Focus...

When I was told that for my first college class I would have no tests and no essays, I got pretty excited. Upon being told that most of the writing we were going to be doing for a Writing 121 class was going to be on a blog on a subject of our own choosing, I got even more excited. Then the reality hit me that I had no experience choosing a topic for my writing that would lead me to make a compelling point, and my excitement quickly turned to familiar school-related anxiety.

From the beginning, I knew one thing about my topic: I wanted it to be bigger than myself and my interests. If you like blues music, nature, and skateboarding, add me on Facebook. This, unlike the aforementioned private personal profile, is posted publicly on the internet for the whole world to read if they so choose. I didn’t want yet another reason for the world to think that all of the youth of today are self-absorbed and ignorant. Though I don’t consider myself either of these things, I felt I didn’t know enough about the world, and isn’t that what college is all about? I don’t say this to insult anyone who chose to write their topic on a specific interest instead of social issues, scientific breakthroughs, or historic events; meaningful metacognition and philosophic epiphanies can be manifested through any medium, as long as you’re thinking.

To choose my topic I began thinking about all the things I had been hearing lately, whether it be from various forms of media or through conversation with other people. I've been noticing a discomfort in the balance of power between ordinary citizens and the public officials that we have elected; a disdain for those given authority even though we were the ones who allowed them to be put into that position. Whether it's because they have let us down in what we thought would be accomplished by electing them or they had a different agenda in mind that we fear might actually be set into motion. Whatever the case may be, people are worried.

What happens when people in a democracy lose trust and faith in the people they elect? Or even worse, what happens when people find fault in a leader who wasn't elected but rather forced their way into a position of power, or never trusted this person in their public quest for personal gain in the first place? In essence, I'm wondering how people are affected when a sense of distrust in the governing bodies of a nation comes about, especially when a way of life is forced upon a group of people by someone whom they never wanted to have that much control over their lives. I could begin answering this question in too many different ways to, so where do I begin?

How does it impact people when they are given a leader that they do not have faith in? What about when they lose faith in someone that they once decided would be the best person for the job? Do they lose their sense of community and nationality, or can they still have trust in their neighbors and just question those people that they don't know? Will people being given a leader that they don't want cause them to have a general sense of weary towards mankind as a whole, or will they find people who hold the same values to the same degree of importance as they do just to reassure themselves that they aren't the only ones? What about when they are right in fearing their leader, or rather conqueror or dictator, when their rights and freedoms are stripped away and their cultures begin to slowly fade? It seems that my question has only raised infinitely more questions, ones that might be answered by imaginary scenarios and how people think they would react, but could be answered much more thoroughly by looking at history and the very real effects of people who had lack of faith in their leaders, with or without good reason. History provides many fine examples of the tragic and, alternatively, inspiring situations that can result when a large percentage of people are governed by someone they don't believe in. So again I ask where to begin?

I've decided that in each post on this blog, I will focus on a different place on earth and time in history, including modern times, when the people's distrust in their governing bodies was in obvious display and in full force. With each post, I'll describe the conflict and the causes that it arose from and examine them to find some sort of parallels in my life.

As an 18 year old Caucasian American male, I have experienced little to no political strife or unjust persecution in my life thus far. That said, I wouldn’t be surprised by someone questioning my choice in topic. Why would someone who has never been personally subjugated to persecution, or even any relative degree of unfairness, by the government be so concerned with people who have? Simply put, I hope to maintain this status as a free thinking individual. By looking at the ways that others have gained this right is a good way to learn how to keep myself from one day losing it.

On top of wanting to maintain my rights to think and question, I’d like to discover a little more about what causes people like me to be so skeptical when someone tells us something, especially when it comes from someone that we really don’t have any reason to trust, like politicians for example. I don’t believe most people when they tell me what the weather will be like on any given day, much less whether or not there are weapons of mass destruction in the hands of people who intend to use them against me. And most of the time, I personally know the people who I ask about the weather.

I don’t mean to pick on any particular politician in our country; I like to believe that at least half of them were hopeful college students hoping to make a difference in the world for the better at one point or another, based on whatever morals they had at the time. However, the fact that for the most part they identify with one of two parties causes me to find fault in the political system in our country today, and really how it’s been since the beginning of our nation. Certainly each politician’s personal views are more specific than the labels “democrat” and “republican” can communicate. Sure these labels can make voting a less stressful task for some; they vote for the person who identifies with the same party as they do. However, I believe that voting shouldn’t be a stressful task in the first place. I’d much rather take the time to learn about the person I cast my vote for and make sure that we feel the same about as many issues as possible than have to fight against whoever we elect if every American adult went into the voting booth with no clue what any of the issues were, or even what the parties stood for. This is why I have trouble placing my trust in any politician who doesn’t recognize this fault, not to mention the seemingly justified opinion that the bipartisan system seems to create stagnation in our government, especially in Congress.

Up until now this sounds an awful lot like an opinion-based, idealistic and pessimistic rant. Though that sort of writing can be entertaining and often times effectively drive home your point, I like to think that my opinions are based in fact, at least the ones I share with a public audience in a forum that is based in education. To demonstrate this I’d like to share a few statistics that give my ideas a little credibility.

Let’s start out with the “leader of the free world”, our current president Barack Obama. I wasn’t incredibly surprised to find out that his most recent approval rating is just 43%, while 51% disapprove and the remaining 6% either were undecided or didn’t respond. If we compare this to our former president, George W. Bush, we find that in this time in 2005, which means he was in office the same amount of time into his presidency that Barack Obama is currently into his, we find that his approval rating was 39%, with 57% disapproving and 3% failing to respond definitively or at all. These numbers were just as expected. Yes, they have debatably the hardest job in the world, but if your work was approved only 43 or 39 percent of the time, you’d be fired. Now some might say that people will disapprove of a president that isn’t part of their political party 10 out of 10 times, but even still that leaves a large group of people who disapprove of their president even when their political affiliations are the same. So should these people be concerned about the fact that over half the population of our country disapproves of them, and if they aren’t is there anything we can do about it? I’d say yes and yes, but will leave it at that in order to avoid more opinions about what I think could be done. I’ll get back to the numbers.

The statistics I found shocking were those relating to the highest legislative body in our country, the U.S. Senate. Currently, our senate has an astonishing 5% approval rate, with an 83% disapproval rating. Upon further investigation, I was a little less surprised by these numbers when I found out how little Congress actually does. From 1999 to 2010, a total of 2657 total bills were passed by Congress. This number seems high, but considering it averages out to be about 5% of the total bills, it doesn’t seem like they are doing much for us to approve of.

I think most Americans would agree that our public officials should be working together for the good of the citizens of our nation and the world, especially those who can’t help themselves, as long as these citizens don’t believe that harming others is going to bring them any fortune. I believe that eventually the goal would to be having the government play little to no role in our lives, allowing the citizens of the world to rationally and peacefully solve our differences, as if the government is our parents and we are children waiting to grow up. However, some people will always be corrupt, and so having some system there to put these people in check is for the greater good. Instead, what I see in our government is people split into two groups arguing amongst themselves over issues that are only pertinent to a percentage of people. Yes, these issues should be resolved, but not by arguing about the morals behind the issues from two different sides while not actually working toward a mutually beneficial solution. A football game has teams; a nation should be united if anything worthwhile is going to be accomplished. For all of these reasons, I’ve chosen to examine what happens when people lose trust in those who govern them, for it seems that we are moving closer and closer to the possibility of history repeating itself as a greater percentage of Americans come to realize that our government is not doing what it should be.

As a final thought on the state of our current political situation and, in effect, the final thought of this entry of my blog, we cannot claim to be the moral standard and the greatest country on earth at the same time; a truly great and moral nation would understand that we individually, and therefore we as a whole, are part virtue and part vice. Our nationalistic ego is much too large for us to be anywhere close to the greatest nation on earth, for it keeps us blind to the possibility of expanding our virtues and eliminating the vices. Any nation that believes it is the greatest nation on earth is in reality far from it.

Bibliography

Peters, Gerhard. "Presidential Popularity Over Time." Presidential Popularity Over Time. The American Presidency Project, n.d. Web. 14 Oct. 2013.

Tauberer, Joshua. "Kill Bill: How Many Bills Are There? How Many Are Enacted? : GovTrack.us Blog." GovTrackus Blog RSS. GovTrack.us, 4 Aug. 2011. Web. 14 Oct. 2013.

Richinick, Michelle. "Congress Approval Rating Plummets To 5%." MSNBC. MSNBC, 9 Oct. 2013. Web. 15 Oct. 2013.