Washington Week: Student Voices (O)

COLUMN: Politicians, pundits act like elementary school children
By Joshua H. Wilder
Massachusetts Daily Collegian (U. Massachusetts)
09/19/2006

(U-WIRE) AMHERST, Mass. — I am sure we can all remember those days in elementary school when all the kids would get together to gang up on someone and make them feel bad. Often, the target child would then get his little buddies together, and the two groups would descend upon the playground for an extreme name-calling and rock-throwing session. While this columnist spent many minutes of recess being hit with debris and starting trouble, I certainly thought things would change once we became adults.

Yet, interestingly enough, while watching the news over the last few weeks, it dawned on me that nothing has changed. The political realm in this country has been reduced to a playground full of little kids involved in nothing more than name-calling and embarrassment tactics. The aforementioned offenders have formed two major groups: Democrats and Republicans.

Last week, President Bush used the five-year anniversary of the Sept. 11 attacks to call out Democrats on their politics and to divert attention from his own mistakes during his term. While Republicans insisted Bush's speech was innocent in nature, the fact stands that it was in poor taste to choose such a moment in time to try to belittle political opponents.

With the mid-term elections quickly approaching, Americans should come to expect these kinds of Bush-league tactics and prepare to see them ad nauseam. As if politics weren't polarized enough in this country, now we have the chance to contribute to the mindless feuding frenzy by choosing one of the two affiliations we have been spoon-fed and told to support. These days, you are either a conservative warmonger or a liberal hippie. Try watching the news or reading the newspaper and finding a happy medium between the two.

Perhaps things wouldn't be this way if we had some mature, intelligent politicians in office right now. Bush's comments on Sept. 11 were just the tip of the iceberg when it comes to the lengths politicians will go to convince the masses to vote for them. It seems that all it takes is to have a stand on one or two broad issues, or talking points, right before the election to sway voters. Recently, Republicans have insisted that Democrats are trying to cut and run from the terrorists and put us in danger. Instead of debating some pressing issues, they spend the thousands of dollars raised for campaigning to attack the character and integrity of their opponents.

Democrats are no better themselves. They choose to point out the many, many blunders of the current administration and basically say vote for us, or else. Yet they offer no solutions to the problems facing our country; they have no plan. Instead, they hope to be elected through their use of name-calling, twisting around the issues and convincing enough Americans that they are competent enough to be in office. They aren't.

These are the politicians we are forced to vote for, but what makes things worse? These clowns wearing suits and sporting fake smiles have already created a large enough rift between the two parties, but our news media works to make Americans choose sides. Now we have people like Bill O'Reilly, Geraldo Rivera, Al Franken, that tool Sean Hannity and anyone else on CNN pretending to be honest journalists. The problem is that these people already have an agenda and just aren't reliable.

If you spend enough time watching shows like these, you will begin to see just how biased they are. It takes a certain eye to be able to sift through the garbage and lies to actually read between the lines. Many everyday Americans either don't have these skills or flat out don't care, especially when the new "Survivor" is on.

So what is supposed to happen? We each choose a side on the playground and take a hard-line approach to politics. Half of us will be on the right, ready to invade any country harboring terrorists and supporting tax cuts, while the other half is on the left making up new Bush jokes and sporting their "No Blood for Oil" shirts. Being divided like this as a people is what the government wants, but it's all just manipulation, my friends.

Anyone who makes up their mind on a subject before hearing the facts is just not rational. Is there any way to just quit this political charade and actually debate the issues? Throughout the next few weeks, as you see countless political advertisements promising to serve the people, just think about the current state of affairs. The rich keep getting richer while the cost of living rises, gasoline is outrageously expensive and people are dying in Iraq and Afghanistan every day.

Politicians on the left and the right are only out to serve their party and themselves. As the future of this country, let's try to see these con artists for what they really are, and stop arguing among ourselves about who is supporting the better liar. After all, we left the playground a long time ago.

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