Brain Splatter

I guess the big topic of conversation on everyone's tongue is politics. Who is going to win what and when? Today is the Florida primary. I guess it is important on some level. I mean this is an exercise in democracy. People voting and choosing who they want to lead their country. It is the foundation of America.

And then you watch the speeches and the interviews with the people in the campaign, they talk all about the promise of this country. It really can be inspiring. Seeing the looks on the supporters faces, at least the ones for Obama and to a lesser extent, Clinton, you almost see a religious fervor in their eyes. That almost always makes me a little worried. Support for a candidate and their policies is alright but a fanatical support is a little bit scary. Sometimes more than a little bit.

If I could believe that voting for one person or another would change the world, would make me healthier, wealthier, and wiser, I would whole-heartedly throw my support toward that candidate. The only problem is the realist in me has a feeling that very little is going to change. I mean, what can one person do as President?

The opposite party and the forces of the status quo will do as much as possible to stop any progress. The days when a man like FDR could institute policies that changed the world is over. Big business has too much of a hold on this country. International globalism would overrule any significant economic change. This country is going to spiral deeper and deeper into a county of the super-haves and a population of have nots. All the while the foreign powers who own our debt will grow more and more powerful.

I mean look at this country. Historically our power has come from our independence. We didn't have to depend on other countries for our food and manufacturing. We didn't beat the Nazis and the Japanese because our soldiers were that much superior. We beat them because we could put more tanks and planes and ships in the battlefield. Our manufacturing base was never threatened.

We out lasted the Soviet Union because we could feed our own people. We could make cars and bombs and tanks and the world would have rather had a Timex watch on their wrist than any immitation Soviet item. How can you rule the world when your people have to wait in line for toilet paper?

Now we come to the new age. The only thing that is made in America is debt. Our food is grown around the world because we are planting corn to put in the gas tank. Our ravenous need for oil sends billions of dollars to countries that have a stone-age mentality and who hate us. While our need to buy and consume have us sending the rest of our money to a country run by an oppressive government with an inferiority complex that is more worried about saving "face" then about the rights of their own people or about the health of the people buying or making their products.

And here we are in America, where the American dream was born, what are we becoming? Or maybe the better question is what have we become? Do you feel safe? Do you feel secure? If you lost you job, what would you do? How could you live?

On a national scale, what would happen if we pissed off China? What if they decided not to send us our TV's and cell phones and fabrics all the other stuff that fills up our Wal-Marts? What if the Middle East erupts into violence and all the oil pipelines are cut? How do we wage a war with no gasoline? How do you heat a house in the middle of a blizzard with no oil? Do we start breaking furniture and throwing it into the fireplace? Are we prepared for any of this? We always joke about things going wrong but what happens if the all mighty Stock Markets collapse and all that money that exists only on paper disappears?

Now, I don't know if any of the shit could or would happen. I mean if China cuts us off, or goes to war, how would they pay for it? Business is usually more profitable then war. The Middle East? Well, let's put it this way. These people have hated each other forever. But if the flow of oil stops, so does the flow of money into their country. What does that leave? A bunch of guys sitting in the desert with guns and nothing else to do but kill each other. The oil money and their hatred of the West distracts the masses from the ineptitude of their leaders.

I must be honest, it is easy to be pessimistic. It is hard to think that you can change things and make it better. Maybe that is the hope of the Election season. Maybe we feel that if we can get behind the right person we can move forward as a group; start a new movement towards a brighter day. Or if you are a conservative, make a move back towards a traditional set of values or a time when things where better.

Though to be fair even the nature of conservatism has changed. Most conservatives really wouldn't want to go back to the subservient wife, the oppressed minorities, and the limiting of civil liberties. At least I hope that is the case. And progressives, or to use the dreaded term liberals, I think they know that the ideas of enforcing change through government means leads to disaster such as a welfare state or a bureaucracy that is even larger and more immobile than we have now.

So what is the answer? Is there one? Is this election going to be the start of a brand new day, a continuation of the status quo, or the beginning of the end? Isn't that the question you should be asking when you go into the voting booth? Is this person just the person that I like the best or is voting for this person the best thing for America? And here is one last question, is putting your faith in a person to change the world the right thing to do if that person not yourself?

Laterz...

Labels: America, China, Clinton, future, Obama

// posted by Biff Manly @ 5:39 PM