Millennial's Guide to November ( Part 1 )
I wrote this article at the request of a 24 year old man, who has recently become engaged in the political process. Please share liberally with both the young as well as the old, who may be in need of a few reminders. We discussed how this election will shape the world that you, Millennials, are in the process of inheriting. So, in order to do this, we'll need to hop into the DeLorean and do a little time traveling.
QUESTIONS FOR YOU TO ANSWER IN 2046
How many islands are under water?
What does the Florida coastline look like?
Did we ever do anything about the 35,000 gun deaths in the United States each year?
How many people died in preventable wars?
How much money does the average middle-class American have for their retirement?
Can I afford to send my kids to college?
Can I afford to send my kids to college?
What species of animals went extinct?
Did they stop genital mutilation and suppression of girls and women in the Middle-East, Africa and Indonesia?
Was cancer or AIDS cured?
Did we solve world hunger?
What is your life span expected to be?
Did the Lions ever win a Super Bowl?
"To understand how important your vote is, you need to look at the past. Run it through the analyzer in your head, compare it to the present, as well as the alternate present, the one that never happened. Only then can you draw a line into the future."
Growing up in the 60's and 70's, it was nearly impossible not to be, at the very least, aware of what was happening in the political world. Even as a three year old toddler in suburban Detroit, I remember my parents watching Kennedy and Nixon duke it out in a debate. I recall a Kennedy volunteer coming to our door, asking to speak with my parents about the upcoming election. Then, at age 5, the Cuban Missile Crisis, where the nation was on the brink of nuclear holocaust. My mother, in a sigh of relief, told me that the President "stopped a war from happening". In my 5 year old mind, I imagined Kennedy walking out on to the middle of a battlefield between opposing sides, raising his hand and declaring that the pending battle be abandoned. In my ever imaginative mind, the words Kennedy spoke were "STOP THIS WAR" (If it were only that easy). I remember the beginning of U.S. "Police action" in Vietnam, as it became a nightly news event, with reporters following Marines through the jungle. I had no idea what it was about, but it was scary.
November 1963, in first grade, on the bus on the way home from school, older girls were crying...all of them. It was then that I learned of the assassination of President Kennedy, and will never forget the wave of shock that pierced my heart. Over the next few days I couldn't get my mind off of Caroline, who was my age and would never jump into her fathers arms again, and I cried by myself when alone, feeling a deep sympathy for her. It was horrible at any age.
After Johnson took over as President, the war escalated, and the body bags flowed. A war that, even at such a young age, I believed would not have happened had Kennedy still been President. By the end of that war, 54,000 American boys will have lost their lives, in a war that was actually a proxy war with the Soviets, as the Communists supplied weapons and artillery to the North Vietnamese. In that war, a war than never should have happened in the first place, more than 2,000,000 (two million) Vietnamese perished, with approximately one million from each side of the border between North and South Vietnam. By the end of the war in early 1975, it was apparent that this ridiculous, useless waste of life was all about weapons and war supply profits, and which superpower had the largest balls. The Soviets won, USA lost, and both North and South Vietnam lost, but the profits had been made.
This gave way to theories on why Kennedy was assassinated. It could have been for one or more of these reasons. War profit, retaliation by Castro for the attempted assassination attempt on his life by Kennedy, the Mafia who Bobby was going after as Attorney General, after the Teamsters helped put Kennedy over the top in 1960, or the Soviets. Oswald had made multiple visits to Russia and Cuba, and Oswald's killer, Jack Ruby was a mob guy. They say that the first rule of assassination is to kill the assassin. We are also fairly sure that there was more than one shooter. Who killed Kennedy is not the point of this article, but what I call "an alternate future" ensued versus the future that I believe would have transpired had the Kennedy brothers lived. They were both peacemakers. Some say that the United States would have been militarily weaker after 16 years of Kennedy administrations, but over two million people would have lived, and peace would have been given a chance.
So, Nixon won in 1968, resigned in disgrace in '74. VP Agnew has already resigned due to tax evasion and Ford was hand-picked by Nixon as a replacement. Gerald Ford, never elected to the VP slot, was escalated to President. He then lost to Jimmy Carter in 1976. Both Ford and Carter calmed things down after the Vietnam war and as the Soviet Union went broke, Reagan, elected in 1980, built up United States military astronomically, tripling the national debt in just 8 years. It can be argued that the U.S. military buildup sped up the collapse of the Soviet Union. Advancements in weapons with the MX missile, Trident missile, F-16's etc., along with U.S. superiority in the space race, put too much pressure on the Soviet Union. In order to keep up, the people paid the price, and rebellion ensued. In December, 1991, the Soviet Union broke apart during the George H.W. Bush administration.
George H.W. Bush ( Dubya's Dad ) was an oil man.from Texas long before he was head of the CIA, VP, or President. The influence of big oil, and the greed of controlling Middle East oil was the reason for the Gulf War. The United States protected Kuwait, where oil reserves were discovered in 1938 and made Kuwait the 6th strongest producer of oil in the world. The control of oil reserves has been a top priority for U.S. oil companies such as Exxon, Shell, etc for many decades, and protecting this profit and any cost was (still is) paramount. Money is power, and many oil wars have been fought over control of Texas Tea. Thinking back to Kennedy now, how would this history have changed? We know Kennedy was preparing to pull out of Vietnam before it escalated. We know that he preferred peace and negotiation over war. We're fairly sure that the Cuban Missile Crisis would have been handled quite differently had Nixon won in 1960, and the prospects of that probability are terrifying, as Soviet nuclear missiles in Cuba were aimed at New York and Washington.
So, where would be be and what would the present look like had negotiators and peace makers NOT been at the help in 1962, or if they HAD been at the helm during the Gulf War and post 9-11 years? We'll never know for sure, because the two guys that could have brought about a different future were assassinated before they could fully prove that peace can win. One of the biggest question posed by scientists and historians in both the 20th and 21st centuries is ... Will mankind survive its own adolescence? The jury is till out on it, but I believe we have to try harder. It is rare that a war was worth the price, but only in the context of history does this become evident. We had no choice in World War II, but most of the other 265 wars since 1900 have been avoidable. Over 200,000,000 (two hundred million) have died in wars in the 20th and 21st centuries. Most of these wars were over money, power, and ego.
To understand how important your vote is, you need to look at the past. Run it through the analyzer in your head, compare it to the present, as well as the alternate present, the one that never happened due to the wrong people being in charge. It's quite a study indeed. Only then can you draw a line into the future. That future, just like that past, can be altered. What if the Kennedy's lived? Nader received 2% of the vote in 2000, giving the election to Bush, which resulted in an estimated 5000 Americans dead and 500,000 dead Iraqi's over false information sold by Bush and Cheney? What if less people voted for Nader in 2000. What will it look like in another 30 years? Who will we be as a nation, and what will the world be like with the leadership, or lack of leadership, from one candidate to the other. The future is flexible. It's like a very large ship that takes a lot to turn, but once re-directed, like the Titanic, it can sail through smooth waters or hit an iceberg along the way. The captain sets the course and makes adjustments along the way, hopefully steering the ship right. The future is not written, and as humanity has evolved, the decision on the direction of the nation, as well as humanity itself is in the hands of the voter.
An example of what I'm saying here:
In 2008, we elected Barack Obama to steer the ship. In my opinion, he's the closest thing to JFK that I've seen in my lifetime. He prefers "smart power" over military force. Since then, Republicans is both the House and Senate, and virtually every Republican candidate except for Rand Paul have vowed to start new wars against Iran, North Korea, Syria, and even renewing the Cold War with Russia. Had the voters chosen John McCain instead of Barack Obama, we would be in at least two more wars, and perhaps up to a million more people in those countries would have died, along with a few thousand more American service men and women. Our firewall against more oil and penis wars has been Barack Obama. The voters made the decision to choose negotiation over war, brains over braun. The decision was made, and the course was corrected by the President. The present, with all of its problems, is hand over fist better than the alternate present, where body bags are returned daily to the United States.
Not enough has been accomplished though. The nation is divided in many ways, and income inequality has only expanded. Unemployment has been cut in half under Obama, yet wages are low. The Dow Jones Industrial Average has tripled, yet net worth of the middle class has been flat. The top 1/10th of 1% of Americans, the multi-billionaires, have accumulated almost 90% of the new wealth. Something is seriously wrong here.
Why? Because of voter apathy at mid-term elections. In 2014, Republicans gained seats in both the House and Senate with a 10% approval rating. A measly 17% of Democratic voters turned out at the polls. The result, a near super-majority in the Senate, and a majority in the House. Mitch McConnell, leader of the Senate, vowed to stop President Obama from accomplishing anything good, in order to deny him a second term. You would think that after Obama won his second term, that Republicans would grow up, but no. Every single attempt by the President to improve the lives of Americans has been blocked by Republicans. Call it stupidity, racism, immaturity, or whatever, but it doesn't matter how it is framed, since the result is the same. Now, if you didn't vote in 2014, and you're saying things like "My vote doesn't matter" or "both parties are the same", then you're wrong. The problem is that you didn't care enough to change the heading of the ship.
Now, we have four choices for President, but even more importantly is the platform in which you vote for and support, and the down-ticket candidates that you choose to support the platform. Only then can progress be made. The direction of the ship that the Captain sets, and the crew that mans the engines and swabs the decks is determined by YOU.
Your choices are Hillary Clinton (D), Donald Trump (R), Stein or Johnson. In Part 2, we'll take a close look at the four candidates platforms and your options in detail.
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