Sing along with me now… you know the words.
Today's discussion is about how our American government sucks. How all of our freedoms are missing. etc. etc.
How is it that we have come to complain about everything that happens instead of seeing the good in it? I am the same way, I know. I do my fair share of complaining.
I have a number of friends who believe the time is now to move away to another country because it's so bad in this one. I think they are being terribly short sighted. There are so many good things about America, but they are all overlooking them for a few bad things. Granted, the few things are pretty bad and really ugly, like the suspension of Habeas Corpus and the horrendous mismanagement of everything that's going on in Washington D.C.; like the way we have criminals making national policy; like the way the whole country has been manipulated for profit of greedy corporations.
But there's good things too. Like the way tap water comes out when you turn it on. Sure, you have to pay for it, but you can also drink it. As stupid as that sounds, it's not true for even half the population of this world. If the government didn't regulate tap water, we'd all be dead already from water borne illness.
Or how about the CDC. I know a lot of people who think the CDC is the enemy, but I believe they keep a lot of us more healthy than we think.
*I heard someone say in a meeting a few days ago that a person we knew had been "shocked and awed" in a good way by a nice deed. My internal reaction was sheer horror that "shock and awe" – a military term for destroying 100,000 lives in one night in Bagdad – was being used a frivolously describe happy events.
Oh how about the research that continues to go on at our universities with little or no help from the fed. Cancer research: Lupus, Lukemia, Breast Cancer, etc. Those programs do not exist in countries where the government doesn't allow them. Uganada, under Edi Amin had a research department in their hospital that basically said whatever Edi Amin told them to say. Now that's oppressive government.
Ours is still a democracy. And yes, whether George W. Bush won either election is still a good question in my mind. Maybe he got 49% of the vote and managed to make it look like 51, maybe he managed to wrangle some cheatful way to get there, I don't know. I can't know. If he did, it's a secret. All I can report is what i hear word of mouth.
But what I do know is that if Al Gore or John Kerry had been better candidates, maybe they would have received more than 1/2 of the vote and the race wouldn't have been as close. And if the balance had tipped for either of them instead of Bush, then possibly we'd be on a different path right now than killing innocents in Iraq*, along with our own young men and women that we send over to a distant place where we don't really have to think of the atrocities of war on a regular basis. We might. Or we might be doing exactly the same thing under different auspices.
We can second guess that all we want, but the simple truth is this: if Kerry or Gore had won either election, 50% of Americans would have been upset. It just would have been the other 50%. Another simple truth: GWBush won't be in office two years from now. It's the way our system works.
Quit whining, go out and vote when the time comes. Sign petitions. Start movements to make this a better place. Don't just give up and move away.
