I'll tell you what I'm fed up with.

THE pretensions of SOME of my generation.  Jake recently asked me why I voted the way I did, and I decided to give him as honest an answer as I could (If I hadn't I would've sounded rather foolish I suspect).  I told him that the only issues I felt I had the authority to speak to were the ones that I can ground in Biblical truths.  Namely, infanticide.  There are plenty of social liberals and neo-classical liberals (I am currently not using the word liberal without qualifying it, or the word conservative at all.) that could convince me that either side was right on pretty much any issue.  The truth is I don't know a thing about economics.  Some say the government shouldn't spend money it shouldn't have, but the most influential economist...ever, John Maynard Keynes, says that massive deficit spending is an absolute necessity during economic down times if you desire a stable economy in a capitalist society.  I hardly know enough about how things work to pick a side.  Some people say that the government could hand over all of its responsibilities except national defense to the private sector and we'd be better off, and other people say the government needs to gain more control over things than it already has.  I don't really know which way is better.  They both sound right when I read their stuff.  Whether there's any hope of effectively democratizing Iraq and Afghanistan?  I certainly haven't a clue.  I'm becoming more and more cynical about politics the more I see of it.  People are so convinced they are right one way or the other.  Shouts against undue partisanship (as if it were inherently a bad thing...) coming from the bitterest of partisans.  Press conferences where politicians try and spoon feed Americans what they think they need to know to make an informed decision.  Goodness gracious, as far as I can see, to make a truly informed decision about your vote you need degrees in economics and comparative politics (might be some subconscious desire to be informed that I'm studying what I'm studying, or at least planning to study).  There is no way anyone is going to have a clue what they are talking about by reading all of the newspapers in the world or watching the news 24 hours a day.  They don't tell you anything but the very surface of a deep ocean of complexities.  One way or another you are trusting a member of the elite class to be right and do your thinking for you, based on a picture that he's painted for you revealing only as much as he wants, or thinks you can handle.  That's apparently worked the last 250 years.  Those genius people with all the money and all the power have created a pretty dang successful nation, and right now I'm inclined to let them keep making the decisions.  Goodness gracious, don't get fed up with the punks in Washington when you have no idea what you are talking about yourself.  I WANT someone thinking on their own and making the decisions they feel are right in Washington.  I certainly don't want someone representing what I think.  That would be disastrous.  I want my representatives doing what they feel is best based on their educated judgment.  I do not want them listening to me.

And goodness gracious Glenn Beck.  The founders were NOT democratic.  They had the knowledge and the power.  They knew how to use it.  They kept the people at arms length.  They knew the peoples political uses and they were few.  All that we the people stuff?  Stirring early American political rhetoric used to rally the troops around a cause they couldn't know less about.  They directed the peoples anger towards a King who had very little control over what happened in his Kingdom and promised that life would be better for them after word.  And it was, no doubt eventually.  But not because of the people or democracy.

Let me qualify myself even more.  I love free speech, and I love everyone voting.  I love democracy in America.  I don't think that should change.  But I think everyone needs to do a lot more listening than they do talking.  The people in 2010 are generally more educated, if less efficate, than they were in 1776.  But I hesitate to say we are educated enough.  Voting and speaking and being active in politics is good, it increases that level of knowledge I think.  Learning by doing.  So perhaps I'm contradicting myself here.  Maybe this is just me being fed up with the stupid people of the world, who are incapable or unwilling to be educated.  I don't think I'm contradicting myself too much...I just want people to shut up and just listen for once...I also want politicians to talk about more than surface gunk.  I think Americans are capable of understanding if you give them the chance.  But we don't get that chance because all the leaders on both sides don't tell you anything more than which box to check, for no substantive reason.

I want to be informed, sure.  I'm working on it.  I'm not suggesting that people stay out of politics.  I think it's a great thing to participate in public life.  Makes you a better person.  But I'd prefer if the uneducated masses did so quietly.  Understand, truly understand how things work before they open their mouths.

Like I said earlier, I vote republican because they are the only people who I can vote for and have any hope of infanticide being made illegal in my country.  That's an issue of social justice that is clearly spoken to in the Bible right there in the ten commandments.  Do not murder.

Maybe I'm speaking rashly.  Probably.  Just a little frustrated currently.

*Earlier I said something about getting a degree in whatever you wanted to be informed about.  I'm not saying that has to be necessary, but a lot of the time it is because that's the only way you are going to acquire that information.  Because those in power aren't going to tell you.  They like they're power (and like I said earlier, have generally managed things pretty well the past 250 years).  The news isn't going to tell you.  I dunno maybe the press secretly works for all those power people.  You can get informed without literally going to school. But it's much harder and requires a lot more than listening to the press or whatever politicians have to say.

*I use the word politician in two ways I think.  One way I use it is as a steward of power, the other a manipulator of it.  Contextually I hope you can understand when I'm using which.  I'm not a fan of the negative stigma surrounding politics in general.  Some of its bad, but I hope that most of it can be noble.

**please also note that this is a place where I publish my unpolished thoughts that I have just worked and am not even truly sure if I truly think.  They are gut reactions.  Shots from the hip.

In America...change comes slowly...if it comes at all...and that's just dandy.  Mostly.