Politics Bore Me
I sincerely hate pre-election times here in the United States, especially the 18-20 months leading up to a presidential election. The main reason I hate it so much is because politicians pander to stupidity in the general population. It really grinds at my nerves. The news media makes it even worse by playing sound bites that are taken out of context. The important context of the sound byte is conveniently omitted. They want us to draw conclusions from these sound bytes. Example:
The United States makes up 5% of the world's population, but uses 25% of the world's natural resources.
If you consider this statement without any additional information, the conclusion you would probably draw is quite obvious. You would think that the United States is somehow unfairly taking advantage of the rest of the world. The convenient bit of information you never see or hear coupled with this statement is how the U.S. gross national product compares with the rest of the world based on population. Some politicians would have you believe that we should reduce our natural resource consumption to 5% of the world's natural resource availability to get inline with our population. You never hear them discuss the impact that would have on our economy, or the world's economy as a whole. These natural resources aren't just resources that we get from within our own borders. We buy a lot of it. If we stop buying those resources, the global companies who supply us would wither away at the same time. This convenient little sound byte has much greater impact than you will ever be told by a politician. Their objective is to have you believe that they are concerned about the environment and are willing to make you believe that they are going to do everything they can to protect it via cell phones, PDAs, SUVs, and 5000 square foot homes. I haven't met a politician yet who walks to match their talk. That talk, however, is required to get big contributions and campaign efforts from environmental groups.
Another sound byte that I am completely sick of:
Embryonic Stem Cell Research
This byte, for the most part, is simply designed to make one believe that babies are being killed in the process. Stem cell research is not about embryos, as most politicians would have you believe. The stem cell lines that scientists want to work with are harvested from a ball of cells called a blastocyst. The blastocyst is a stage of development that comes well before the embryo. The blastocyst is a ball of cells that implants itself in the endometrium of the uterine lining 6 to 7 days after fertilization. This blastocyst is made up of stem cells. What is a stem cell? A stem cell is a completely undifferentiated cell that can develop into anything, but has not started differentiating yet. The major issue with this idea is that there is no strict definition of when life begins after or at fertilization. Comparing stem cells to embryos simply makes it easier to follow a pro-life path in the debate. Politicians won't discuss the blastocyst and the completely undifferentiated stem cells because it doesn't make the general population feel like they are supporting the right to life issue. These cells haven't started developing into a human yet. They will soon, but they haven't at this point in their development. The medical implications of stem cell research are very exciting. Lab rats have re-grown severed spinal cords with the aid of stem cell research. That type of breakthrough in humans may be possible with the proper research. The ban on creating new stem cell lines here in the United States won't stop stem cell research. It's going on in the rest of the world. The U.S. just won't become a world leader in this technology. We will have to buy it from overseas when the time comes.
Ok.. I have banged on two issues as examples, and I have covered beefs with both major political parties at the same time. These are just two examples of why I hate what I read in the news, hear on the radio, and see on TV. I can't help but believe that I'm being played for a fool all the time by politicians on issues such as these. What I fear even more is that many people hear these sound bytes and take them at face value without going on their own to find out what the real issues are...