Thoughts on the 2008 Election

I wanted to take a moment and state my views and thoughts regarding the results of the 2008 election. These thoughts reflect some of my personal ideology, which I have not fully elaborated on in this blog, but I feel the need to make this public now rather than wait, as knowing myself, I may not have the courage to say them later.

The election was yesterday and Barack Obama is the President-elect. I voted for him, but today I found myself depressed. Someone asked me who I thought would win this election a couple of months ago, and I remember my response clearly because I thought it odd the oracular nature of it. I said: "The wrong person will win for the wrong reason."

I didn't like either major party candidate for the Presidency. Neither really appealed to me because both seemed focused on maintaining the system we currently live under. And by maintaining it, I mean they talked of fixing it to get it going again. In my opinion, I think our system does not project well into the future because it is linear and self-destructive, and that it will eventually devour itself unless fundamental changes are made in how we view our world. Neither candidate focused on this fact.

The primary issue for me, in deciding between the two candidates, was how I perceived each candidates' roles in furthering the massive social injustices propagated by the Bush Presidency. I don't know if Barack Obama or John McCain would be able to rise above the simple and terrible path that is the abuse of the Presidential office, however, there are people behind both candidates that will fill major roles within this government that I can guess about. In my opinion, the Republican party is used to a certain course of action, and even if John McCain may have been able to limit his abuses, I don't believe the people working under him would be able to stop themselves from acting, carte blanche, in a way I would approve. I have no idea if a Democratic government will be able to act better, but at least there is a slim chance that they may behave, and that is something I couldn't grant the Republicans. That is the reason I voted for Barack Obama.

However, that is not the reason I believe many Americans voted for him. I watched and read polling information that stated a vast majority of Americans who did vote for Barack, voted with the economy as their deciding factor. We've had a recent downturn in a lot of economic areas, in particular the stock and housing markets, and this forced people into questioning who they wanted to be their President. The stock market has been flailing for a short time. The housing market has been poor for longer. There maybe other reasons people think the economy is going bad, but I think most of them are fairly selfish reasons (not that this is necessarily a bad thing, self-preservation it a fundamental drive in life), but I'll be honest, it pisses me off. How fickle are the American people that one-year of troubled times affects them so? If things got really bad, how would they respond?

If people were really concerned about the economy, they would stop being irresponsible with the energy they put into it. To make an analogy, imagine a net stretched across a canyon, and people are living on it and have no choice in whether they can leave it. The only thing saving them from a fall is the net, but there is some perceived value in damaging the net. So the people cut parts out of it, they rip holes, and they complain when people fall through because the net wasn't there to protect them. They simply fail to see that their own greed will be their downfall - literally in this analogy - and if they don't learn to properly respect the net, the whole thing will violently fall apart, destroying everyone.

I would call this net our economy, our social institutions, our way of life, and our planet. Sure there may be some perceived value in debt, imbalanced opportunity, entertainment, and squandering natural resources, but I believe these acts are like cutting the net. Maybe one act on its own doesn't hurt, but the accumulation of years of cutting will eventually destroy the system we live on.

The problems of debt should be obvious, but there is a lot more to it that I will get into at another time.

Imbalanced opportunity hurts everyone because for every person that succeeds, there is another person who will require support. That leads to a question of how this support is handled and I would present the most two obvious solutions I can think of: a callous response or a caring response. The callous response says that individuals must pick themselves up and keep trying, and for maybe one in a hundred, or one in a thousand, or one in a million this will work, but for the rest this will fail. And in failing will create an even bigger burden for those who succeed, or even a more callous response. For a caring response, it is far more likely that there are more people needing support than those who don't, some people will abuse the system, and the overall cost would be even greater than if everyone had the same opportunities. However, continual support could eventually lead to a point where the growth will outweigh the costs, and freedom is truly achieved.

Entertainment is the bane of our society. It blinds us to the reality of the world we live in, disguising disgusting practices in ignorance. The education system is falling apart as more and more Americans obediently follow a path that is completely obscured to them, and these facts lead to the perceived value in self-destruction. The damage may already be too great to recover from because once people stop caring, it may be impossible to get them going again. The entertainment industry encourages and reinforces this mock-slavery of ignorance, and uncontrolled support of it could be just as damaging as anything we do to our planet.

Which brings us to Earth; the place all humans call home. A place we pollute, poison, abuse, and mindlessly sacrifice in the name of profit and perpetual "growth". Our economy is driven by how much damage we do, and the worse we are, the more profitable it is. The economy may be in a bad shape, but if the economy is "fixed" in a way to reinforce current standards, the planet will be in a much worse position than it is today.

The biggest net we have is this planet, and it must be the one we protect the most fervently. What is the straw that broke the camels back? The last one, obviously, but it wouldn't have if there weren't thousands of precursors. Similarly, what is the act that will destroy the planet? The last one, obviously, but it won't happen if there aren't thousands of precursors.

Perhaps Barack Obama will be a restrained and just President, but something tells me he won't take the hard step and truly save our country from its own self-inflicted demise. But then again, neither candidate promised that. Yes, I am happy Obama won, but because it could be a step away from the fascist patterns embodied in the Bush Presidency. These patterns have been preluded by at least a century of American Presidents, both Republican and Democrat, and I will need to see something dramatically different before I believe Obama will change the path we are on.