Sigh… Another election season has come and gone. Even in my state of reduced TV-watching, I was continuously impressed (or should I say, depressed?) by the sheer volume and abysmal quality of campaign commercials. Why do all politicians decry negative campaign ads, even as they are producing their own negative ads? Why are we subject to this barrage of insults, innuendo and inaccuracy? I’ve never once decided to vote for or against any candidate for office based on a commercial and I never will. Who are the registered voters who actually let these ads affect their voting choices? No one I know or have heard of has ever decided to vote for or against a candidate based on a TV or radio ad, yet we continue to get greater volume and more vitriol with every passing campaign season.
The truly sad part is that no matter who wins the elections, democrats or republicans, nothing ever changes. When George Bush II was elected in 2000, the Republicans wanted us to believe in compassionate conservatism. Translation- more of the same of what we like best- corporate welfare. When the Democrats took control of Congress in 2006, their mantra was anti-war and help the poor. We’re still in Iraq and Afghanistan on looking for new fights in Pakistan and Yemen, of all places! Poverty will never be abolished until it stops becoming defined in relative terms. There will always be some people who are better or worse off financially, than others.
Obama ran on the slogan, ‘Change we can believe in.’ What has changed? All we’re getting is more social welfare (the health care disaster), less civil liberties (Guantanamo feet-dragging, increased airport ‘security’, cell-phone tracing,) and an ever-expanding military presence in the Muslim world in the name of the “War on Terrorism”; which, by the way, can’t possibly be won as long as we insist on creating ever more terrorists by killing thousands of innocent women and children who never had any desire to harm the United States, let alone had the ability to do so.
Now the Republicans have claimed control of the House of Representatives, this time vowing to ‘really be the voice for small government, and fiscal conservatives.’ Yeah, right. Fool me once, shame on you. Fool me twice, welcome to US politics.
The common denominator for the past 10 years of government is that government has all the answers to all our problems, and we are expected to sit back and allow 535 +1 mercenary liars in Washington, DC, to run 300 million+ individual lives. Doesn’t it make more sense to allow those 300 million folks the freedom to figure out what’s best for each of them, with the help of their family, friends, neighbors, and social institutions (churches, schools, hobby clubs, social groups, charitable organizations)? Why do we only allow ourselves two solutions to any given problem- the Democrats’ answer or the Rebpublicans’ answer? Wouldn’t it make more sense to get a few million good ideas from us 300 million individual thinkers, then choose the hundreds or thousands or more of really good solutions to individual problems rather than insisting on the ‘one-size-fits-300 million’ approach?
It makes sense to me, but millions of possible solutions will never happen as long as we are brainwashed by the Dems and Repubs into believing that they are the only ones qualified to solve our nation’s problems. To do that, we need to STOP VOTING FOR THE LESSER OF TWO EVILS. A massive campaign to vote for third-, fourth-, fifth- or 32nd-party candidates must sweep the country. Either that, or a wholesale rejection of politics as usual must take place: a basic ignoring of frivolous, ill-intended, misguided, unfair, special interest group-appeasing laws and policies.
The American people need to start thinking for themselves again, accept personal responsibility, reject government intrusion and control into our lives, and reduce our government to its proper role, the insurer of fair play, civil rights and liberties, and defense of our borders. Until that happens, the endless nightmare of watching our great country self-destruct will continue.
What’s your solution to our national dilemma?