Reporting for my slap sir. (” I would like to *itch slap every single one of them.”)
In California I had no choice - I had to register either as a Dem or Rep in the Primaries.
Wise smart suggestion as to what I should do next please.
>>>I have noticed in my lifetime that the population seems to be getting dumber by the decade. When I engage people in conversations, it seems that the average person knows less and less. What is wrong here I ask myself? Am I brighter or does it seem that every other person seems really dumb? These are the people who push the “D” button every election. Have any of you out there who have been around for more than 4 decades noticed this? I’m serious about the next question. Do most Americans really even deserve to live in this country? It is a brutal question to be sure. But do they?<<<
I’m in the middle of my fifth decade. I also teach English at a local high school. On top of that, I’ve been keeping a journal since I was in junior high, so I have access to my little brain as it was way back in the day.
In answer to your questions, here are my opinions.
There’s a reason why the Founders decided that one of the two qualifications for president is age. Only after I passed the age of 35 did I understand that my outlook about myself and the world had changed, in some ways dramatically.
I don’t think I’m unusual in my state of mind reflected in my journals. When I read my writing from the early 1970s, my focus was mostly girls, friends, various sports teams, and girls. Did I mention girls? This slowly matured into a shallow desire for sex and material accumulation. Did I mention sex? When I started my career (not the one I have now, by the way) most of my writing is about gaining prestige and position. I slowly learned about all sorts of things which no one really taught me along the way - balancing my budget, mortgages, car repair, and, yes, a lot of history, politics, and philosophy which I had brushed over in my pursuit of girls and sex.
Right now I have a job in which I’m in a room 90 minutes at a time with people between the ages of 14 and 18. They are mostly interested in themselves and their friends - even the gifted ones and the ones who have an uncanny understanding of history and politics. Many of them like Obama. Their reasons are shallow beyond words. They like Obama because he’s black. (I kid you not - it’s that explicit.) They like the way he talks. They think he’s hot. When these kids get to be my age, they’ll look back and shake their heads and wonder what the hell they were thinking, in the same way that I wonder why the hell I didn’t vote for Reagan in 1980 and instead pulled the lever for John Anderson. In retrospect, I was stupid. At the time, I’m sure, I could have come up with some sort of clever reason.
The vaudeville joke here is that youth is wasted on the young.
I also understand that there are people my own age who have decided, for whatever reasons, not to develop their own wisdom and knowledge over the years. Fortunately, we have a representative republic, and hopefully those representatives will exhibit that wisdom and knowledge.
People are people. You’ve changed. God bless you on life’s journey. Maybe your insight is a small nudge from your creator to lead others. Just a thought, bud.