No Such Thing As A "Self-Made" Man?

I went and wrote another wordy thinkpiece on Facebook in response to a comic that someone was sharing. I figured I might as well repost it here for the sake of giving it a bit more permanence:

Just annoyed with people right now

For some reason, the Obama campaign shared this story on Facebook a little while ago. Apparently they expect it to be uplifting and inspiring. I just find it confounding and infuriating, and the comments are even worse. One guy states: "I know it's not much, but donating $5 [to the Obama campaign] made me feel really good about myself."

...Why?

Maybe I'm naive, but why do people who donated a few dollars to a political campaign say they feel good about themselves? They shouldn't. Really. The only way they should feel worse is if they donated more than a few dollars.

Even if you honestly believe that Obama is the best person for the job of the Presidency right now, answer this: how does that $5 help him win the election? It's not as if your vote is multiplied by the number of dollars you sent in. All you're paying for is more brain-dead political ads to bother me while I'm eating dinner. You're buying another bottle of seltzer for the clowns in the three-ring circus we call a political system. Metaphorically speaking, that is.

Here's a sad dose of reality for you: at this point in the race, anybody who hasn't made up their mind already is not going to be swayed by political advertising. Hence, you wasted your money.

And yet, scores of people feel good about the money they've thrown away on political campaigns. If you donated $5 to Obama's political campaign, or worse yet feel somehow moved by stories about working class people giving up a pizza dinner so they can instead give to the campaign, you should be ashamed of yourself. This comes straight from that letter to Obama: $15 could have bought that nice family a fun pizza dinner, fresh fruit, or helped pay for tickets to a show they could enjoy together. Instead, that money went to paying for the incompetent political machine that pesters me incessantly with its propaganda. That political machine, by the way, is in no danger of running out of money anytime soon either.

If you want to help Obama win so badly, then inform yourself about his policies and his opponents' policies, discuss the issues with friends and family, and help get the word out. Hell, you can have local rallies for him if you really want.

But some of you can't be bothered with all that, can you? Instead you just throw a couple dollars his way so you can feel like you did something good to make a difference. Throwing money at a problem is a stereotypical lazy American way to handle things, and it's a big part of the reason the world doesn't take us seriously. Can you blame them? Actions like this make us look positively pathetic.

Of course, all this is ignoring the fact that nobody even knows about the presidential candidates in other parties beyond the big two, and I've heard virtually no one place any emphasis on voting for their own representatives at the local and state levels, or even the people who are supposed to represent them in Congress, but those are glaring issues for another time.

When our people are more committed to obtaining the new iPhone than to making an informed choice about the people who control our government, it's time to throw our hands up and let England reclaim control of their former colony. Sure, they've been having a collective panic attack over Kate Middleton being photographed topless, so they aren't the picture of common sense right now either, but it's clear now that we really can't handle running a country any better than they can.

So, that's all I'll say for tonight. I apologize for the negative tone, but I really needed to get all of that off my chest. Hopefully I'll be in a better mood after the election season is over.

Peace and love, dear readers. Oh, and if you'd like support my own campaign to become future president of the United States, send me as little as $5 to express your support, as well as your sick sense of bizarre irony.

Re: America, F@#k yeah!

On my last rant post, I talked about moving to another country. I know that's probably not something that should be thrown around too lightly. To tell you the truth, I was in a pretty rotten mood that day to begin with.

Anyway, the way President Obama has been responding to criticism of the US approach to Iran and the healthcare reform plan the last few days, I think maybe we're going to be okay. Maybe it's silly, but it puts my mind at ease to know the most powerful man in our government has America's future at heart. The fundamentals of the economy might not be perfect, but the fundamentals of the American spirit haven't been shaken. I guess I was just a little too short-sighted to feel that way; national pride never was a big thing for me anyway. But then, pride in general never was. I'm kind of a pessimist, if you hadn't noticed.

To sum up, I guess I won't be buying that one-way ticket anytime soon. I'll probably bitch and moan quite a bit, but nothing so drastic as that. I know some people aren't fond of anti-America talk, but if anything it shows I'm still an American at heart. I don't sit back and accept crap from my government. They're supposed to represent me; I expect them all to take their jobs seriously. Right now, I trust Obama to take us in the right direction. Now, if our senators and governors would just follow suit...