Change, The Other White Meat
October 5th 2008 16:15
"The ultimate measure of a man is not where he stands in moments of comfort and convenience but where he stands in times of challenge and controversy."
~Martin Luther King Jr.
~Martin Luther King Jr.
When I first began writing this series of blogs, my inspiration came from questions I had within myself about a government and a society that relies on simplicity rather than reason. I always had these questions about why things were the way they were and I always came back to the same "classic" age old answer…
"Everything is the way it is for a reason and nothing is going to change"
At that moment my choices were to either turn my back on a system I saw falling off the tracks or I could try to work the answers to these questions out through discussion and analysis outside of media spin and partisan doctrines with you.
My goal in these blogs is to take a non partisan approach to the massive amount of problems we are having in our government and society. The facts are all on the table and are mounting by the minute as we dig deeper and deeper into avoidable debts our public servants didn't take care of.
It would be simple and convenient for me to join the brigade ready to chase George W Bush out of town with pitch forks and to pretend all of the problems we are currently facing are his fault but that is simply not the case.
The need for a 700 billion dollar bail out are not the devise of one man's blunders in Iraq, Afghanistan or in the way he handled Hurricane Katrina but is rather from decades of greed and gritty hard work in lobbying by the financial industry for our elected public officials to turn their backs while they raided the cookie jar.
Does the Republican Party doctrine call for less government intervention in financial industries and other aspects of society in an effort to let companies grow and prosper to raise revenue for the country?
Sure
Does the Democratic Party doctrine call for a strong federal government built on regulation and oversight with strict controls to avoid problems like these?
Sure
My goal in unraveling these revelations is not to "dirty" Obama or to state that I think he is a better candidate than McCain for not having any direct lobbyists donating or working in his campaign but to rather look at this situation down the middle without any partisan thoughts about who's going to vote which way ..ion or who's going to let "everyone" own a gun.
In the end, the social issues are important and if these are the things you hold near and dear to your heart when voting for national leaders I strongly commend and encourage you to vote with your heart. The problem we're having in this country is that we have partisans on both sides that ultimately cancel each other out and a wide range of issues in the middle that ultimately decides elections.
Scare tactics are the rule of the day and has aspects of the public believing that votes for a Democrat will change our government structure to communism which is just as ridiculous as a blanket statement of voting for any Republican will reverse Roe vs. Wade.
While one statement is a little closer to reality than the other, the facts are that we have had 20 out of 28 years of Republican control in the Oval Office responsible for appointing Supreme Court Judges and at the end of the day the Supreme Court Justices that make it through the divided Congressional approval process aren't activist judges who are looking to change law.
These facts coupled with a Congress that is elected state by state and region by region accurately represents the mood of the nation and not the current mood of whomever is occupying the Oval Office. Long term law is hard if not impossible for any President to accomplish in 8 years and this is the reason not to vote on simple false fears of scare tactics.
This country is too divided between the left and right on a national level to let clouds of misunderstanding in the aspects of radicalism stop you from looking at a candidate beyond the Republican or Democratic labels or how they live their lives outside of politics.
My only problem with politicians on the far right or left comes from when they bring their own personal beliefs into the job they were publicly elected for and it clouds the aspect of compromise and the sacred trust of the people who elected them as a public servants and not as a partisan mouth piece.
Partisan mouth pieces never get anything done and always hit a brick wall in times of crisis and in times of preparing for the inevitable.
The more I look at what's happening to this country, the more I firmly believe that we need a leader who has strong personal beliefs and convictions for one side or the other but is willing to look beyond his or her own partisan ideals for the betterment of the nation but I also understand that there will always be partisan factions on both sides of the conversation not allowing our leaders to work efficiently.
These factions would rather sacrifice any hope of the American people choosing the right person for the job for the sake of "their party" coming out on top. Winning is the only thing that matters for these individuals in their haze of blue or red and the fact that our country is falling on the verge of a true recession, schools are failing, food is less than safe, people are losing their homes and jobs are hard to come by does not matter to these individuals who only see politics in a D or R framework.
Smear attacks, lies and strong efforts to define political canidates before they can define themselves with fantasies of a 232 year old nation built on Democracy becoming a Communistic state overnight or a government that strictly states that there will always be a seperation of Church and State in it's Consitution becoming a bible nation has flooded the American imagination in this election season from both sides.
No matter who wins this election, the results in how our government runs it's day to day proscess will remain the same. The lobbyist's will still be there criss-crossing Washington DC offices in an effort to build their agendas ranging from causes that help the poor and disadvantaged, environmental issues to the representatives of the bank that secures your money or place of employment seeking to have less regulations.
Any change outside of inaugurating a new President on January 20th will not come until we legitamately push the issue of government working for the American people and not for the interests of their party or special interests.
This is the new American dream and it is not embodied in catchphrases simply stated as "We can not afford four more years" or "He's going to raise your taxes".
Whether it's a Republican or Democrat inaugurated in January, our problems will still be the same. The only thing I want is to elect a leader who will deal with these same problems in a new way.
Sources:
Union Leader.Com:
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Daily Record.com:
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