Something big is happening in the world today.
I’m not talking about the red tidal wave which washed Republican challengers into office in the ill-fated yet all too predictable mid-term election. In fact, fewer than 37% of 218,054,301 eligible voters turned out for election day 2010. For all our gripping and frustration over a government we know is going wrong, Americans seem desperate to avoid doing anything about it. To contrast, one merely needs to look at the rest of the world.
On October 12th, mass protests started across France because President Sarkozy endorsed a bill that would have raised the retirement age from 60 to 62. Three and a half million French citizens took to the streets while public transportation slowed, flights were grounded and workers at France’s twelve oil refiners went on strike. Later, students clashed with police during nearly two weeks of rioting in which areas of the country were off limits to police and medical personnel.
On November 10th, more rioting broke out in London, this time in response to the government’s proposed raising of tuition rates, resulting in 50,000 college students vandalizing and overrunning Conservative Party headquarters.
These stories appeared in American newspapers but briefly, and were dismissed as soon as “Dancing With the Stars” came on. Bristol Palin advanced to the next round and Bristol’s mother, a former half-term governor and star of her own reality show “Sarah Palin’s Alaska”, may be a front runner for the presidency in 2012, yet hasn’t proved she can hold any job with actual responsibility.
Of course, the same thing was said about our own Barrack Obama in the run up to the 2008 election. He spent the next ten days after the mid-term defeat touring Asia getting mostly nothing accomplished. Notably, he failed to reach any kind of agreement with China, which has contributed to much of the financial devastation in the west by keeping their booming currency artificially weak, all while referring to U.S. Federal Reserve Board Chairman Ben Bernanke’s decision to pump 600 billion dollars into our economy as “economic warfare”.
“We don’t want to lose the opportunity to sell our goods and services in fast-growing markets,” said Obama in a mostly conciliatory speech to the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation’s CEO Business Summit in Yokohama. “We don’t want to lose the opportunity to create new jobs back home. Strengthening our economic ties can be a win-win for all of our nations.”
Meanwhile, earlier

this month Citizens Against Government Waste released an advertisement predicting that, in 20 years, the American Empire will have collapsed and we will all work for the Chinese. The ad has been banned from television, but you can see it on youtube.
These stories may make you mad. They may even make you stand up and shout that somebody should do something. But unless you exercise your political freedom to speak, assemble and vote, America and the world will continue to proceed down a path we know leads straight to hell.
What will the issue be that finally makes Americans angry enough to get out and vote? Will there be another government bailout of a massive industry we can’t afford, or will it be as simple as increased security at airport checkpoints? In the end, it is the citizens of this great nation who decide where and when to make our stand.