Politics: Are we kids on a soccer field?
*edit*: I wrote this over a week ago and saved it as a draft because I tend to get heated about things and write them without thinking. Since this goes to my facebook and I have both friends, family and co-workers on there who I fully realize do not agree with me on many things, I decided to hold off and post this later if I felt like it. I still feel this and just thought that I’d share my thoughts, read them or don’t, respond or don’t.
And by that I mean, do we do nothing other then follow the ball, regardless of our position or where the team might need us? Now you might expect this to be a claim that as American’s we should follow our government, being that I am (most of the time) decidely left wing and at the moment the government is going forward with most of the promises I heard during the election, that being gay rights, healthcare reform, leaving abortion alone, leaving Iraq, and economic change (whether you agree with the “how”). If I were to fall into the gap of saying, we should listen to our leader and go with him, then I would be no better then the folks who infuriated me during Bush’s two terms by chanting that I wasn’t american if I didn’t agree with:
- the war
- the patriot act
- oil companies take over of our energy plan
- wire tapping
- the maddeningly increasing deficit with little to no domestic spending
I didn’t agree with it then and I don’t agree with it now, if you are American then disagree all you want, it’s what our country is based on, go ahead and argue it out and get angry and make your points. What is pointless is the finger pointing, the name calling and much of this sarcastic vitriol that does nothing but further the argument. This includes the rights almighty FOX and the lefts little brother MSNBC. I used to watch MSNBC, then came Olberman. He is a blowhard and nothing more then what O’Reilly is to the right. A cheerleader and a bully who cheers on his left while being pretty much downright mean to the right, never able to admit wrong and never able to come to an agreement. Then you’ve got Glenn Beck, the guy at the campfire telling everyone scary stories, except he doesn’t follow it up with an “I’m kidding” and a s’more. Followed by him is Rachel Maddow, who I loved at first, but I’m honestly getting tired of her sarcastic “Really” schtick.
What I meant by the headline is that all we appear to be is a bunch of people following whoever is yelling the loudest. One of the worst things about the internet is also one of its greatest, masses of information. The thing is it’s unorganized, biased and generally lousy information. We have no real way to look at it except through someone else’s keystrokes. We quickly read Drudge or Huffington and due to the size of the H1 tag we assume, man this must be really important. We immediately hop on twitter and share it with our friends and then before you know it CNN is airing it, but it’s not news at that point, its a record play. It’s drama on repeat. Then we yell, “Well those aren’t real news sources, you need to go read it at NY Times or WSJ.” The thing is, those are companies, they need profit and due to the climate the only way to attract readers is to write the most asinine things you can get out of your finger tips. So they do, the NY Times unleashes its left wing droves to tell us how great Obama is, while the WSJ lets us know how bad the economy is going to keep going if Obama stays at it. It’s the same thing, the same information with different spins to stoke things we already feel. This isn’t news, its a news cycle, its repeated and rewritten until we click the NYT article before we click the WSJ article.
Last year we had a slew of famous people die, including one huge star in Michael Jackson. We all, me included, wrote on Twitter about how weird it is that so many famous people are dying, that this must be one of the highest numbers of deaths ever. Truth is, it wasn’t, it was pretty average, but when you scream it into the echo chamber and you hear about every death from Michael Jackson to Bob Bogle, you start to look around and wonder who’s next.
The point of all of this is that it’s easy to watch Glenn Beck and fear for your life or Jon Stewart and assume all right wingers are morons, it’s easy to watch Fox and assume everyone is against the healthcare bill or MSNBC and assume everyone is for the healthcare bill, but why? Do you need your feelings affirmed?
Here’s a fact you might like, Obama’s public opinion is hanging around 48% right now. It’s pretty low, George W was somewhere around 71 and Clinton’s in the 50s at the same point in their presidency. Seems like all of America must hate Obama right (FOX opinion), but you want to know another president with similar numbers at a similar time? Reagan, the almighty leader of the Right. What’s the point? Nothing. It is a number that lets you know where the country is right now with what’s happening right this moment, I’ve never been polled by Gallup or Rassmussen, I’m pretty sure no one I know has been, so does that reaffirm or break what I think or feel right now? No, should it? No. What it should do is give you a pause and then move on, but instead in the 24 hour news cycle you will hear that number pounded on you for hours on end. Is Obama failing? Will he be re-elected? Who knows, its over 2 years out, the guy has been in office 1 year and 3 months. Can we let him get the chair warm before we throw him out?
To take me back to the headline, can we all just resume our normal positions and have enough faith in each other that we are all where we are supposed to be, I kind of always thought that was how things were supposed to work before we started listening to the noisy parents in the stands yelling at us to get the ball and score no matter what.
