Tune in, Tune out

For the last two weeks my email has been flooded with forwarded messages from my friends about Ron Paul, and judging by the amount of responses to last week’s article in The Rebel Yell about the presidential candidate, it seems his campaign is growing in popularity. I was very interested in finding out more since I didn’t know much about the Ron Paul “revolution,” so I checked out a video on YouTube titled, “Ron Paul: A New Hope,” which is a brilliant title. Someone should make a video called, “Dick Cheney: The Empire Strikes Back” so that people might understand why many consider Ron Paul to be a new hope for American politics.

Throughout the video, uplifting background music played behind various clips from Ron Paul speeches. He promised to abolish the Internal Revenue Service, which I don’t think anyone would object to; he also wanted to abolish America’s central bank, the Federal Reserve, which I think would be fantastic. However, one thing occurred to me - this man has some amazingly progressive ideas, but if he actually does try to follow through with them, he’s definitely going to be assassinated either politically, or literally. The reason being: the average citizen who might want these changes doesn’t have the power he or she is constitutionally supposed to have to make them happen. Plus, there’s no way the reserve’s bankers would let the Ron Paul revolution get too crazy.

The video was well made, giving off a sense of renewed hope about a return to an America the framers had envisioned; an America whose first interests are the interests of the people, not the major corporations and special interest groups. The main function of our government is to serve and protect its citizens first. But sadly, this isn’t the case, because our current system of politics and democracy has disconnected itself from what it was meant to be - a representative government by the people and for the people.

The bottom line is that our “democracy” and way of life which we wish to export to other countries is in a downward spiral, and I’m not sure if even a Ron Paul revolution can turn it around. Think about this - the richest 1 percent of the U.S. population makes 50 percent of the total income made in the United States. What we have here is not a democracy, it’s an oligarchy.

The policies of our government, both at home and abroad, are out of touch with the true interests and needs of the people. A good example of this, a very pressing issue that is hardly mentioned on any news station nor spoken of by any government official, is the threat of the next global pandemic. Our federal, state and local governments are ill-prepared for an outbreak of SARS, Avian flu or the next influenza pandemic. Hospitals are under-funded, understaffed, and overcrowded. Insurance premiums are forcing many doctors into rural areas and away from big cities. If a mild pandemic were to hit the United States, it would create a complete disaster with the current state of emergency medical services being what they are.

Another example of how this country is not answering to the needs of the people is the strictly profit-driven attitudes of pharmaceutical companies. Ever wonder why your kid brother or sister runs around the house singing “Viva Viagra” all day? That’s because pharmaceutical companies specialize in marketing and producing drugs and treatments for diseases of the rich - like erectile dysfunction. Pharmaceutical companies don’t want to research vaccines or cures for influenzas, viruses and other causes of mass death and suffering because there is little or no profit in such research and development. And if a private company does discover a cure for HIV/AIDS, cancer or any influenza or virus, any and every company would patent it in order to sell for an astronomical amount of money.

Ironically, money is what’s necessary to correct some of these problems, but getting it is a question that again exemplifies how we are not a country run by the people, for the people. Case in point: the national debt is more than $9 trillion, and $1 trillion of it is going to that quagmire in Iraq. Nothing good has come of this war for the United States. We went into Iraq for two main reasons: One, to secure access to friendly oil, and two, to make the Middle East safer for Israel by spearheading a transition to democracy in Middle Eastern states beginning with Iraq, because rarely do democracies go to war with one another.

But what’s actually happened is the war has emboldened a new radical alliance in the Middle East between Iran, Syria and Hezbollah in Lebanon with Iraq, which has a majority Shiite population that may eventually join this rising alliance. And how is the U.S. government trying to counter-balance this new alliance? By selling more than $20 billion worth of hi-tech armaments to Saudi Arabia. Oh yeah, how many of the Sept. 11, 2001 hijackers were from Iraq? And how many were from Saudi Arabia?

The war has been disastrous, with thousands of Americans killed or maimed during combat and tens of thousands of Iraqis dead and dying. There is no doubt that this war has hurt U.S. credibility worldwide. There is no more soft power, only hard power; and the word of the United States does not resonate as it once did in the international community because the carrot is gone, leaving us only with the stick that is seemingly getting frailer. And yet, we hear of a “revolution” among some candidates’ campaigns, an end to the war among others, but the decision to elect such candidates, which is supposed to be held in the hands of the people, has become too oligarchical in nature.

Changes are needed, but citizens are kept ignorant. How? The United States ranks ninth among industrialized nations in the number of people between the ages of 25 to 34 with high school degrees. Thirty years ago, the United States was number one in that category. Our public education system is falling behind quickly, but do we do anything about it? We talk about it, but the truth is that the 1 percent of the population that makes 50 percent of the entire income of the United States doesn’t really care about public education and have no interest in improving it. They’re interests lie in maintaining the status quo. Just keep feeding us Britney Spears, O.J. Simpson, Ellen DeGeneres’ dog, and all that other guff on the evening news that keeps us tuned in to unimportance and tuned out to what we should know.

It seems like there are a trillion examples of flaws within the system that need to be fixed; basically one flaw for every dollar spent in Iraq. But where does change start? Does it start with the Ron Paul revolution? We’ll see. He was right about one thing - the founding fathers would be disgusted if they saw how things are going today, mainly because these politicians are not for us, they are for the interests of those lobbyists who fund their campaigns. But they have no problem taxing us without truly representing us. I wonder if the founding fathers had planned on this - taxation without representation. Probably not.

By Sharief Ali, Contributing Writer