The Uninformed Generation? Let's Have a Look...

Hello folks and welcome back.

Given the feedback, I seem to have gotten a lot of people "all fired up" by my first entry. To those who were put off by my grammatical errors, I apologize for the lack of editing—the blog was written in the heat of the moment; I was not expecting it to get posted on reddit. I am not, however, sorry for any of the implications put forth in said rant: I meant what I said about my generation lacking the drive to get out and vote.

I hope this current entry will stir up those of you who seem to think that our generation is uninformed and therefore should not vote.

To recap, I stated in my last blog that our generation needs to get off the couch—or that swivel chair at the office—and take a few minutes to vote on Election Day, February 5^th. Thousands of people read it and, despite the obvious partisan squabbling, there was a relatively positive response. However, some readers responded by accusing our generation as being "less informed" than our elders. That's a load of crap.

I will not be citing any statistics or try to be academic about this when I say that our generation is the best informed of any generation this country has known. The fact is, we are plugged into more sources of information (accurate or inaccurate) than anyone has been before. We're the "online generation", and until the next generation of voters comes along, we will have no competition when it comes to access to information. The fact that not all of us pay attention to current events is a moot point for several reasons.

Should uninformed people stay home on Election Day? That would make this country far less democratic. We might as well return to the days of the Roman Republic. Even if one concedes that we live in a time when most of the population is uninformed and that there are limits to the amount we can know about the decision makers who "represent" us, we all have instincts. If older folks are utilizing their instincts and uninformed opinions as tools for choosing leaders, why shouldn't we? I'm not advocating being uniformed, but lets deal with one problem at a time here; it's time for us to get out there and vote.

Most older folks get their news from TV; they have access to fewer sources and what news they get has been passed through more filters. Their information is inferior in many ways to our own. We read articles from around the world; we view video footage of material that the TV networks don't care to show. We are unfiltered. Every generation has its uninformed voters. The problem remains the same: We don't Vote. Why? Maybe it's our lack of civic education or something less obvious—it just isn't a part of our identity as Americans the way it was for previous generations. Given those two factors, do you want less informed members of our generation to sit at home on Election Day while uninformed folks from older generations go out and vote? Hell no.

If older people are the only ones whose opinions count in this country because they are "better" informed, how do you justify the reelection of President Bush? Older people just vote on blind instinct as much as young people would; the difference is they actually vote. Why presume their instinct is superior to our own?

So to sum things up; twenty-somethings are informed—probably more so than the previous generation. Older folks vote, whether they are informed or not—it's how they were brought up and part of their "American identity". We don't vote because we're lazy or we just don't think we can make a difference—it's not part of our identity or perhaps we don't have an "American identity". That's not acceptable. Tell your siblings and your classmates and your friends to GET OUT THE VOTE!

If You're Between 18 and 30, Read This...

Hello all you twenty somethings out there.

I have been working full time on the Obama campaign for the past month and witnessed the rollercoaster ride of Iowa, New Hampshire, and Nevada from inside the Massachusetts Campaign HQ. Today I finally had a chance to sit down and look at some stats about who is voting in the primaries and guess what? It's not you! You lazy, self serving piece-of-shit, get off your ass and vote. According to CNN, the 18-29 segment of the population represented a measly 13 percent of the voters in the democratic primary. I guess compared to the GOP us Dems are doing alright; only 11 percent of their voters were 20 somethings who took the time to punch a hole in a piece of cardstock; but you should be ashamed. During our lifetimes, we've witnessed some pathetic presidencies. In fact, from my limited first-hand political perspective, Bill Clinton looked tops! Compared to sleeper George HW and His predecessor "bury the nation in debt and get remembered as a great conservative" Ronald Reagan, Clinton sure did right the ship... so what if he had to sacrifice our nation's reputation as a humanitarian power and drag our welfare system back into the stone age to do it, he fixed things, improved our economy and generally made people less pissed off at the government. I won't even mention the idiot child who followed him into the Whitehouse because if you were born in the 80s and you don't despise what he's done to our democracy you might as well stop reading this now; I have nothing to say to you asshole.

So back to the task at hand, get someone who's not an entrenched politician, idiot, pushover, or dumbass elected to run the executive branch of our federal government, the way it was supposed to be run. And guess what, it's not going to be that hard. Our generation has already chosen a candidate... He's won us over because he's been unwavering in his opposition to the war in Iraq, he's as charismatic as folks come, and he's a brilliant organizer. Bedside’s he's just the most likeable of the candidates in the field (who's not opposed to birth control and/or biracial marriage). Let’s face it; he's a human in an arena of Neanderthals (no offense to the Geiko Cavemen).

So you're curious.... What's the difference here between this and all other elections? How could we twenty somethings possibly make an impact on the results of a national election? Try voting dumbass. You haven't done it since you turned 18 and it was "new" and "exciting". Guess what, your parents and grand parents do it every chance they can get. It's their favorite way to keep our generation in check, and they're well practiced at it. Do you seriously think that there are enough republican's our age to keep us down any longer? Sure they're out there; they're loud and obnoxious and they can piss you off at the drop of a hat, but they're dinosaurs; a dying breed. All we have to do is show up and they're done, buried, in the ground never to resurface. It's time for change. Get your ass off the swivel chair for half-an-hour on Feb 5th and go to your polling location. Vote, and then get back to your business. It's simple, and it's how change happens. Do it, or you'll piss yourself off when Mike Huckabee stands on the steps to the capital building with his hand on a bible and usher's in the neo-dark-ages---I hope your well versed in biblical chants cause you don't want to wind up being taught a lesson by the American Inquisition; I hear they were trained at Guantanamo Bay.