Wake Up and Smell the Manure

So, I'm flipping channels last night and land on CNN and Larry King Live. He has a panel of four women - Janine Turner (Northern Exposure) among them - discussing Sarah Palin. Two of the women were for Sarah Palin and two against. The problem: both sides were not actually listening to each other. They would spout their rhetoric and then, while the other side was speaking, they would plan their response, without actually listening. It was just amazing to see the defense/attack of Sarah Palin and/or the Republican Party.

I love the rabidness of politics. I just wish the fervor/passion would be directed in a better manner. Forget about a rabid defense/attack against Sarah Palin, Barack Obama, the Republican Party or the Democratic Party. Your voice, your thoughts, and your energy are wasted. Direct that passion, that fervor, that rabid single mindedness toward something better: fixing the system that no longer works.

The current system of government in the United States is broken, perhaps beyond repair. How much better would our government be if the rabid defenders of either party actually put forth an equal, if not greater, amount of energy toward fixing the problem?

The current candidates are not going to fix the problem. The current candidates are part of the problem. Sarah Palin - love her or hate her - is part of the problem. The American People are part of the problem because we sit back and allow our government to stagnate and decay. We are responsible for who is currently in office, and who will be in office soon. We pick sides, when sides should not exist at all, and rabidly defend our position without looking at the bigger picture. We the people, to borrow a phrase, have failed as much as the government has failed.

It is time that we the people wake up and smell the coffee, roses, or huge piles of horse dung emanating from our nation's capitol. It is time that we the people stepped back from our rabid defense of either party, and focused on the actual ideal of fixing the broken, stagnating, decaying government that has inexorably driven our country into a recession. People are losing their homes, their jobs, their retirements, and their hope because we have a government that cannot cooperate with each other, even to save a failing economy.

So, hold onto your fevered beliefs, but direct them in a way that helps, rather than hurts this nation. Defend your politicians of choice, but not so rabidly that you lose sight of the greater picture: we are a country in crisis.

Just because you are Republican/Democrat does not mean you are honor-bound to vote Republican/Democrat. Sometimes, change comes from going against the flow, rather than with the flow. I see most political mind people as lemmings - those cute, adorable little creatures, that have no greater sense than to follow the leader over the cliff to certain death.

Wake up, dear little lemmings!!

S