Get Smart

It becomes increasingly distressful to watch television coverage of the Democratic race for the party’s nomination. It becomes increasingly evident that America is home to some of the laziest and all together most vulnerable minds in the world. Why is it that we take more time in our daily lives to talk about what happened on Desperate Housewives than we do to discuss the positions of Clinton and Obama and McCain on health care, education, the war in Iraq, the economy, the rise in high school drop out rates, etc.?
Why is it that we allow the media, in its pursuit of ratings and advertising dollars to dictate what we hear and what is important to us? Because we love it.
We welcome it.
We allow it, and at the end of the day, we PAY FOR IT!
We are so much a part of the problem that we can no longer identify it. We are being force fed a steady diet of American Idol and The Office. We are being educated on major issues that affect our economy, our ability to educate our children, our ability to get health care, our ability to protect the air we breathe and the water we drink, by media outlets that deliver in sound bites.
We, the grown-ups who make the decisions on who holds office and sets policy and writes legislation by Cliff Notes. That may be giving too much credit to the level of detail we are actually getting. It is absurd, and what’s more…it is dangerous.
People will jump all over the relationship that Barrack Obama had with his former pastor and worry that it implies, by association that Obama is a racist. How many of us have been in church when our priest railed against homosexuals or divorced mothers and we sat silent in our pews ready to accept it and return the next Sunday to Mass? How many of us have been at cocktail parties in polite company and sat silent as a black joke or a Jewish joke was told? Are we homophobic or racist or anti-Semitic?

What about John McCain? He has used some of the most horrible language in the Halls of Congress and against his own wife. He is known for his horrible and explosive temper. Have we all at some point in our lives lashed out? Become so angry we were red faced? Or Hillary Clinton, what about her rumored ill temper or excruciatingly high standards and intolerance? Or her marriage to a man that people either love or hate?

All of these questions mean exactly NOTHING. They mean nothing if you are not able to tell me who you support or do not support because of their stance on issues that actually mean something. I don’t care if any of them go to church. I do care if they can identify the various ethnic and religious factions killing each other and our troops in Iraq. I care if they have a plan to fix our broken health care system and restore dignity to the elderly and the poor when they need medical care. I do care who has a plan to help us wean ourselves from our addiction to oil and demand, in fact LEGISLATE that Detroit produce cars that get higher fuel efficiency. I care who understands that foreign policy is a nuanced art and not a game of cowboys and Indians.

I want to hear about why John McCain thinks he can bring change and help get this country back on track if he is aligned with Bush and thinks that the country is in fine shape. I want to hear from Hillary why she thinks that her ties to Lobbyist money will not require her to appease them should she occupy the oval office. I want to hear from Barrack Obama that he has a real and executable plan to bring greater equality to the country and start by fixing our broken public school systems. I don’t care if they can bowl, or drink shots of bourbon. I don’t care if they are divorced, religious, vegetarian, or pretty. I don’t even care if I like them. If you had a choice between the very best surgeon whom you did not care for personally or the third best surgeon whom you really liked to perform surgery on your daughter, which candidate would you choose? Do you care if you like them and want to have them for dinner? Do you want the best person for the job or the person that you want to hang out with at the yearly Holiday party?

It is time to stop being lazy and start caring about who leads the largest economy, the most well armed military, and the most powerful nation in the history of the world and say who really gives a hang about American Idol? It is time to be grown-ups and read the whole book, not the cliff notes. Ask yourself why you should care if the next President can take the steps to avoid war, not seek it. Is the next President smart enough to bring industry back to our soil and employ Americans in their hometowns? Is the next President forward thinking enough to invest in solar and wind power and create an entirely new industry to develop and build the infrastructure we will need to use it? Ask yourself questions that matter, not questions that entertain.
I know who I am voting for, and I know who I hope to see in the White House. I hope that America will rise to the very important occasion of participating fully in the process which defines us-voting. We can not wear flag pins and put yellow ribbons on our cars because we love democracy and then refuse to take the time required to make sound and informed choices in our selection of such high offices. Being a patriot has nothing to do with slogans or buttons or even flags. Patriotism is about believing so strongly in our system that we force ourselves to consider all sides, all options, and all realities. Being an American is about understanding that our way of life is predicated on one thing and one thing only – our Constitution. The person who is sworn to uphold and defend the Constitution of the United States should be able to rely on an electorate that has taken, at the very least, the time to understand exactly what they are voting for and why.