The Party is Over

Once upon a time there was a National Government. It was a nice Government. It represented all the people of the Nation. It established guidelines for all the people to live together and to get along.  It watched over its people and guided them. It protected them from their enemies. It provided a means for all of them to be happy and to achieve every goal in their lives.  It……………….Yeah right buddy, whatever you’re smoking, pass it this way.

It is incredibly easy to find all kinds of things wrong with our National Government today.  I do not have to point out our current government shutdown, or the battle of Obamacare. The constant struggle between Republicans and Democrats.  No one is surprised anymore by the budget deficit and many of you now have firsthand experience at the lack of employment opportunities available in this “Land of Opportunity.” 

We can blame it on this President, the last President, the President before him; Congress, the Democrats, no it was the Republicans. This war, that war, this scenario or that damn younger generation. Which is the exact same thing they said when I was the “that younger generation.”  Who is at fault or what is the cause of our current situation does not matter anymore. What matters is that we are here and we really want to be there. So how do get there from here.  Damn good question.

We have learned in the last few months that there might be a problem with our electoral system. The voting machines may not be as secure as we thought.  Our representative may not have our best interest at heart and the virtue they claim to have probably would not be recognized by Aristotle or Plato.  We have learned that our representatives are in a slightly higher tax bracket than most of us they represent. Okay, a lot higher tax bracket but I’m still hoping for the winning lotto ticket and no, I will not be contributing to your campaign program.  The point here is that we have learned. We now know what many of us kind of knew, heard about, but did not fully understand or just ignored because it made no sense at all and we just were not interested. 

But now we do know and we cannot ignore what is right in front of us.  It is not their problem anymore, it’s ours.  We cannot turn a blind eye and say we do not understand or it really does not affect me.  It does! It affects the very reason why you are striving so hard to earn your degree.  Your future, your job, your home, your security, and the life style you desire, all depends on how your Nation is governed. 

The system is not going to change itself.  Those that are in power are not going to wake up tomorrow and say, “I have way too damn much money and I need to give it to Professor Seago’s class and let them run my office.”  I have a better chance of winning the lotto than that happening.  When I first started this blog, I posted the following quote from Abraham Lincoln:

 “This country, with its institutions, belongs to the people who inhabit it. Whenever they shall grow weary of the existing government, they can exercise their constitutional right of amending it, or exercise their revolutionary right to overthrow it.”

I am not inciting a revolution here, but the time to be weary is upon us. The part about exercising our constitutional right, we need to exercise that right and we need to exercise it to the fullest extent.  We need to wake up and realize that what we want for our tomorrow requires our action today.  It is up to us.