2 to 18 year olds know their bodies better than anyone and can make the decision to mutilate it to become something they weren’t born to, then you know evil has taken over. When the Left and media refuse to recognize a fully formed baby in the womb that could survive if born after 24 weeks gestation, and believes that it’s a woman’s choice to kill that baby by having it dismembered as it is pulled from her body instead of birthing it and giving it to a loving family, then you know evil has taken over. When the Left believes it’s okay for children to be sent unaccompanied over our borders because of their willingness to turn a blind eye for skewed reasonings, knowing those children are being sexually abused and sex trafficked because of their decisions, then you know evil as taken over. When politicians, actors, royalty and the wealthy individuals travel to an island and other places around the country or world to have sex with underage children, then you know evil has taken over. When you have a media that refuses to explore any of that and more, who make up or ignore stories because the Party they support asks them to, then you know evil has taken over.
Evil will continue to win until We The People take our country and lives back. We need to insist upon Term Limits, in-person voting with IDs and do away with Dominion voting machines, the borders need to be closed, criminals need to remain in prison, and the laws on the books need to be enforced. Public schools need to start teaching reading, writing, science, social studies and math, leaving health and moral decisions up to the parents. Discipline needs to be reinstated in the classroom. Psychiatric hospitals need to be reopened to help those who need it. Traverse City, Michigan once had a psychiatric hospital that was self-sustaining and actually helped people in the early 1900s, that is until the government stepped in and forced changes which didn’t help people and only made them worse before being closed down. That original model for psychiatric care needs to be reinstated. Children in abusive homes and abusive foster care settings need to be sent to orphanages which are run by caring staff. We no longer live in the times before the 20th Century and have compassion enough to build and maintain facilities to care for abused and unwanted children. Essentially, stop sending those children back into the abusive homes and the families that never really change.
The solutions are actually easy. The desire of our political class to implement them isn’t as cut and dry, because it would take an element of control out of their hands. Our educational system and media have worked hand in hand to eliminate any reminiscence of common sense, so the people aren’t standing up for or demanding workable solutions. Our forefathers had the wherewithal to fight for what was right, since then the fight has literally been beaten and manipulated out of us. To politely and legally stand up for what you believe isn’t treason. To burn down homes and businesses, take over parts of cities, destroy property, shoot and kill people, beat and rape people, and rob those who are trying to make a living by doing everything right is treasonous. Until the media properly reports this and politicians do something about it, neither of them have the right to lecture those of us who advocate for change.
My political journey over the past 40 years has been long and eye-opening. It has taught me a type of compassion I didn’t know I could possess. It has also helped in my journey for self-growth, as well as helped to deepen my relationship with God. I pray that others find a little piece of peace in these times, while continuing to grow and learn. God teaches us to forgive so we can be forgiven. That is still something I struggle with. Maybe it would be easy to forgive my parents for the past, it’s just hard to when they continue the destructive path they’ve always been on while trying to pull me into it. Maybe God simply wants me to forgive myself for distancing myself from that life and lifestyle, so I don’t have any regret in doing so.
I am now fortunate to have been married for 40 years and still love my husband, as he loves me. Our lives have not been perfect, but we have held fast to our commitment to each other and our family. We raised two children and have four grandchildren. Our children are hard working and successful in their own rights, who too live by conservative values. We all work together in the molding of our grandchildren with love and those values, as well. It’s a full time job staying on top of the grooming that takes place in the public schools these days, but we have faith that our family’s efforts and faith in each other will ultimately prevail.
