Traveling Thoughts

When I was a senior in high school they were preparing us for what would be our first presidential election, the election of 2000. I remember rolling my eyes every time they mentioned it and how important it was to vote and that it was just as equally important that we knew where we stood on the issues. I knew it was important to vote, because that gave me a right to complain, the issues though, I could’ve cared less about those. I wouldn’t even spend the time finding out what the issues were because I felt that every political commercial or debate wasn’t about telling what a person was going to do to better the country and how things were going to be different, it was all about the stuff that the other candidates did that made them unworthy of the position that they were running for. I hated that, and it turned me off when I was fairly young.

I can remember riding in the car with mom and pathetically asking “when are all these signs going to be gone, vote for this person, vote for that person, this district that district…blah blah blah” it’d happen every time there was something that had to be voted on. They really just disturbed me. And there was a long time where I refused to watch TV because the only commercials I ever saw were political commercials.

Every time that I have voted, I go to dad and ask him who he’s voting for because he keeps up on the issues and follows the candidates and I’ll sit down with the newspaper and copy his little slip so that when I go press the buttons the same way he does, because I feel that he knows best for me.

This year it’s changed, for some reason in the past month or so I’ve started reading news sites like cnn or msnbc, I’ve started watching a little bit of what’s going on on TV. I’m starting to read a little about what the various candidates have done in their pasts and how that might effect what they’re going to do if they become president. I can come home at the end of the day and sit down and talk to him and have a grown up conversation about what I may have read and what I think about it.

I’ve entered a new world, a world that I didn’t use to care about because I didn’t think that it mattered, but I will say this, I currently feel that no matter who becomes president, we’re screwed. I just really don’t like any of the peeps that are running, and where I didn’t care before, I’m now feeling that I have to choose among the lesser of evils. There is no straight line because both sides are equally as messed up as the other sides.

This November will be the 3rd time that I’ve voted for a president and this November will be the first time that I’ll be truly aware of what it is I’m voting for.