I can’t tell if we are evolving as a species… moving forward, developing, getting smarter, becoming more enlightened, however you want to look at… or whether we are going the other direction. I have noticed that as the world changes in some positive ways, it seems to make white people nervous and more reactionary. The ones who are already conservative become more so, the ones who are already religiously fundamental become more fundamental… accent on the ‘mental’.
What I heard on the radio was a poll taken of thousands of young people in America. Some of the answers to the questions did not surprise me at all. Some of them sort of scared me.
The thing is that most media and news makes it sound as if we are actually making great strides towards becoming more caring about our fellow man. We just seem, on the face of it, to be a little more open-minded and laid-back about things.
Take the whole ‘gay marriage’/’treating gay people fairly in all respects as valued members of society’ thing. The polls I have heard about all reflect a trend towards acceptance. The only reason we don’t have actual equality for gays is that most of the lawmakers are still old white guys.
So this poll said, and I was delighted and not shocked to hear it, that more than half of young people want a democrat to become the next president. But then they had to go and qualify that by saying that this is only true if you take all the young people’s answers together as a whole. What scared me was the fact that it turns out that slightly more than half of young white people want a republican in that office. So the young white people, who presumably all want jobs at some point, want us to go back to the days of a destroyed economy where rich people are doing just fine, but everybody else is screwed.
But what really scared me was that the poll revealed that more than half of all young people… not just the white ones… think America needs a more ‘hands-on’ foreign policy. They think we should put troops on the ground to fight ISIS. Uh, hello, young people… you know who fills those ‘boots on the ground?’ Young people, that’s who. Those boots are mostly filled with young feet.
Hey, I don’t pretend to know what this all means. I just know that it made me nervous enough to do a post about. I don’t have answers. I just think that maybe we should at least be asking some questions. We are living in confusing times and perhaps we ought to talk about stuff.
Pouring My Art Out 
I find as a I get older I am more & more often listening to newsy type stations on radio & TV rather than music & I am thinking more & more about what they are saying & how people are feeling/acting in this world. It is distressing.
me too… and then I pop in my mix CDs and rock out…
Oh man, that whole ISIS thing scares the crap out of me. Do these young’uns understand the basics of what is happening there? The Shia Muslims are majority in Iraq and Iran. Hussein was a Sunni and killed thousands of Shia simply because they were Shia. Because the majority are Shia, America installed a Shia President, who, in turn picked mostly Shia government officials. They started an undeclared war on Sunnis because of past atrocities – getting even for what Saddam did. If you live in Iraq and are a Sunni – you are as good as dead (and maybe even tortured) for no other reason than you are Sunni. Wellllll, it turns out that there are a slew of Sunni military people from Saddam’s regime who are now unemployed and in fear of their lives. So, they gathered together to make a Sunni militia. And they got so much support from other Sunni regimes and Sunni wealthy and disaffected Sunnis from the region, that they grew into basically a disenfranchised country very quickly. So they called themselves ISIS and have set about killing all the Shia they can find. And because the Americans upset the balance by installing a Shia President who is now slaughtering all the Sunnis he can find (with American weapons, no less)- ISIS is after Americans too. The hatred is palpable between the Shia government and the Sunni ISIS and both are acting terrible. Both are killing indiscriminately and thousands of innocents are dying. America is only bombing ISIS because America is supporting the Shia government they installed. Under other circumstances, it could easily be the rebels who are being shot on sight who would receive the largess of the mos militarily powerful country on the world.
That whole situation over there is F**KED UP. Each side is slaughtering the other side with vigor. And which side you are on has nothing to do with what kind of a person you are – it has only to do with what group you were born into. The whole “kill ISIS” line being preached by the Western world is just covering their own asses for the choices they made in the past by supporting the Shia. Neither side is sane and it is getting worse as more and more people are joining because someone they knew who was innocent was killed by the other side. Sooner or later everyone will either be solidly aligned with one side or the other or they will be dead. There is no middle ground and there is no “good guy” or as the Bible says – “The blood of the innocent cries out from the earth.”
It is hard to see how sending American teenagers into that mix is going to make it any better.
“…want us to go back to the days of a destroyed economy where rich people are doing just fine, but everybody else is screwed.” That sounds a bit like right now…it’s too simple to put it all on one party. It’s like judging a book by the cover. The Democrats are mostly old white guys too.
True, but it is hard to argue with the fact that the economy does better under the democrats.
Unintentionally funny there. But I guess I can’t argue here…because I hate politics.
me too…
I wish there was a love button instead of a like button.
Okay… that would be sort of awesome…
Very scary times. Is this what our parents said about our youth?
We had problems of our own, I guess.
Hey man, is that not what you’re doing talking about it…
Perhapse the baby boom young, have the right idea…
Anyway i all for seeing Obama, running for a third term…..
we don’t really let them do that very often
We don’t?
nope
where was i driving
who knows
ifinn you don’t and i don’t, best not be behind the wheel….
word
look out below
I always do
Watch your head
in a mirror
crack squirrels are dropping rocks
more or less
always more
not always
What do you mean not always?
Are we meaning stuff now?
Well maybe?
scary thought
Scary like in Halloween?
kinda like
I think young people just care about politics less than older people do (election turnout is the proof), so they’re probably more likely to think that if the things are somewhat bad under one party, electing the other party would improve things.
that is putting a positive spin on it.