So yesterday I made a pretty passionate post about the treatment of Ron Paul and his delegates at the RNC, and the extraordinary lengths the Republican establishment took to disenfranchise him. I went as far as saying I would cast my vote for Obama in November if the absurdity didn’t get some real attention from the VIP’s of the current Republican party. Hindsight being 20/20, I’ll admit I couldn’t in good conscience cast a vote for the current President’s re-election bid. That left me to question though – what is there for an American like myself to do?
I can stand beside the current Republican platform in its entirety, I’m a lifelong Conservative like my father before me. I’m not sure where my grandparents stood on political issues, they weren’t alive to tell me. On my father’s side, his parents died comparatively young – he grew up in an orphanage – and stepped out into the world with a fierce work ethic, and a belief that anything was possible, anything was achievable, as long as you worked hard enough to earn it. That’s the biggest thing I took away from growing up in my family. Anything was possible if you were willing to work hard enough to achieve it.
There is never going to be a perfect President. They will always have flaws. As far gone as our country has become, its constant shift from Left to Right and back again has kept us moving forward while the people stand back and watch. Some of us get involved, devoting our time and effort into a specific candidate or ideaology, putting all of our hopes and dreams onto the shoulders of one person that isn’t ourselves, and then have the audacity to write them off when they couldn’t do what we were not willing to do ourselves.
It’s easy to redirect our hopes and dreams on another… to mistakenly shed the weight of our world onto their shoulders and cry foul when they don’t live up to expectations. The current administration strolled into power on a wave of hope, change, and empty promises to a society that has put more value in instant gratification than in the value of hard work and its rewards. People are so hell bent on the promise of what could be – that they’ll willingly blind themselves to reality and vehemently defend the one who made the promise instead of getting off their fat, lazy, self-entitled asses and fulfilling the promise themselves.
With 23 million Americans out of work, is it Obama’s fault? No, I don’t blame him in the least. While his policies and ideas fall astonishingly short when it comes to inspiring our society, and make achieving the American dream more difficult for everyone – there are nearly 300 million other Americans who are still working to achieve that dream despite the failings of our elected leaders. Yes, there is an official ‘8.4%’ unemployment rate which doesn’t account for the so called ‘underemployed’ or those who have simply stopped looking for work… but that also means that at least 90% of us are fully employed, and moving forward despite the action or inaction of our Government.
One of the big campaign slogans of the day is a question… “Are you better off today than you were 4 years ago?”
Truth be told, I am. Sure, I’m in debt up to my ears. Sure, I’m in the middle of a divorce. But I’m a homeowner, drive a 3 year old car, have a full time job that pays my bills, and most importantly a work ethic that has taught me the value of earning what I have, and what I want, without expecting someone else to give it to me. There are no cheat codes in life like in a video game. I can’t wave my hands in the air and immediately wipe out my debt, or increase the value of my bank account. I have to work for it. If some blessing comes along the way – I don’t stop to think that it happened because of some government program, or because some politician kept a promise to cut my taxes… I stop to thank a higher power – God if you will – for letting me live in a place that despite so much hardship still allows me the opportunity to succeed and improve my lot in life if I am willing to do whatever is necessary to make it happen.
I don’t look to Government for solutions or answers. I look to Government to keep the bad guys from taking my ass out when I’m in my office, flying, driving, or just walking down the street. I look to my government to for no purpose other than to protect the freedoms granted to me by a higher authority. Our Government, for as long as it has been in existence, has never gotten smaller. It has never taken less. It has grown to its current size and weight, built up such an astonishing amount of debt, limited our freedom, taken actions which inhibit (but not eliminate) our ability to work and earn and achieve our dreams – because we let it. I don’t know when the shift took place, maybe it has been this way all along, but it started somewhere… Someone, somewhere thought that there was a shortcut, a cheat code, a way to cut a few corners to make their dream come true… and that my friends began a near viral infection of the idea that Government is the highest authority in the land and it – not ourselves – is solely responsible for whether we sink or swim in this life of ours.
Things are the way they are, not because of the Government, not because of Barack Obama and his gaggle of elitist peckerheads, its because of us. It’s because we have collectively forgotten that our destiny is decided by the choices we make and the actions we take. There’s nobody to blame for the current state of our nation other than ourselves. No one American can right the course of our country if we aren’t willing to stand up and do it ourselves. We have just as much opportunity to hand our freedoms over to an all powerful bureaucracy as we have to stand up and take them back.
Lets say for a minute that all Republicans are racist, woman hating, close minded bible thumping idiots and all Democrats are lazy, drug addicted, homosexual Communists. Good, now that we’ve gotten that out of the way…
What the fuck are YOU going to do with YOUR life? It’s time to shit or get off the pot people. Make the first thought you have when you wake up in the morning “What can I do to make today MY day?” You do that, and you take the actions necessary to make any day YOUR day, and you’ll see that there are more important things in life than waiting for your life to start. Make it happen. No Democrat or Republican can stand in your way if you don’t let them. No government can stand in your way if you don’t let it. There are 23 million reasons in this country to get of your ass, and unless you want to be number 23,000,001 – today is a good day to start.
I’m going to vote for Romney and Ryan – because when it comes to those 23,000,000 reasons to get off your ass, I think they’re going to be the ones that can put enough foot to ass so that maybe enough people will only need 1 reason… themselves.
