My Political Thougts

Tea Parties

2010-04-22T12:15:00.000-07:00

I just read an article in the NewyorkTimes abut how tea party attendees are majority wealthy educated white males. My grandmother sent me this article like I would be pleasantly surprised to know that the tea partyers aren't all just poor uneducated country people. Much to her dismay, this did surprise me, but not for the reasons she was thinking. I've become used to the fact that the Republican party's loudest supporters are people living in rural areas and possessing a low socioeconomic status, this is why I was surprised. It appears that finally the conservatives are being supported by people who are actually looking out for their own economic interests. These people are calling for lower taxes, a rebuttal of the health care bill, and for "socialism" to not gain ground in America. These are all things that the wealthy people, who are strong believers in the every-man-for-himself ideology, should be fighting for. Socialism would help to take care of the less wealthy people at the cost of more taxes from the more wealthy people. While some wealthy people don't mind this idea, it appears that there are many who do, and they have come out in droves to make sure that they get to keep a majority of their wealth rather than pay taxes to help those in need. Thankfully we live in a country that is so far from the socialism and communism that they claim our "Muslim" president is attempting to impose upon us that these people have the freedom to protest on his door step and yell whatever obscenities they want to at him, no matter how fabricated they are.

Race

2010-04-07T12:46:00.000-07:00

Speaking about race is usually something that I try very hard to avoid doing. It seems that no matter how harmless your intentions, someone always seems to get offended when the topic of race is brought up. What many of us don't really realize though, is that we hardly look at the actual color of someone's skin before we profile or stereotype them. The color of their skin plays only a small role. We would first look at their style of dress, how they carry themselves, how they speak, maybe how they wear their hair etc. What we are actually categorizing is their personal style and what sort of pop or folk culture they may represent. It's just not fair to group all people together who share the same skin shade and assume that they all have the same values and beliefs. Separating people into groups of anything other than humans can only aid in breeding hatred and prejudice.

Unfortunately, most of us do just this. We stereotype and judge people just by looking at them. We form opinions and prejudices based on what someone looks like, and then we apply these to our everyday lives. It's really quite an awful thing, but we all do it, even me. Often times, this feels like the only way to go about life, b/c if I'm not racially profiling someone, than most likely, they're doing it to me. I think it may make us feel safer to stick with and support people who look like us, one of the only things we truly fear is what we don't know and aren't familiar with, right? I'm not sure if "racism" has always been around, nor do I know what has caused it to come about, my best guess would be fear of something different. Despite this, I do hope that in the future we may find a way to categorize each other as individual HUMANS and nothing more, each with thoughts and feelings of his/her own, rather than the black, white, yellow, brown or red guy/girl.

Healthcare

2010-03-23T07:52:00.001-07:00

It's about time something was done to, if not fix, than at least change for the better our long deteriorating health care system. How very embarrassing it's been to be the only developed country without a health care system that actually takes care of all its citizens. I don't think this new plan is perfect, in fact, it really doesn't take care of ALL U.S. citizens, but it certainly makes it easier and more affordable for everyone to get covered. I wasn't particularly happy to hear that those without coverage will have to pay mandates in the next couple of years when that part of the plan is enacted, but it's not going to affect people who honestly can't afford it. This is because if the person seeking out health care can't find a plan that costs less than 8% of their income, than they won't be fined. I understand why this rule must be in place, its b/c in order to make health care more affordable, we must have more people paying for health care, so there must be some sort of incentive (or in this case, punishment) to cause more people to pay for health care. Medicaid is also being expanded so that more people will have access to it. Children with pre-existing conditions can no longer be denied coverage, and eventually adults with pre-existing conditions will no longer be able to be denied. Medicare is doing away with its "dougnut-holes."

To make all of this possible, not only are more people going to be required to pay for health care for themselves, but the more affluent families and individuals will be paying higher investment and income taxes (it's about time! George Bush was doing the opposite of this by giving them tax cuts!). This plan isn't exactly what I was hoping for, and we're still not as far along as other developed countries with universal health care, but this is undeniably one step in the right direction, and thank goodness! NO thanks to Fox News and their lies, the American people will finally get to live in a developed country that treats them like citizens of a developed country!

Israel's bold stand

2010-03-16T13:48:00.000-07:00

It seems that the U.S. is finally standing up to Israel and telling them to stop doing something that they've been getting away with since the 1940's. President Obama told Israel to stop building new settlements that encroach upon Palestinian land. The Israeli Prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, made a bold statement saying that Israel will act in the interests of Israel. This is a clear defiance of the wishes of the U.S., not that they have to do everything we tell them to do, but we have invested somewhere around $28.9 million into helping them expand their settlements. Now that the situation in Palestine has become more public, and the abuse going on there at the hands of the Israelis is public knowledge, the U.S. can no longer continue to treat Israel like its favorite little brother.

I don't believe we have the power to go around telling other countries what to do, but I do believe that if the country is clearly abusing our generosity and harming another group of people, than we have the right, if not the moral obligation, to step in. Israel's own David Shulman of the Hebrew University of Jerusalem asked: are Israelis still able "to see, to imagine, and to acknowledge the suffering of other human beings, including those aspects of their suffering for which we are directly responsible?” I'm glad that what's been going on in that part of the world is finally being acknowledged by the U.S., rather than supported. Israel and the U.S. have never had a disagreement like this in the entire history of Israel's existence, it will be interesting to see how it turns out. Hopefully the U.S. will not have to use any sort of force or make any threats toward Israel, and hopefully the Palestinians and the Israelis will find a way to live peacefully, as neighbors.

Genocide

2010-03-06T06:35:00.000-08:00

Genocide is properly defined as, "The deliberate and systematic destruction of a racial, political or cultural group. I would say that's a pretty to-the-point definition of genocide as we know it. Genocide has more recently been named, for political correctness reasons, "Ethnic cleansing." I'm not sure which name for pre-meditated prejudice based murder fits better, but they both are fairly strong words which send a slight shiver down my spine when I hear them. From what I gather, the new term, Ethnic cleansing, was created by the U.S. in an attempt to trick, if not the world, than at least the American people into believing that it's not the naughty word, Genocide, that we're avoiding in Darfur, but the fairly new and undefined term, Ethnic Cleansing.

As a human race, I don't think we'll ever get along and accept everyone. There have been many a book and movie written describing how we destroy ourselves because of this. There is an activist and journalist who recently passed away named Howard Zinn. He had a very interesting take on our nature to claim something, such as a section of land or water, as our own and defend it with something called Nationalism. I'd like to quote him:

"Surely, we must renounce nationalism and all its symbols: its flags, its pledges of allegiance, its anthems, its insistence in song that God must single out America to be blessed. We need to assert our allegiance to the human race, and not to any one nation". -Howard Zinn-

Zinn took what some may call a radical view on life, I can only guess that it may be called radical because it all seems so far fetched. The notion of everyone accepting everyone else and actually caring for people over things that they can claim as property is an outlandish idea to most of us. I suppose it's our nature to exclude people who are different than us in an effort for self preservation. This may be some sort of built in survival thing, or maybe it just takes more effort than we're willing to exert to try to go against this nature in favor of what is right.
I wish there were more people like Howard Zinn, people who feel compassion, people brave enough to fight for what is right rather than just talk about it, people who inspire other people, people who are genuinely good and caring.

We live in an every-man(or woman)-for him/herself society. We care to only look out of ourselves, this is how we're taught to think from childhood on up. It doesn't make any sense b/c in reality we all depend on each other for so much. Not many of us make our own clothes, grow our own food, or build our own cars, tv's, computers etc. We do need each other, and therefore need to take care of each other. This is why it makes no sense to consciously deny our fellow "patriots" access to healthcare, yet there is a huge movement in this country to do just that, and in many American minds this is perfectly justified, why? B/c we are all just in it for ourselves, right? We need to change our thinking, we need to realize how much we do need each other and just how wrong it is to not care about our fellow human beings, or who knows? These doomsday books and movies may actually be getting at something with some truth.

Had to Vent

2010-02-24T07:34:00.000-08:00

Sarah Palin? Glen Beck? Really? Republicans, you've got to get it together. If these are the best you've got to offer at your CPAC gathering than you really are very out of touch with Americans. Yes, I know you claim that these are the people who most closely represent "average Americans," but you've got it all wrong. You see, less than 3% of Americans work as farmers and less than 9% work in factories (all of your worshiped rich people decided they could save money by out sourcing, guess those tax breaks don't inspire them to create jobs here after all). We are not the America of the early 20th Century anymore we have progressed forward, maybe it's time that you ultra right wingers do the same. Listen guys, we like intellectuals running our country, it makes sense. How completely ridiculous is it that our last president was elected b/c, "he seemed like someone you could enjoy a beer with." Well, that worked out well didn't it? Why choose such a regular person for such an irregular job? And a word of advice, you are not fooling anyone, your party is indeed the party of white people and it's quite obvious, I suppose this is all part of your scheme to not change with the times, b/c along with the farmers and factory workers, the early 20th Century was very divided racially. And it does actually look like we've gone back in time when one of your tea parties or other ultra right wing gatherings is shown on television and every last person is white except for the one single black person that Fox News insists on showing over and over again as if to say, "see, black people like us too." I'm not attacking right wing views, I'm attacking the ostracising nature of these radical figures that the party has produced and what they represent to most level headed people. There are many right wing views that I myself align with, but I think some of these people just do so for the sake of trying to keep the country white, English speaking, and predominantly Christian.

Apathetic Attitudes

2010-02-22T09:01:00.000-08:00

What has become of our country when the top news story on 20/20 and every other news show is Tiger Wood's "apology?" I watch 20/20 every Friday and all of the political talk shows on Sunday morning such as "This Week" and every single one spent entirely too much time talking about the Tiger issue and entirely too little time talking about real issues taking place. We are an entertainment society, you can ask any teenager who Paris Hilton is and they will tell you, but many wouldn't be able to name the vice president (I tried this on my 15-yr-old brother). We do not stress enough, especially to our young people, the importance of understanding what's going on in the country and the world.

Here's one example, in my political science class on Friday we spent a significant amount of time talking about movies and directors and which ones were good and which ones were bad. Interesting as this subject may be to some people, it's sad that so many more of us are able to easily talk knowledgeably about this subject matter than are able to talk about an issue that may actually affect our lives.

Why is this whole entertainment culture pushed on us so much? And why do we so readily accept this as news? We are making it easy for the powers that be to distract us. I think this is really a generational revelation. It's older people who come out and vote in huge numbers, it's older people who attend these tea parties, it's older people who read the newspaper and subscribe to political magazines. Why is there such an apathetic attitude exuding from the young people of today? It's our parents and grandparents who fought for civil rights, for women's rights, and who protested the Vietnam War. Where has the fire gone? We can all write an essay on Michael Jackson or Brittney Spears' life, but what about the Unites States standing in the world today compared to that of other developed nations? I wish we could bring back the passion, or at the very least show some interest in real issues among today's youth.

Abuse of Power

2010-02-09T13:14:00.000-08:00

Never before have I been so disenchanted with American legislators. Maybe it's just that now I'm older and not so naive, but I'm beginning to understand how it all works, and it's not the way that we were all taught in school. It seems that everyone has a price and can be bought, this includes our law makers, the people who we elect to make all of the big decisions for us. The older I get, I realize that not just many of them, but most of them do not have their constituents' best interests at heart, or at least can temporarily forget about our best interests when presented with the opportunity to fulfill their own. If you google "congressmen bribed" or "congressmen bought" you will see what I'm talking about, there are countless stories of this happening, although most of it happens behind the scenes and doesn't make front page news, if it makes news at all. The very first thing that will pop up on google will be about the very secretive "Jewish Lobby" who have a huge influence on what laws do or don't get past, who gets appointed, and where to send aid money.

This is blatant abuse of our chosen form of government, we are a Republic, which means we elect supposed educated and qualified people to make our very important decisions for us. We are being taken advantage of, many of them are abusing their power in more ways than just lining their pockets. Our government officials have been caught on many occasions lying straight faced to the public, do the names John Edwards or Mark Sanford ring a bell? (Bill Clinton is too obvious an example) It's not what these men did that was morally wrong to their families, but the fact that they lied to the very people who put them in those powerful positions.

I don't know that the average person can handle so much power without being corrupted or acting immorally. Many of us would live fairly honest lives unless put in powerful positions where there may be too much temptation to handle. It's very unfortunate that the U.S., a country that has been a moral example to all is now losing it's shimmer. We are beginning to resemble countries like Mexico or Columbia, places where people view law enforcement and gvt with distrust. A system like ours' only works when people can trust those in charge, and when those in charge are indeed trustworthy.

First Blog

2010-01-26T08:18:00.001-08:00

Yes, it is sort of a big deal that Ted Kennedy's senate seat was lost to a Republican, especially because this happened in a notoriously blue state. I think most people are missing the point though. All I've heard on talk radio and political television is what this means to the Democrats and what they are doing wrong, and what they need to do about it. I don't really think it means anything at all, good or bad, for the Democrats or Republicans. What this vote tells the politicians is that the American people are upset. They are upset about many things, but mostly, despite the fact that economists say the economy is getting better, many people are still losing jobs or looking for jobs after having lost one, or at least know someone in one of those situations.

Historically, when Americans are unhappy with the economy they vote for politicians representing the party that's not in power at the time, which in this case, are the Republicans. The first very memorable time this happened was when F.D.R., a Democrat, was elected during the Great Depression. Roosevelt's presidency was preceded by President Herbert Hoover, who came into office just in time for the stock market to crash, 1929. Another example of this happened during former Democratic President Bill Clinton's presidency; he got elected during shaky economic times and because of this the people elected a Republican majority congress.

These are just a couple of examples. President Obama said in his own words that the same thing that swept the new Mass. Republican into office is exactly what swept him into office. What he meant by this is that it had almost nothing to do with the party in power at the time of the vote, but the state of the economy and how it's affecting the lives of Americans.