The State of Affairs

On the night that President Obama gave his first at least four State of the Union addresses, I figured I would welcome myself back to the blogosphere with a State of Worldly Affairs address of my own.

Let me be surely not the first to tell you that the state of affairs are not looking good. If you wagered bets that things would go from bad to worse in the past few years, you might be ok, but the rest of us are fumbling to pick ourselves up by our jockstraps, keep our American dreams alive, or at least keep the American nightmares away. Why did so much go wrong so quickly, when for a moment things seemed so good. We can blame many things for our current collapse, and to be honest I'm not sure who I am speaking to when I say "we," cause seriously, that could mean most everyone right now. What is important however is how we figure we will face the current set of dilemmas and how to proceed from here.

Let me tell you another thing, this will not happen riding the backs of the ignorant into the sunset. What do I mean by that? Well, we need to educate ourselves, educate people around us, and not just wait to be manipulated for the idiots that we are by people who may know better but decide its more efficient. Here is a good example: Sarah Palin. I'm not sure what your particular political affliations may be, quite frankly I don't care for such affiliations. But genuinely, from the bottom of my heart, I find Sarah Palin to be uninformed idiot. This is not harsh, this is not misspeaking. Everytime I hear her speak about anything of importance it reminds me of myself bullshitting through a physiology midterm without having studied for it at all. We can all spot an uninformed person when we see one cause we've all been there, right? Wrong. Wrong because too many Americans remain buffoon and uninformed and don't see the stupidity in Sarah Palin cause it is not necessarily distinguishable from their own stupidity and lack of know how.

Take exhibit A: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mKKKgua7wQk

For those who didn't watch this video, its interviews of Palin supporters at an Ohio Borders Book store for her new book Going Rogue. People are excited about Sarah Palin. They love her. They want to meet her. Here is the scary part: They want her to be the President of the United States.

Take a look at that last sentence. Let that sink in...

The Presidency is not something that should be taken lightly. No matter how short a stint a person may have in the White House, heavy damage can be done by some one who doesn't know what they are doing; even worse, someone who is being propped up by backers, some of whom we may not even be able to see. Look where the last puppet presidency got us. Since I brought up Palin, I found Matt Damon's pre-election take on Palin to be the best way to describe how exactly I feel about her: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=C6urw_PWHYk&feature=channel

There are a lot of people, good people, people with good intentions, who are just not smart enough to realize how little they actually know and remain ignorant. Sarah Palin is just a more current example of what I am saying, but this basically applies to most important matters these days from healthcare reform to foreign policy. People don't know about anything cause they don't learn about anything, either through choice or circumstance, either way its bad.

The state of affairs of America are poor, at best. The state of affairs of the whole world is a mess. In this time of toil and trouble, can we afford for people to be stupid? Government has become stupid because some of the people we elect are stupid. In a democracy, that makes us stupid. But after seeing videos like the one above, I sincerely believe that there is a strong number of Americans who are not intelligent enough to even be allowed to operate heavy machinery, and voting for government officials is the heaviest machine at out disposal. But thats just it...either we use it incorrectly or we dispose of it entirely.

People need be smart, and its their responsibility to realize when they are not smart. Its partly the governments perogative to provide the necessary means for people to treat their stupidity through resources such as funding for good, not subpar to adequate public eduction. Education in this country follows the money and where there is not a bounty of discretionary income for higher class education the government should supply the balance. When people are stupid, the people suffer, the government suffers in so far as it fails to provide for the betterment of its people, and the ailing system cycles itself.

I hate the liberal left in Washington, I have a lengthy list of reason, and I have longer list for the conservative right. I am a registered Republican (soon to be independent), supported Bush in 2000, supported Obama in 2008 (note the void of '04), supporting intelligence since 1988. People need to stop sipping the Washington moonshine, let themselves let go of the political machines on either side and figure a few things for ourselves. When our children fail, it reflects poorly on us, the parents. When our products fail, it reflects poorly on us, the designer. When our government fails, it reflects poorly on us, period. People do not need to be connected to a politcal party as much as parties want us to believe we do. I have always considered myself a Republican cause my family has been for as long back as I can remember and then some. This doesn't make sense to me now, because I can think. I do find many conservative points to be of great importance and significance. Liberals have some things right as well. But that is just my point. Lets not take sides: I am not leftward or rightward leaning. I consider myself a conservative pragmatist. Consider all aspects, consider real world application, consider compromise, and always err on the side of caution. This is not a political manifesto but a guide to intelligent progression in a problem solving schema. Its a smart way to apply ourselves to problems in our world and I think people should learn it, live by it.

We have problems, we have all got problems. Lets not make it worse by not realizing it, and then walking back in the wrong direction.