Many people, especially liberals, bemoan the state of the US, whithout showing an alternate solution. They especially bemoan finished issues such as race, making the situation even worse with policies such as affirmative action. I propose to, in this essay, state what i believe is wrong with the US and I will offer a solution.
The problem i believe to be most threatening is the problem of America's youth. America's youth faces many problems, and this is important because in 2006, America will have more adolescents than any time in history. The first threat to America's youth is the threat of lack of education. The educational system of the US is collapsing far more quickly than it can be repaired. For example, a student can finish high school without knowing how to read. I'm sure that if you can read this, you will find this pathetic and unnacetable in a country that claims to be the greatest in the world. Another threat to America's youth is the lack of political information and caring. There is not a lot of political awareness in America, especially in the 18-25 demographic. It is true that the music industry is trying to combat this, but the mainstream music industry is far behind less known punk rock outfits such as Anti-Flag and NoFX. These punk rock bands are extremely politically active, but they have far less of an audience than other forms of music. The people who listen to these groups are also already most likely politically aware, because most of these groups carry an overtly political message. Thus, the media and private groups are doing little to combat political unawareness. A third large threat to America's youth is the media in general. It's bad enought that the corporate media manufactures 98% mindnumbingly stupid programming, but this is not only applied to entertainment. If you watch the news, you will notice that there are nice little things called human interest stories. These are simply reporting on pointless things such as celebrities, movies, or random useless trivia stories instead of reporting on politics, technological breakthroughs, encomics, protests, or crimes. This and the practice of airing the same thing constantly are a huge plague upon the media. Even on NPR, i've heard the same thing for about a week now, and this is the best station for news there is.
First, the political awareness of America's youth, and Americans in general, is very low. Many people blindly follow the a single party simply because their parents, friends, co-workers, or bosses follow it. A system run by blind partisan voting is not a democracy, or even a republic, but a nation of drones, controlled by a small portion of aware people who manipulate the massive group of blind partisans. Thankfully, the blind partisans are in the minority, as many are not fully blind partisans, and do believe and understand the party's ideology. However, if there is not a revolution in voter awareness, a regression in political awareness will continue, eventually degenerating to a Droneocracy, the name i assign to the rule by the small, manipulative group, controlling a large, unaware group of drones. The way to avoid this and to create an upward trend in voter awareness is to add more media programming about all the candidates for an office and to continue making voting registration more readily available. Get out and vote organizations have done an admirable job of making registration easily available, as have activism groups. They are not, however finished. There is still more work to be done in poor areas that may not have internet access, such as making voting registration available at public places such as community centers and grocery stores, and possibly even malls. Many people in low income areas do not have time to get to the city hall, but may be able to get to these places many already go to. Thus, voter turnout would increase, making the will of the people know, but we still must repair voter awareness. The media can no longer influence the election of the president as much as it does. Now, one may ask how the media does this. The media influences and controls many votes based on coverage of candidates. Any politically active or current events oriented person will tell you that no news source is without bias. This is extremely dangerous around voting time, as many voters depend on the corporate media for their information on candidates. This bias often effects the way a candidate is portrayed, and even whether or not they are portrayed at all. The media should not be able to do this; the purpose of news reporting is not to change the election, it is to provide as news as accurately as possible. The reporting will always be biased, but the media must provide equal coverage for all, and the coverage should be discounted for candidates at election time, in case someone who is (heaven forbid!) not an incredibly rich corporate executive or corporate politician runs to actually represent the people. This runs into the issue of campaign finance reform. This is essential for America to stay under a good government. Candidates require such an incredible amount of money to run, that by the time they actually run, they are almost required to be so rich that they are alienated from the working class, and even the middle class. A policy discounting air time for candidates must be instituted, or a government station for each candidate must be temporarily created. The money for this would be found in reducing spending on building a moon colony, or on sending probes to Mars. This is how candidates will cease to be chosen by the media. To increase voter awareness of what candidates are doing, representatives should communicate more with their constituents. I realize that they are in Washington a significant amount of time, but they should ask for more input and give information on what they are doing in Washington back to their constituents through mail, or on websites kept up by staffers. If people know what their representatives are doing without going through a laborious process of sifting through many internet, newspaper, or magazine articles, activities in which mostly politically aware people already engage in, than this system would greatly increase the ability of a young people
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