America Fail

So, the time has finally come. The long awaited sophomore blog, and how swiftly a few days turned into a week. I guess I dropped the ball on that one, and I partially blame the website failblog.org. Addicting is what it is. So, in spirit of the site, on with the blog that I titled...

America Fail

It is doubtful that anyone in the United States was not aware of the recent elections, and that history has indeed been made. Yes, we have elected the first “African American” president with Caucasian and Hawaiian descent. There might be some other stuff in there too, but, no one ever seems to talk about it. Funny. Perhaps we can only use one minority to not make things to awkward or complicated, but we have to leave out that he's part white to make this seem like a big triumph for our country. Before we go too much further, let me express that this is not about my displeasure with the new presidential elect, but with the process itself.
Several times during the 2008 campaign, the phrase came into my mind, “No taxation without representation!” Granted, this was originally directed towards the British during the American Revolution and culminated with the Boston Tea Party, but I still feel that it applies in some forms. How well does Barack Obama represent you? An extreme liberal in favor of federal health care, $500 dollar tax handouts (which does not seem all that different then our recent rebate checks, except I might actually get one this time) and eliminating free trade. What about John McCain, a war hero that favors tax credit towards health care, off-shore drilling, and is completely inept when it comes to technology. Personally, I am not either of those. The only thing I heard that I liked during the election was Obama's proposal to remove the capping of bandwidth, and that is merely because the nerd in me yearns for faster downloads. This is the beginning of where the election failed. America cannot continue to be governed by a two party system. As far as it goes, I would consider myself more of an average young adult, and I don't see anything that remotely resembles my ideals in either party, but rather, I am the hybrid, which, I would venture, most Americans are. Where is our representative? Yet, somehow, every for years, we get packaged up and placed into these roles as staunch democrats and republicans.
In my preparation for voting, I came across a sample ballot that had listed about 8 or 9 presidential candidates, and with the exception of Ralph Nadar, I had not heard a thing about any of them. Even with Nadar, I had not heard anything about him for the 2008 campaign. I'm not sure why voting third (or even fourth or fifth) party has become such a futile decision. There was a great Tree house of Horror episode of the Simpson's in which aliens had come down and take the place of Bill Clinton and Bob Dole, and both aliens were poised to over throw humanity. The crowd became elated when the remembered that they did participate in an open party system only to have their hopes squashed as the aliens rebuked them, “Go ahead! Throw your vote away!” A bitter satire indeed. What if one of these lesser known candidates held the key to improving our schools, economy, and over all way of life, and we did not even know there name when we saw the ballot. Most likely, these guys did not have millions of dollars to spend on advertising, which most likely excluded them from being included in the national debates. This comes down to campaigning itself. So, I ask you again, where is my representation? Perhaps I don't want it, the idea of throwing bulk amounts of beverage overboard stimulates me. Owhooo. Chill. Did you fill it. It's the Minneapolis Nesquick party.
I digress. In the month of September alone, Obama raised close to $150 million dollars to McCain's $80 million, give or take. One thing I do find a little funny, is that people complain about higher taxes but pay to endorse politicians that will raise their taxes. Anyways, roughly estimated over $200 million dollars were spent on some form of advertising, whether it be print, radio, television, or other forms (such as using this crazy Internet thing). The thing that is most ironic about it, the last month before the election, the thing I heard the most was “I can't wait until these ads are over with!” So, wait, two men used a quarter of a billion dollars to try to talk to people who were not even listening (or at least trying not to). It's no wonder why, either, they were flat out annoying. If these ads were ran about ordinary people, it could be considered slander, but run them for a politician and it's campaigning. What did we learn about the issues at hand? Political stances? Policy proposals? Not much, if anything. I did learn that Obama thought that Governor Palin cannot be a good vice president because she was good looking and that McCain would not be a good president because he voted with Bush. Man, now I cannot vote for either of them, because they are both obviously horrible human beings. I was pretty confident towards the end that we were voting for second grade class president of America. Not only that, but now we have candidates that practically bought their way into the election, and they are promoting things I do not agree with, and taking away my valuable TV time!? The nerve. Despicable if you ask me. I actually wrote a paper about it for class, and I'll slap it on here.
The last thing that disgusted me about this election was the failure to recognize that the problems in America now are not separate, they are related, much like the parts of the human body. To illustrate, once, during a class I had on first aid and CPR, the teacher came in and pronounced we were having a pop quiz and hammered us with some of the more complex aspects of saving lives. Once the test was finished, she had asked as a few questions about the experiences. Everyone confessed that they felt their heart rate rise, they started breathing a little harder, even sweat a little. One test affected our nervous, respiratory, circulatory, and integumentary (skin) systems. They are all connected. So, if our economic system is failing, is it not reasonable to see our education slip, and our health care programs stumble a bit. Now, I would not know the best way to fix the problems, but I do know that being able to recognize that this is one big problem, and not a bunch of smaller problems would be a step in the right direction. The people that see the federal health care program as beneficial don't realize this is going to lead to higher taxes. They don't associate the decline of our school systems with lower paying jobs because our children are not properly educated. The end of free trade means that we have to make products domestically at a higher cost, or pay to import every day products, like coffee. In the past, we would just through money at the problem, but, we realize that we cannot do this anymore, because there just is not any money left to throw (besides, there would be people snapping it up before it hit the ground because they need to buy their necessaries, like a big screen TV).
To conclude, or government is all messed up at best. We blindly elected a man into the white house based off of a few vague policy outlines after we gave him all our money, instead of the other guy, so he could promise not to take more, but needs more it flush out those vague policies, instead of the other guy, and no one seems to realize it. I might be wrong, and please, correct me if I am. Oh, wait, I'm suppose to be wrapping up. Well, welcome to the United Socialists of America... excuse me, I mean States. Not that I think McCain, the one who proclaimed his ignorance economic policy, would be any better. At least with the Blacausawiian the rest of the world is jazzed about our president. Maybe we will see a slight improvement in international affairs until the realize that we are still the same jerks we were before. Anyways, good luck, and don't say I didn't warn you.