9.13.2009

This is what I get for thinking

Warning: I'm about to go political.


I try not to pretend I know what I'm talking about when it comes to the state of America. I follow the news and form my own opinions. How trustworthy the opinions of a 16-year-old high school student is, I'm not sure. There just seems to be something wrong about the way we're handling things. It just seems nonsensical to me.


Friday was the eighth anniversary of 9/11. It's hard not to reflect when every flag in town is at half mast. I looked up the videos on Youtube of the news reports when the planes first hit. To say the footage was horrific would be an understatement. The reporters were stunned to silence. Words couldn't describe it. People soon turned from melancholy to anger. A tragedy unlike anything in American history had happened, and we wanted revenge.


We obviously handled it wrong, but that isn't what this post is about. It's about our perception of that day now, in 2009. I heard numerous times on Friday something along the lines of


"If only our country could be as united as it was the weeks after 9/11. That's when our country really knew what it was doing. Now we're divided."


I get the idea, but people were talking about it with nostalgia. Like those were the good old days. Partisanship is as bad now as it always has been, and it took a tragedy to make us realize that it just doesn't work. We're split in half. I wish I could have seen my face when I was watching Pres. Obama's speech to congress and hearing "You lie!" from Rep. Joe Wilson. Ridiculous. Disgraceful. And that isn't the worst part. The Republicans are embracing it. They're literally selling bumper stickers with "You lie" written on them. This isn't right. It's common sense.


I won't pretend like I have an answer. Obama needs to realize that he and the Democrats have majority in every major section of the White House and stop trying to play to bipartisanship. We can't have it. The Right simply won't let us. Dissenting opinions is one thing, but flat out anger isn't going to solve anything, especially as senseless as it has become.

They don't need reasons anymore. Glenn Beck will call the president a racist, a socialist, not an American citizen, a supporter of "Death Panels" and whatever else he wants. O'Reilly will yell at some senator about the decay of America and what a monstrosity this administration is. Rednecks will bring their high caliber rifles to Obama functions to show their belief in the second amendment. Crying extremists will scream about the end of the world at town hall meetings. These are obviously the kind of people who won't change their minds. Whatever he does, they'll make sure to dig in their vault of Obama fallacies and find something to charge him with. Fox News is, by far, the number 1 news station in America. These aren't the kind of people who want solutions. They want impeachment. And I think they know that all they're doing is ripping us apart. Hopefully it doesn't take another 9/11 to make them realize that we need to stick together now, more than ever.


4 comments:

  1. I think this is insightful, not just for a sixteen-year-old. (:

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  2. Thank you! It's good to know that someone is actually reading this haha

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  3. What we need is compromise, the willingness to work together, not just unification of thought. The latter's probably more dangerous than anything; that's what got us into the Iraq mess in the first place. Diversity of opinion is good; flipping the finger to the other side is not.

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