Sure, I watched the debate last week, and I was taken aback for the 20 seconds where I heard one of them start to answer the question they were given. The only reason I watched the debate is so that Saturday Night Live is funny.
The point is: When will politicians start answering questions? Why is a bail out needed? Here is my attempt: because without the bail out, credit is hard to come by which is necessary for businesses to do a lot of their business and some times all of it. Therefore, if they can't get a loan, then they can't do business, then some people are going to lose their jobs. I think that's pretty accurate, and yet, I only heard part of that answer in the debate. When I ask a question, and you answer a different question, you're telling me that my question was stupid, and I'm not smart enough to know what to focus on. So as I see it, these two politicians are telling me that I'm an idiot. If I'm asking the question, it is because I expect an answer. So what can you do about it? I don't know, but I can tell you what I'm going to do about it.
I'm not voting this year just like four years ago. I'm not voting until politicians stop answering questions I didn't ask. I'm not encouraging anyone else not to vote, and I was about to vote in this election. I was told it was important, and I was going to vote for a third party even though I know that's basically wasting my vote. I'm enslaved to one of two parties who are mostly the same.
As Lewis Black says, you have the republicans on one side who say, "We have a really bad idea", and the democrats on the other side who say, "And we can make it worse!" Thank God for George Carlin on voting: "You may have noticed that there's one thing I don't complain about: Politicians. Everybody complains about politicians. Everybody says, 'They suck.'
But where do people think these politicians come from? They don't fall out of the sky. They don't pass through a membrane from another reality. No, they come from American homes, American families, American schools, American churches, American businesses and they're elected by American voters. This is the best we can do, folks. It's what our system produces: Garbage in, garbage out. ....
I have solved this political dilemma in a very direct way: I don't vote. On Election Day, I stay home. I firmly believe that if you vote, you have no right to complain. Now, some people like to twist that around. They say, "If you don't vote, you have no right to complain," but where's the logic in that? If you vote, and you elect dishonest, incompetent politicians, and they get into office and screw everything up, you are responsible for what they have done. You voted them in. You caused the problem. You have no right to complain.
I, on the other hand, who did not vote - who did not even leave the house on Election Day - am in no way responsible for that these politicians have done and have every right to complain about the mess that you created.
Robert McKeon
grad student
off campus
Oct. 8
