Political Journal- Left or Right? It's time to make a choice.

[Trishintraining]

Well, after speaking to people over the last few weeks, I feel the need to expound on the state of the election and politics in general. I know that this very well could make me unpopular with certain people; but nonetheless, I will share my views.

The political process is what makes this country great, and for once, the country is primarily focused on real issues. The past two presidential elections were focused mostly on single-issue votes.

In 2000, the electoral college (not the people) elected Bush into office on a platform of supposed morality. There seemed to have been a backlash against Clinton's personal life outside of his actual office of president that made a lot of conservatives and independents vote the moral line and ignore other important issues such as repairing social security, providing middle-class tax relief, education, or the environment. These are issues that should breach party lines, but they did not.

Again, in 2004, Bush ran on a platform of being against gay marriage and abortion and other moral social issues, but completely glossed over the extremely mismanaged war in Iraq and the even more poorly managed war on terror. While doing this, his administration was responsible for invading the privacy of Americans with phone-tapping, violating the constitution by imprisoning and torturing "terror suspects" at Guantanomo Bay, and lying to the public about his intentions to invade Iraq. And again, the other socio-economic issues that I mentioned earlier that were becoming an even larger threat to the welfare of America were not in the spotlight. He won again against an admittedly weak Democratic canidate and unorganized Democratic party, but still the lesser of two bad choices.

In 2006, the Democratic party was able to finally reorganize after people began to see that abortion and gay marriage aren't the only things that matter in this country, nor are they even that important to base such an important decision as who you vote for on. They took back control of both the House and Senate, but were still blocked by the veto power of Bush and lacking the numbers to overturn that veto.

We come back to the present. Every election is about the independents, and the undecideds. Most independents are no longer concerned enough about abortion or gay marriage to let it influence their vote any longer. They have now, finally, been forced to pay attention to the more pressing matters of the economy, healthcare, and the environment. The independents now have to decide what they really are, left or right, there is no choice of middle. That's because this country must now make the choice as to what direction it is going to go in. We can choose to stay on the path we are now (the right) and continue to have a shrinking middle class and a growing population of working poor and unemployed. We can continue to allow healthcare costs to skyrocket due to little-to-no regulation. We can continue to feed the soul-sucking corporations and free-trade economy that has shipped so many of our jobs overseas. We can continue to let education and social programs to go under-funded. We can continue to allow unsustainable energy and poor environmental policy to ruin our environment. We can continue to be the world's police when we have our own issues at home.

Or, we can choose to take a new direction (the left) and finally give the middle class that this country is built on a break and, yes, spread the wealth a little. Progressive taxing has been in practice since 1913, it's not socialism. We can decide to finally regulate healthcare and bring down the costs, which will help not only the economy of America, but the world economy as well. We can provide incentives for businesses to operate and employ in America and get our jobs back here where they belong and away from exploitive manufacturing facilities overseas. We can bolster education and social programs in America and get back our pride as one of the world's most intelligent, unselfish, and supporting nations. We can join the rest of the post-industrial world and focus more on cleaning up how we create and use energy and protect our environment. We can give diplomacy a chance before running in guns blazing.

There are many fundamental differences in the canidates and in people in general. It's time that we find how our nation at large truly feels. I hope we give change a chance. If not, well, there's always Canada. Maybe that's why conservatives are more up in arms about losing... where else in the world could they go to find a government that suits them? It's time to join the rest of the modern world.

[worktodo]

Jan. 8, 2009 at 8:55 AM

Trish, did you write this?  It's really good.