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Monday, February 01, 2010

2-1-10 (Monday)

Well here we are Monday morning Feb 1st. I hope you all had a good weekend. While mine was by and large uneventful I would say that the most eventful thing I did was to finally stop working at the church. Now, those of you who read this blog and know me in meat space are all well aware of how long I have worked at the church on and off over the last I would say nearly 20 years. I was not a pastor or any kind of officiate there. I used to call myself a church sexton But I was really just a custodian. I grew up going to that church. My parents had been missionaries in Indonesia coming out of there and I went with them. In fact I lived in Indonesia for basically the first three years of my life and when we returned to the states I spoke better Indonesian then I did English.

I grew up going to the church and being involved and once I got out of high school and after spending some time working in a few different movie theaters I ended up working at the church. I enjoyed it there but it also was a place that allowed me to be lazy and to not move forward or to pursue things that I might have had I not had that safety net to fall back into. It isn't the church's fault it was my own doing. Basically a mix of fear and a desire to be comfortable kind of locked me into place. Well! I have already written more about this then I intended to. I guess it was more of a big deal then I thought it was or wanted to admit. I guess that is what happens when I write without the filters in place. I hope people didn't mind a little bit of the old autobiographical this morning.

On to the politics....................I read an interesting quote by Gore Vidal this morning,

"“It makes no difference who you vote for — the two parties are really one party representing four percent of the people.”

I am not sure when he said it but it really rings true for me today the Monday after President Obamas state of the union address. Because we have a two-party system, the only choice people have if they 
don’t like what’s happening is to vote for the other guy,
 even if the other guy is largely responsible for what’s happening, and the 
guy that’s in there now is in there because of the other guy’s mistakes.

People are angry at deficits, largely run up by the irresponsibility of the 
Bush administration, and topped off by Obama.
 They’re angry that the bankers who got us in this mess are making millions
. Thanks mainly to deregulation
 promoted primarily by Republicans (but signed off on by Clinton). They’re 
angry about jobs, but there would be a lot more of them if the 
stimulus package had been larger, which would have increased the deficit, 
which they are angry about. They are angry that Washington 
seems totally controlled by special interests, so they’re going to vote for the
 party that loves special interests at least as much as the 
party in power now. They’re angry at the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, which 
were started by the party they just voted out a year ago.
 They are angry that President Obama has accomplished so little of his agenda, so 
they’re going to vote for the party that has unanimously opposed
 every single aspect of it.

I have said it before and I will say it again. The two party system is a failure in America. There is no real difference. The agenda they both seem to have is to look for themselves and not for the good of the American people. The Democrats in Congress have proven that with their actions over the last few years. It was interesting to see the populace rise up in anger and shake their collective fist at the Republicans a few years ago and pretty much sweep them out of Congress. Oh the Democrats cheered. "It is a mandate from the people." they said. What is was was a mandate for these guys stink and we have no other option. Sure the Democrats said they would be different...they haven't been. So few years have passed and nothing has changed and surprise, surprise, surprise people are angry. Throw those bums out they are yelling. We will replace them with the same kind of bums we threw out before and then we will act surprised when they screw us.

WAKE UP PEOPLE!! The system is broken and the Tea Party pipe dream is not going to fix it. Keith Olberman and his Olbermaniacs are not going to fix it. Glenn Beck is not going to fix it. There needs to be! There must be viable third party candidates that are willing to listen to the needs of the populace and not the needs of the business as usual crowd. I hope one day true change will come in America but I am not holding my breath.

2 comments:

JoelAT said...

Professional Politicians are the main problem in my opinion. Seeing as they are intended to be the representatives of the people they serve, and in the modern age it should be simple to garner how the constituents wish them to vote, being a true representative that has no past political experience might work nowadays. Go for a system where the representatives serve for a single year, don't leave the state they represent, home-office sort of thing where they are provided with connectivity to vote and poll their populace, and are selected similar to jury duty.

It would never fly, because politics have become such a big business, but I think it's truer to the notion of representative government.

Sherry said...

Congratulations on moving on from the job at the Church! I bet it is great to have just one job at a time now. :)