"Don't Be So Hard On Your Big Brother, He Tries" your mom might have said to you if you were getting mad at something your big brother did or did not do that you thought was not right. I believe this is how we are supposed to treat the Government, with the idea that "they try". Now don't get me wrong I enjoy living in America, but the Government doesn't always do what we (the people) want. Look at the years of 2000, 1824, 1876, and 1880, all of those are presidential election years in which the majority of the people (that's us) voted for the candidate who lost.
What happened there? How could a popular vote not get elected? I thought the people voted for the president? These are some common questions asked by many people when you talk about these elections. See my theory, which may sound a bit conspiracy, is that the founding fathers did not really want to put that much power in the hands of everyday people, they wanted a small hand of people they could control to be able to really vote. This is why we (the people) don't get to vote for the president, we vote for electors, who we hope will vote for the president we want. But as you can see that does not always happen.
I don't mean to sound like a pessimist, as I said before I do enjoy living in America. But like most people I want answers, I want to know why the government hasn't changed. I want to know why the people don't have a say, and why the electors get all the power. I want to know why "big brother" doesn't want to hang out with me.
2 comments:
My colleague writes a good post about treating the government as your big brother. Your big brother always knows the best for you and you should always be satisfied.
I agree with much of his post. We should be happy with the system our founders laid out. We are a representative democracy after all, and we vote for representatives, senators, delegates and for electoral votes.
However, there are some points i want to add here that deal with our modern political system. We live in the era of special interests where corporations, big donors and other influences control a lot of what happens in Washington. Congress has a historically low approval rating by the general public and people have little trust in the government. Both Republican and Democratic voters are choosing outsider candidates who won't be influenced by special interests.
Our founders did lay out a near perfect system, but they also didn't know the reality of today's politics where voters are having less and less influence in the process. For example, the Republican establishment is quietly trying to stop Donald Trump (who has the most votes in the primary process and who will likely secure the most delegates before the convention) from getting the party's nomination. Even though i personally disagree with almost everything about Donald Trump's views, i think robbing the majority of voters and stealing the nomination from him would be an utter disaster.
In conclusion, the reason big brother doesn't want to hang out with us is because of money in politics and laws like Citizens United. Both Republican and Democratic politicians have more incentive to be loyal to their donors than their voters. I personally think we should amend the constitution to make sure big money doesn't influence politics the way it does now, so that congress has more of an incentive to listen to "We the people".
I chose to critique my classmate Quintin Buxton's, "Don't be so hard on your big brother, he tries" in this editorial he asks a simple question that many of us have asked before, whether it be in class or elsewhere. Why is it that who we vote for doesn't necessarily win even if they have the majority? This very perplexing question is not even necessarily a theory, we have seen it happen on more than one occasion just as Mr. Buxton explains, the only thing I would have liked to see here is maybe going into some detail about these past debacles.
Overall I like the short and sweet style in which the editorial is written. While he is not over complicating things by adding big words or over explaining the system of the electoral college, I can't help but feel that there should be at least a small mention about the electoral college with that being the main issue here. This is most definitely a "Hot" topic that any one of us could be asking at any point; the truth is that "we" as the American people should know more about this process with the Electoral College and all of its intricacies. I agree with Mr. Buxton's argument that we most definitely deserve more answers regarding this issue and answers that actually give us valuable information to further expand our understanding of this complex system.
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