TAG | president
I am so tired of reading Digg, Twitter, any website and seeing something about how Obama is evil or how Glen Beck is evil…blah blah blah.
It is all rhetoric, from both sides. We have a new president, with new politics and now the sides have flip-flopped. Before this most recent election, the left-wingers were cursing the president and his policies and accusing him of treason and now the right-wingers are doing the same to the current president.
Everyone just SHUT UP. Your radicalism gets you no where, except alienating any moderates that are left. I identify myself as a more conservative moderate, but on certain issues I am left-leaning. Now I can’t stand either side of aisle.
As I am one of a millionish bloggers that will be posting posts with the words “Obama” or “Inaguration” in them today, I am sure that my little blog is going to get lost in the flood. I decided to post anyways.
We have been privileged to witness a beautiful thing today: the peaceful transfer of power from one head of state to the next. While so many others are harping on President Obama’s race or how he is ‘hope for the future’, I take a more pragmatic and cynical approach to the affairs of the day. I believe he is a good man and I am sure he means well, but he is not going to be the instant band-aid so many in this nation want him to be. He is taking the helm of the foundering ship that is this nation and it is going to take some serious navigational skill and sacrifice on the part of the crew (us) to get back on a good course. Too many worship him as the savior of our nation…and he hasn’t done anything yet. Keep in mind that the President is just ONE part of our entire government, a governmental system that is fundamentally broken and corrupt.
While it is wonderful that we have broken the 43 person streak of white presidents and proven that as a general rule we as a people do believe in racial equality, I am worried about the racial backlash I am seeing day in and day out. Racism has shifted and now its not minorities that are being targeted, but the “majority”: White, heterosexual males. I don’t mean on a personal level, as there are still plenty of ignorant people in the world with hatred in their hearts, I mean on a governmental scale. I am a broke college student, made even more poor by the fact that I can’t seem to get any sort of assistance to go to school. I graduated with honors, got an almost perfect score on my ACTs and a 1450 on my SATs, and there just isn’t money for me. Yet, I see guys who have awful grades and don’t give a shit about going to class or school that have full or almost full rides. Oh, and they’re black (insert any other ‘minority’ here). There have been several occasions in my life where I have been slapped in the face by Affirmative Action. I’ve seen my father passed over for a job he coveted and was fully qualified for, for a less qualified candidate because the police department had to fill an Affirmative Action quotient. Just last night, a friend I met via twitter posted a blog entry about how he was denied a job at Starbucks because he wasn’t gay or a woman (http://www.int23.com/rants/houston-starbucks-practices-gender-discrimination/).
How does this relate to today’s events? Sadly, I am of the belief that Mr. Obama is our first Affirmative Action president. I’m sure that he has plenty of qualifications, but I question whether he was actually the best man for the job. Don’t get me wrong, I was no strong supporter of McCain either, but I was more sure of his qualifications to be PotUS then Obama’s.
Why is race such an issue in these modern times? I think it’s time for all of us to go color blind.
There will be another blog post either later tonight or tomorrow morning on my thoughts on the Inaguration ‘09 Circus.
