Politics, Religion and Personal Responsibility

Politics or religion, sometimes it's hard to tell them apart. The fervor with which one views the issues of both serve to blur the lines between them. One argues that abortion is a religious issue while another sees it as political. On both sides, there is a certain amount of leadership playing the puppeteer. It bothers me the number of people who blindly trust others to tell them how to think and vote without weighing the issues personally. Why am I on this rant? I came across one of the opinion polls rating our current president. One could argue that he inherited the country's difficulties from the former administration or on the flip side that he made a bad situation worse. At what point in his leadership is the best place to "take the temperature"? When can you truthfully say that the advice from Congress and his counsellors has been faulty or not? What would you have done in his place? Look at how many people he has to please. Arguably, any CEO has to make decisions that may not be popular with all in his organization. What makes one think that a President would be any different? Of course, he will make some bad decisions, but he will also make some good ones. One's opinion of effective leadership can be colored by whether one expects success or failure. A pre-determination that Mr. Obama, for example, will fail creates the climate that ensures one seeing the negative in a stronger light than the positive. The same works in reverse, regarding pre-determination of success. The law of probability assumes that there will be a percentage of good and bad decisions. How much stress would it be to have the entire world watching while one attempts to solve problems that have so many variables? Perhaps we need to take off our rose colored glasses and consider the outside variables in our pre-determinations.

I am neither condemning nor condoning Mr. Obama, merely asking if anyone could do the job to please everyone. We come out of an election with the "pie in the sky" thinking that whomever we elect will make miracles happen. Maybe it's time we did something in our realm of influence and stop expecting the President or Government to "take care of us". Granted, voting for competent leadership is a step in the right direction, but sitting back and expecting the government to take care of us with little or no personal input is unrealistic and a certain way for the government to disappoint. Where and when have we lost the reality that WE are the government and those in office merely elected representatives? Those representatives are there to set up the framework that the country operates under, not to "do it all" . Government was never meant to be a welfare system and it is a proven fact that those areas in which an individual is personally invested can have the capacity to change the world.

Conclusion: Stop whining and complaining and get out there and change your corner of the world. (This may even mean running for elected office.)