Dis­claimer: I can­not vote in the United States. I am not a cit­i­zen but I am a legal alien and as such, I care about what hap­pens to this coun­try. I have a fam­ily that lives here and it’s my home. The only way I can see this affect­ing my opin­ion and it’s mer­its is that even though I wasn’t born here, I may care more about your land’s future than you do — which is a sad case of affairs.

Now… some peo­ple have a weird fuck­ing idea when it comes to their view on the pol­i­tics of this coun­try and the obliv­i­ous depen­dence their lives have on the choices those who run it make. A deci­sion is made, an action taken and all of a sud­den we’re pay­ing $4 for gas.

Repub­li­cans have some­thing to say, which although I usu­ally don’t agree with, is some­thing at least. The Democ­rats have a say as do the Inde­pen­dents and any­one else that keeps an eye on what is HAPPENING in their coun­try. This is all good, because beyond the dis­agree­ments and cor­rupt, lobbyist-tainted politi­cians we care, right? Good.

The peo­ple I am refer­ring to in my open­ing line are those that don’t give an ounce of care and seem­ingly con­tinue on as if noth­ing that hap­pens above, will ever fil­ter below. Shit rolls down hill peo­ple, and we all get a smell of it. I have recently got­ten an exam­ple of this view from some­one I have met (I won’t say I know them because frankly, I only know enough to label them as an ‘acquain­tance’ in sta­tus), and it made my Colbert-eyebrow hit the ceiling.

Although this was one exam­ple, it raises a con­cern for the masses of like-minded indi­vid­u­als out there. How can you NOT care? How can you NOT have a voice? To con­tinue on as if noth­ing mat­ters and no deci­sion greater than what fuck­ing lip­stick to put on will affect you is retarded (ugly word, but accurate).

The exam­ple I was affronted by was one of cho­sen igno­rance. It was a defin­ing view of some­one who’s lived in their own sand­box for way too long and for some­one whom the out­side world is either A) untrust­wor­thy, or B) not good, or impor­tant enough to take a chance on.

To NOT take a chance on some­one (or some­thing in a broader sense) because of what could hap­pen is sim­ply not good enough. When your life is tainted by the choices they make, you are obliged to care or be left with the pun­ish­ment you chose for your­self. There is no room for a sec­ond chance when issues are afflict­ing the lives of mil­lions of peo­ple, you can’t just say, “Maybe next time… maybe.” To not act is an act in itself — it con­demns us all to a future not cho­sen for ourselves.

I guess my own opin­ion — with any­thing in life and espe­cially our future and the qual­ity of life we endure — is ‘take a chance’. I would be more than will­ing to for­give some­one a mis­take or two if they mean to do the right thing, I would rather have that than some­one sad­dling a high horse and telling me to shut the fuck up. If I have a voice — and use it — I have a response to my given respon­si­bil­ity. If I ignore it, then what right do I have to com­plain when things go south.

Another thing is mul­ti­ple ideas of how to pro­ceed when fac­ing an issue. Obvi­ously dif­fer­ing par­ties have dif­fer­ing plans (some­times I think they share the same idea, but God for­bid they have the same thought pub­licly), but you can’t NOT choose a path. This is just igno­rant and irre­spon­si­ble. No-one should be hid­ing in their fox­hole and wait­ing for some­thing to mag­i­cally change.

A fur­ther exam­ple in this regard I was given was in response to the elec­tric car. A view shared with me (though not one I agree with) is that if we replace gas-powered vehi­cles with elec­tric ones then what do we do with all the used bat­ter­ies after­wards? Um… eh… OK.

First off, elec­tric cars are not the future. No one is push­ing for them to be, because it sim­ply is highly unlikely to work. Other power sources though: hydro-electric power, solar power, fuck­ing cow-shit power and so on are being con­sid­ered and they will ALL have con­se­quen­tial thumb-prints on our envi­ron­ment and econ­omy. How­ever, the ideal solu­tion to this — and one that makes any log­i­cal sense — is that the con­se­quences be less­ened in rela­tion to the reward gar­nered (and I’m sure dis­pos­ing of bat­ter­ies would be a lot health­ier than con­stant fumes and mul­ti­ple holes in the ozone).

Any­way, ush­er­ing away from Duracell-powered cars I think I’m just hav­ing dif­fi­culty under­stand­ing how any­one can just not care, but I think the cause is sys­tem­atic to the problem.

The groups defined by this lack-of-action seem to be the chain-smoking teenagers, the ham­mered twenty-somethings, the snack­ing pot-smokers, the rich and famous, the gated-communities, the cor­rupt, the heart­less, the irre­spon­si­ble, the reli­gious zealots, the untouch­ables (or so THEY think) and just the down­right hair-brained. Whichever you may fall into, just take a look at the price of gro­ceries, the price of gas, the state of our econ­omy, the state of our health­care sys­tem, that next door neigh­bour who had to move into their car because their sub-prime loan swal­lowed their house and think for a moment, which — if not all — have affected you?

If your answer is none, then you must live on another planet.