Well yesterday the forces of reaction and repression won a resounding victory in the US elections. We will be faced for at least the next two years by a Congress that will work tirelessly to restrict the rights of women and minorities, give tax breaks to millionaires and corporations, and refuse to help the working class. All I can say to my fellow Americans is that you have brought this upon yourself. All those leftists and liberals who refuse, for one random reason or another, to vote against these forces of reaction have allowed them to win. All those people who don't care about politics until the State comes smashing in their door or restricting their rights are equally, if not more, to blame. We have a culture of mass political apathy in this country. We only seem to care when we are placed in the crosshairs by our government.
Young people in particular need to get their heads out of their asses and go make their voices heard. I am 24 and I have no problem saying that most people in my generation could give two shits less about politics. Sure we have issues we care about just like anyone else, but we systematically refuse to act on those beliefs. The Millenial generation is the largest and most left-leaning generation in American history, and yet we don't vote. If we have a 70% turnout rate (comparable to our older and much more conservative parents and grandparents) then we could single-handedly change the course of elections. But instead we are more worried about going to parties, sleeping in, and browsing the internet. 27.4 percent of the population is between the ages of 18 and 35 and yet we only account for roughly 15% of people who turn out to vote in an election and that's in years with Presidential elections. Voters are disproportionally old, white, and male and so their much more conservative views are more strongly represented in our elected officials. This information should not be new to anyone who has studies elections in the slightest.
What frustrates me the most about the fact that my fellow Millenials refuse to vote is that we have the most to lose by not voting. We are strongly effected by political decisions made in Washington in which we take no active interest. Take for example student debt. Until 2005 most student loan debt was dischargable in bankruptcy. In 2005 Congress decided, in the Bankruptcy Abuse Prevention and Consumer Protection Act of 2005, that students should be held accountable for our debt even if we will never be able to pay it back despite the fact that almost all other forms of debt can be discharged in bankruptcy. Today this means that the 1 trillion dollars in current student loan debt can never be discharged and we will forced to pay it back in full even if that means garnishing our wages for the entirety of our lives. This is a political decision that we are directly effected by and yet we refuse to mobilize over. If we as a generation decided to march on Washington and demand that our debt be treated the same as every other kind of debt we could change the law. But instead we are so focused on the here and now that we don't even realize the crushing weight of our student loans until years after we graduate and suddenly find ourselves unable to pay back our debt. We are the most heavily indebted generation in American history and most of us haven't even gotten into the workforce yet. Unless we as a generation decide to act on this issue then we will see another Great Depression caused by our inability to spend money in the economy because we will be more concerned with paying back our huge debts. Keep in mind the current status of student loan debt results from the decades long push by parents, schools, and society at large that "college is the only way to get ahead" and so college, and the massive expenses it entails, have been billed to us as an utter necessity of life. I didn't intend to go on a tirade about student loans (that is a whole series of posts on its own) but it is just one of a million possible examples of what can happen when we refuse to vote.
So for the next two years we get to look forward to more of the same from Congress. I would love to see them get all conservative crazy just so the American people can see just how bad the beast they elected can be. The only saving grace is that the Presidency is still out of Republican hands so hopefully nothing too bad gets through. We just have to hope and pray that 2016 isn't as bad as 2014.
No comments:
Post a Comment