My Government is Broken

The principal downfall of our society has always been, and always will be our government. This may sound like a crazy statement, but if one was to really sit and think of humankind's problems, some form of government is probably found to be the root cause. Death, famine, genocide, corruption, war and taxes. These are just a few of the wonderful things government has brought upon us, and the only way to fix this is to take it apart and put it back together again.
It's no coincidence that most politicians are wealthy to begin with, and this would make one wonder why a person with that much wealth, would want a job with so much responsibility and so little payback. People who fanatically back a candidate, like a groupie follows a rock star, don't realize that this person is not the Messiah. They may have started out with all the right ideas in their young political career, but they slowly transform into a beauty queen in a pageant, and Americans eat it up. Noam Chomsky sums it up best, "Candidates understand that the election is supposed to stay away from issues. They are creatures of the public relations industry. Voters end up endorsing an image, not a platform" (Chomsky, Noam. "The Disconnect In Human Democracy"). Issues like immigration, abortion, and same sex marriage are all distractions that they use, to take our attention away from the fact that THEY are the issue. As long as politicians are treated like royalty, the system will remain broken.

It seems that we forget these people work for us. Three or four hundred years ago if the government did not perform, they were fired, like any employee would be fired for lack of performance. Revolution was commonplace and accepted. In America, we are too comfortable to think of upsetting the balance with our big screen televisions, giant luxury SUV's, and six thousand channels of white people, with cheap suits and bad hair who call themselves journalists and say they are "fair and balanced". What they are really doing is telling us how to feel and the latest "must have" products we should spend our government issued money on. At this point in time a revolution is obviously out of the question. But there are small things we can do to put an end to the madness.

"TV, is the reason why less than ten percent of our nation reads books, while most people think Central America means Kansas, socialism means un-American and apartheid is a new headache remedy" Franti, Michael. "Television, The Drug of the Nation." Hypocrisy is the Greatest Luxury. Although this is probably an exaggeration, I'm sure most kids growing up now don't know what some of these terms mean. We are breeding an idiot generation and this is the exact kind of thing our government wants. No one likes a person who asks questions. The first thing we need to do to take power away from our government is to turn off the television. Children need to be taught this at an early age and need to realize the power of knowledge and reading. If people stopped watching the news, these programs would have no power and be forced to disappear. This would give our government one less media outlet to spread fear and misinformation. A book is something that one is actively involved in, has no sponsors, and requires one to think. Television does not do this; instead you are a passive observer absorbing nothing. We need to put down the Doritos, turn off the television, and be more active in our thinking.

" If you don't vote you have no right to complain." This statement makes me cringe every time I hear it. When one goes to the polls to cast their vote for president, they are not voting for that candidate. They are voting indirectly for that person, because these votes for president are actually cast by electors who we did not choose. These electors are supposed to take the popular vote and choose the appropriate candidate. Four times in our history this did not happen, most recently with the controversial 2000 election. For this to happen once is too many times, but four times simply means the American people were robbed of their choice. My answer to this is simply don't vote. Our voting system is not a democracy, but more of a suggestion by the people for who we hope will be president, but if these Electors choose otherwise our vote means nothing. Telling someone not to complain if they don't vote is a cliché and something they want you to believe. If no one voted in the next election, wouldn't someone see there was a problem? We force democracy on other nations but yet we don't use it here, and the only way to fix this is to stop using it and show them we don't care for them or their "issues".

These are drastic measures that need to be taken and put into action. Will it ever happen? Probably not. Life is too comfortable for most people who have any power to change this, and as long as one is part of the system one cannot change the system. We can only hope that in future generations the people will be more alert and less gullible. This is the only hope for any kind of change. As Karl Marx once said," The philosophers have only interpreted the world in various ways-the point however is to change it."