Agendas, Selfishness, and other social travesty

I know it is a heavy title for a post. Now that I am home full time and a mom I have a lot more time to be disgusted with our western world. It is election time and oh how I hate election season. I am tired of adds that tell me how "bad" the other guy is for our community, city, state, and/or country. I would like to see adds that tell me honestly--yes I do know that I am talking about politics--what the candidates stand for. I don't want you candidate one to tell me how bad/wrong/dishonest candidate two is. I want my vote to be informed by what someone stands for. Besides we all know that it almost doesn't matter who we as constituents elect. Big money and lobbyists really control the government. My Representatives don't represent me individually and I'm really tired of them telling me they do. So here we are the "greatest" country in the world trying to police the world. There was a time in our history when we were more isolationist and our people were better off. When you take on the worlds problems you must ignore some of your own. We can't do it all.

I was watching Good Morning America this morning and Diane Sawyer was in North Korea. She was showing the country to us Americans who might not be able to comprehend what it is like behind the communist curtain. Their apartments are small and the children in school don't know anything of America. Oh My Gosh. They haven't seen a Tom Cruise Movie. Somehow this is surprising. We have people in our own country who haven't seen a Tom Cruise movie. We have people in our country who can't name all 50 states and couldn't tell you the name of their Representatives who represent them in government. Yet you don't see Diane Sawyer doing a story on that. People in N. Korea are on average a head shorter than those in S. Korea because of the malnutrition. There isn't a developed country that doesn't have malnutrition. We have people in our own country who don't have a place to live, don't have a job, and certainly don't have food to eat. When are we going to ignore the world's problems and work on our own. We have more folks without health insurance than is reasonable in a developed nation. It wouldn't be so bad if health care was affordable, but as we all know it isn't and it will break you if something happens and you're not insured.

I understand why we are so concerned with N. Korea. Japan is afraid and well since we don't allow Japan to have a military we feel responsible to defend them. Okay great. So we really aren't the white knight riding in on a horse to save the damsel in distress. We are doing what we think we need to. And because N. Korea is now nuclear. If they weren't nuclear we wouldn't care about them anymore than we care about any other nation that isn't really a threat to democracy (that was a little tongue in cheek). I am saddened by the selfishness of our country. Yeah, I said it we are selfish. If we weren't we wouldn't be waging a war in Iraq we would be in Darfur. We aren't about doing what is moral. We are about seeing an agenda to fruition. If we really cared we would be waging war in our own country against big business who wants to keep the poor poor. We would be doing something to feed our children and to make sure that all children had a place to live. But really, that doesn't seem noble enough for us here in America.

I am happy to see GAP, Apple and other companies step up in the latest campaign to do something. Go Bono. The new Red Line products are great. A percentage of the cost of the items will be given to fund AIDS drugs for the whole of Africa. This is great. The AIDS drugs cost the people of Africa's many nations about .50 a day--it is two pills a day that can keep those affected alive so that they can raise their families. This is too much for nearly all in Africa's countries--most people don't make but $100 a year: but come on, how much did you spend on your coffee this morning. We as a nation could easily fund the needed medicine for those in need. But we are spending Billions of dollars a month to bring democracy to a country that didn't ask for our help. For a country that is not in any way our responsibility. Oh wait. That's right. We put Saddam in power. We also put the Taliban in power and I don't even want to get into the issues we have helped create all over South America. Don't you think we would have learned our lesson by now. We create these democracies, or put particular people in power and think that we can influence and control them. You'd think we'd learn. You'd think we would try to really do something that would leave the world a better place and not just push through our particular political agenda.

Okay, this is a lot longer and more preachy than I was anticipating. I am just frustrated by our ability to truly ignore the real problems in the world and our desire to focus on those things that don't really improve any thing for the world. Isn't that really our responsibility as the wealthiest country in the world. Where is our social consciousness? When did we lose it and how do we get it back? Buffet and Gates are doing it? Why can't we all?