If the choice is to be politically aware or ignorant, I’ve decided to choose ignorance
My New Year’s resolution: to spend the year as politically ignorant as I possibly can.
I’m fed up with politics. Healthcare, terrorism, the economy, employment, etc. I’m tired of it. I spent hours volunteering for Obama, I tried to rally people behind the public option, and I called several representatives. I’ve been let down by all three.
Our president has taken on too much, and produced very little. People behind the public option have been shouted down by the ignorant right, so much so that it is significantly influencing policy. Calls to my representatives were pointless, because I ended up speaking to office staff who already had their talking points memorized.
I’ve been thinking lately that politics should not be interesting. It should really be quite boring. Anyone attempting to make it interesting, specifically the 24-hour news networks, is just personality peddling. To go on the air and actually, faithfully cover policy and the goings-on in government would be a ratings killer. It would be C-SPAN. It would be Congressional Quarterly. But it’s not. It’s four hours every evening full of commentary and spin and guests who are on five minutes to talk about a complex topic, usually concluding when the host says something like, “I’m sorry, we need to cut to break. We’ll have you on again sometime and discuss this further.”
They never do.
Someone once said that Washington was Hollywood for ugly people. It couldn’t be truer. The Washington Post and the Washington Times are our People Magazine and Entertainment Weekly. USA Today is USA Today.
In the end, what is accomplished? The average person, average person, has no role in legitimate political discourse anymore. You’re often a foot soldier to special interest groups on the right or the left, spewing the outrage that they tell you to, under the guise of being a “grassroots movement”.
I don’t need it anymore. At one point several years ago, around the time we were ramping up for war against Iraq, my father, a lifelong conservative, and I got into a heated debate over politics. That year I didn’t come home to visit for Christmas, the only time in my life I hadn’t done so. My sister passed away suddenly three days later. I never got to see her that last time. Since then, my father and I have reconciled and pretty much have discussed politics rather civilly. But I’ll never forget what toll it took on our relationship and how we could’ve been spending so much time talking about much more interesting things.
And now we do. It’s been a long time coming, and it’s the beginning of a new decade. I expect many great things to happen for me and the people around me over the next 10 years. I don’t plan on wasting any more of it on the sport of politics. That’s my New Year’s resolution.
If you voted for Obama and believe in better healthcare and affordable healthcare, please call your local Democratic representative and reblog this/pass it along.
This appeal is not just some BS request. I literally mean it. The Democrats are losing the health care debate right now. The Republicans and the insurance companies have stirred up lies and fear and are succeeding.
The main issue centers around the idea of a “public option”, which would be a government owned and operated health insurance company. The reason for this is to create a company that will compete with existing insurance companies, forcing them to provide better care and lower their costs. Such an entity already exists for seniors, Medicare, and it works really well.
Republicans are claiming that this entity will put private insurance companies out of business and will put the government in charge of health decisions - for example deciding whether someone gets a treatment or not. Currently, that happens to be how it is with all insurance companies, including Medicare.
As for putting insurance companies out of business, the US government and state governments currently have organizations that compete with private industry. State universities have not put private universities out of business and have allowed many more people the opportunity to get an education. The U.S. Postal Service competes with FedEx and UPS.
Right now, Republicans are trying to kill the public option. They claim that that is their only objective, that they would be open to health care reform if only the public option was removed. The truth is that their goal is to reject as much health care reform as possible because they want to hobble the president and win back seats in the Congress.
You are not going to change the mind of any Republican representatives, which is okay, because health care reform can be passed without most of them onboard. Unfortunately, there are fiscally conservative Democrats and weak kneed Democrats who are resisting the public option. Many of these people are up for reelection next year.
So, I’m begging all of you to please call your local representatives or state senator’s offices, and tell them not to back down and that you support the public option and believe that it is the only way that health care costs will be brought down, as there is currently no mechanism in the health care system to incentivize it to do so.
Find your congressman using this website:
Please take a few minutes to call and briefly tell whoever answers that the public option is essential.
And please, reblog this, don’t just “like” it. Thanks.
Detaining terrorists in the US: Bring ‘em on.
The far right and even the not-so far right in this country are making political hay over the potential relocation of Guantanamo Bay detainees to the United States. The wording that they use varies, but the implication is the same - terrorists could be loose, either as escapees or as free men on the own recognizance, in our communities.
For the large part, these politicians have been successful in scaring the often spineless Democrats in the House into voting against the funding necessary to close Guantanamo. It is obvious to any person with an iota of common sense that the United States has no intention of “releasing” any of these suspected terrorists into the United States - a wording that conservatives like to use. It will be more like “releasing” these prisoners from Guantanamo into the watchful custody of a super-max facility.
No one has ever escaped from a super-max prison; a facility designed to house the most ruthless killers in a solitary confinement. But for argument’s sake, let’s just say that one of these suspected terrorists manages to conspire with a fellow inmate, a convicted killer and rapist, to break out of a super-max facility.
For starters, prior to the breakout, our terrorist is going to have to overcome another barrier - a language barrier. This terrorist wasn’t here in the US on a student visa. He was plucked straight out of Afghanistan or Iraq and likely knows no English. But for argument’s sake, let’s just say he lucked out and that he is somehow able to communicate with his fellow escapee in order to formulate a plan.
They break out, are now free in our communities, and go their separate ways. The first thing that each is going to need to do, is gain access to money and transportation. Each is going to have to try to blend in, most immediately amongst a community near the prison. While the killer knows the language and culture, our dark-complexioned terrorist will be on the run in a land where he doesn’t speak the language, knows nobody, and where everyone is on the lookout for him. Both will have the same goal of not getting caught, and I’m confident that on the way toward that goal each is equally capable of chalking up a body count. But to be honest, I think I’d be more comfortable having my family around a terrorist looking to get back to his people then a sadistic killer/rapist.
In the end we can draw up as many potential scenarios as we’d like, but it doesn’t change the fact that no one has ever escaped from a super-max facility.
I don’t know what’s more disgraceful, the Republicans who always seem to stir up fear to achieve political ends or the Democrats who so often seem to bend to those fears and act indecisively on national security matters. I take comfort in knowing that, by all indications, it seems we have a grown up now presiding over the country and over these little children in Congress.
