Watching Fox News one will quickly learn that the blame for the government shutdown falls squarely on Harry Reid, the Senate and President Barack Obama. Change the channel to MSNBC or CNN, and it becomes evident that John Boehner, Ted Cruz and the House of Representatives are the cause of the shutdown. Who does the blame really fall on?
Us. We the people. The citizens that only really care about politics while blogging or blasting out tweets. The people who really only get active in the political debate during election seasons. The people who vote almost exclusively along party lines, very rarely listening to what candidates actually say nor the actual substance of their political views. In the age of a 24 hour news cycle that does nothing to hide partisanship, we turn to talking heads on TV and radio to tell us what to think.
Look at most Twitter arguments. They generally consist of 140 character blurbs paraphrasing the words of talking heads on the cable news networks. Self described conservatives parrot the likes of Sean Hannity, Sarah Palin, Mark Levin, Glenn Beck, Eric Bolling, et al. Self described Progressives/Liberals use the words of Chris Matthews, Rachel Maddow, Ed Shultz, Al Sharpton, etc, etc. Very rarely do people espouse their own opinions or views in their OWN words.
We let the pundits spoon feed us "our" opinions and vote for who they tell us we should. These people are trying to draw an audience, which I applaud! It is hard, however, to draw viewers in with moderate, common sense views. So these folks do what pays the bills and take a hard right/left approach with commentary. They dangle that politically charged carrot right in front of us and boy, do we run as hard as we can to eat it.
Any time a Republic lawmaker takes a moderate approach to an issue, that lawmaker is branded a RINO. A Democrat voicing a moderate thought on an issue is a DINO. No one ever takes a second to listen to what those lawmakers are actually saying and think about whether or not it actually makes sense. The moderate approaches of people like John Mccain (one of the greatest men to ever be a senator), John Boehner (until recently), Ted Poe and others are blasted by those self proclaimed conservatives as "caving to the progressives!" Someone like Joe Manchin, Tom Carper, etc are accused of catering to the Tea Party.
We instead let the talking heads convince us the extreme partisan views of people like Ted Cruz, Michelle Bachmann, Sarah Palin, Nancy Pelosi, Harry Reid, Debbie Wasserman-Shultz and so on and so on are the only solutions to our problems. If you think about it, it is really sad.
We are never going to support every position of ever politician in every instance. We must, however, stop letting the talking heads stop telling us what to think! If Ronald Reagan where to see the GOP of today, he would be pissed. If FDR where the President, he would tell the Democratic party to get their crap together. And if the the Founding Fathers could see what has become of political discourse today, I think they would kick some ass in a bipartisan manner.
How do we fix it? We get involved. We right/call/email our elected officials. We listen to what they say. Observe how they vote on issues. And if what they are doing isn't making sense, we don't re-elect them. We show the talking heads that the average American isn't hard right/left. We are somewhere closer to the center. We vote for people who don't just talk the latest party tags, but people who do what is truly better for their constituents. We stop voting for people who go to Washington just to go their and gain national attention, but those who listen to the people they represent! Until then, politicians are going to keep playing tug-o-war and someday, that rope will break.
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It has been a while since I blogged. I was taking a break from political blogging and news to refresh. I am now going to get back into the swing of things. Please feel free to follow me. Leave comments and lets get engaged in a real conversation.
-The Independent Thinker
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