Changing The Way Things Run

I think it is important and beneficial for all people to be concerned or at least skeptical of our government, and participate in our democracy the way it was intended. Personally, I find issue in many parts of today's government. First of all, although I am not old enough to really confirm this, it seems through what I read and hear about history, that today's government is less efficient, and less bold as it once was. The political landscape seems so divided, that nothing is of sufficient size is ever passed, and the things that do get passed are so dumbed down, and full of special interests that they do not produce any significant change.

Other things have changed as well, such as media, and public image. I believe that the public image of government has shifted from that more or less of respect, to distaste. It seems that in the past, while many were very vocal about their disapproval of the administrations policy, there was still a certain respect for your president. This change has a lot to do with the media, specifically during the Clinton administration.

Somewhere along the road, between the affair, the growing size of the internet, and 24 hour TV cable news, the media began to mock the government, and make personal attacks. This only continued, and grew during the Bush administration, and during the 2008 elections, Obama was accused of being muslim, a terrorist, etc. Even fellow, ELECTED politicians are beginning to act childish, such as Joe Wilson shouting "YOU LIE" on national TV during a joint session of congress. Besides, there is nothing wrong with being a muslim in America. This is not to say all politicians are like this, there are still many respectful, and intelligent people in Washington. One of those people is John McCain. He can frequently be seen on TV giving his support, and wishing the president luck, while many others are hoping that he fails. Additionally, he often decides not to comment on issues of which he is not very familiar with, or has not been briefed on. You can tell that he is there for the people, and not himself.

Although we constantly blame, and often rely on the government to solve all of our problems, many of our problems are problems we can solve as a society, and that is where I feel the real fault lies. There are frequent reports of things we can do, that will often solve our own problems, many of which you can simply look online for. For example "If everyone in the U.S. used energy efficient lighting, we could retire 90 medium sized power plants". However, how many people actually do that? The current recession was not the governments fault, it was our bad decisions that got us into this mess. Everyone from the big time executives, to the people who bought the house they couldn't afford. We should be taking responsibility, and doing whatever we can to fix this problem. What happened to "ask not what your country can do for you, but what you can do for your country" This is something I do not expect to happen anything soon however. Many people are stubborn, ignorant, and borderline careless. I saw an ad in the paper today, it said "Lost Shotgun, please call if found". How do you lose a shotgun?