Government isn't at fault!...completely

Previously, I wrote about the effectiveness of our national government. In my eyes, our national government isn’t very effective however it isn’t their fault. Like I said before, our government is the TMZ of politics, they only focus on current issues and completely disregard the prolonged unresolved issues. Even though it may appear that our government is to blame for their inability to solve issues like the reconstruction of New Orleans, in actuality it is the citizens of the United States who are at fault. We as people don’t take a stand and demand our government to help us.  Studies have shown that our government does respond to the needs of the people however, just like any change, our government needs time to respond to the demands of the people.

So is our government truly to blame for unresolved issues in our society today? Not really because we as citizens don't take action and are unresponsive. With issues like Hurricane Katrina, if the people wanted, the government could have spent money and rebuilt cities like New Orleans. However, because there were other issues going on in our nation at the time such as unemployment, the citizens shifted their attention from the disaster left behind from Hurricane Katrina and focused their attention on the more current issues.

The reason why we shouldn’t blame our government is because we as citizens aren’t strong enough to have a dramatic impact on our government. So technically the people are to blame for the infectivity of the national government. We tend to focus all of our attention on current issues and put all the old issues aside. Our government is only partially to blame for this because our government does a terrible job at keeping the citizens informed about the progress made on these issues. If we as citizens become strong and focus our attention on one issue at a time, we would be able to solve most of the issues that are a part of our nation today.

Since we live in a democratic society, it is our jobs as citizens to be informed about the issues and the progress made by our government to solve these issues. If  on some occasion our government is unresponsive, then we as citizens have the right to demand that our government respond to our needs. If our government is responsive to our needs like it says it is, then whatever the people want, the government will do.  

Bias in the Media

In a fairly recent blog post from Give Me Liberty or Give Me My Money Back, the blogger had a post on how the media tends create propaganda and how different types of media networks tend to bias. However, what the blogger fails to note is that the reason why the media tends to be bias and creates propaganda is because that’s what the people want. If the media outlooks didn’t create controversy and weren’t bias then they wouldn’t be as popular as they are now.  It common knowledge that most Conservatives tend to keep up with the Fox channel because it too is a right leaning media network and tends to be very critical of the Democrats. I being pretty Liberal, watch the Fox channel because I find it entertaining how they tend to over exaggerate and blow unimportant issues out of proportion and it’s not just Fox it’s other channels as well. It’s safe to ask would the channel have such high ratings if it weren’t bias? Not really. People enjoy controversy that’s why every other day there is a new celebrity sandal because that what people enjoy reading and listening to.

Now even though there are many very bias media outlooks, most of them try to give insight into both sides of the controversy and they tend to be very equal about covering both sides of the issue. This is a horrible way to cover an issue because the coverage itself becomes vague and unoriginal. If someone is reading the article or hearing about it in the news they don’t want the highlights they want author and or reporter’s opinion. The reason being--especially when it comes to politics--is that Americans are very uneducated about politics. They’ll hear one thing from one place and something completely different from another place and then they’ll formulate their own opinion based off the information that they have gathered. The job of the report and the author is to influence their audience and the only way they can do that is if they are extremely bias. The reporter and author have to back their opinion up with facts. Without facts their news report will be dry and public will look over it. That is why even though people criticize newspapers and television networks for being bias, what they fail to note is that because they are bias they are successful.

Why do you think the Presidential Debates are so boring? It’s because the debate conductor gives each candidate equal amount of time talking about their issue and criticizing the other candidate. If the debate conductor was to let each candidate go on for as long as he or she wanted and there was civilized argument between the two candidates then the debates would be more intriguing to watch.

So it is evident that the more bias media networks tend to be more successful than the ones that aren’t bias.

How effective is our government?

The sole purpose of our government is to help the public and restore problems in the nation. But is the government responsive to the needs of its citizens?

In 2005 when Hurricane Katrina hit the Atlantic Coast and the Gulf of New Mexico, thousands of lives were taken and many people were left without a home, especially in New Orleans. Our government immediately declared the National Response Plan in response to the hurricane in attempt to help the hurricane victims. Nonetheless despite the various government relief programs, eventually the needs of the people in New Orleans were forgotten about and as a result today hundreds of people are still homeless there. Even though our government was responsive at first, eventually it  stopped worrying about it’s citizens because the cost to repair New Orleans was tremendous. Our government can’t afford to help it’s own citizens--people that put them in office—because it’s too costly however presidential candidates can spend millions of dollars on campaigns making empty promises just to get elected. It’s surprising to note that neither candidate has yet to mention how they’ll effectively restore New Orleans in any of their speeches.

Our government is portrayed as the TMZ of politics.  It constantly argues about the latest issues regardless of how important they are. However, our government fails to resolve previous issues that are continuing to affect citizens. It’s safe to say that the government is going to have some sort of relief program for the victims of Hurricane Sandy however in a couple of months those people and their needs will be forgotten about because there will be some other issue that seems more important that the government will divert it’s attention to.  

            Despite everything however, our government-- even if it’s for a little bit-- attends to the needs of the people in order to pacify the public temporarily. Take a look at President Obama, when he was running for office back in 2008, he promised to restore the economy and end the war in Iraq. Even though he made some effort to please the public, he was unsuccessful because again like TMZ he pushed the old issues aside and focused his attention on the new ones. As a result now the public considers his presidency unsuccessful. What the public fails to note is that every president is like that and will continue to be like that. In the first couple of years they’ll do whatever it takes to please the public, then after a while when they have spent some time governing our nation, they'll slowly begin to push issues that the public previously found important aside and begin to focus their attention the more current issues.

If our government were able to focus its attention on one issue at a time then more issues would get resolved and citizens will be more pleased.