I don't understand how your first paragraph suits the rest of the essay.

First paragraph: about government intervention into local/state authority - people ceding authority to the federal government.

Rest of the essay: mostly about mass commercialization making every place similar - people ceding authority to corporations.

Looking at your prompt you posted, I would say the first paragraph is more on point. So my suggestion is to relate the rest of the essay more to that, using more appropriate examples than name-brands and what towns look like.

EDIT: also, if you're not a registered Libertarian, I would suggest using small-l "libertarian" instead, to distinguish ideology from party, though admittedly the two are more similar than "republican" and "Republican," for example. But that's just me being picky.