Angela Bacca

Tonight at the Ace Bar in San Francisco (14th and Mission), I held a long and disorganized discussion about religion, politics, and other taboo topics of conversation with a Guinness-drinker who would only allow himself to be identified as “The Suppository of Knowledge”.

We began to discuss the tired topic of the Bush Administration.

I began by telling him my maybe far-fetched notion that George Bush and the events of the last 7 years in this country are no worse than anything that has happened in the past- the only difference is that through rapid advances in technology in the last decade, we now have all the power in the world to know everything that goes on, but no power to do anything about it. I continued by explaining that this is the dilemma of my unmotivated and over-entertained generation, and I do believe that is why we are more concerned about the meltdown of Britney Spears rather than the meltdown of our government.

No wonder we are all talking about “change”- it’s what naturally needs to come next for us to sustain our economic, social, environmental, political, and personal lives in the modern and more informed world.

Last week, in a visit to the Middle East, our country sold billions of dollars of weaponry to Saudi Arabia. Didn’t giving weapons to Middle Eastern countries with whom we have current strategic ties backfire on us a few times already? Aren’t we currently amounting another 3 trillion to the national debt fighting against our own weapons?

In an interview on “A Daily Show“ the Newsweek International editor Fareed Zakaria commented, “We want democracy in strategically irrelevant countries.”

This is true, and this corrupted foreign policy of push and pull where it is financially convenient is not working as well as when the wool was over the bulk of the world’s eyes. We can start change however, by admitting there is a problem worth changing.

The way we have operated in America since the end of World War II has been to maintain our newfound hegemonic position through a fascinating and uniquely American system of imperial-capitalism. We currently control much of the world through debt, occupation, and gifts. No one in the world would deny the power of this nation, and the majority would not disagree with the ideals of its revolutionary free democracy. But our system has failed and we have created a world that is impoverished, oppressed and hostile.

Last month Papua New Guinea summed it up quite well for us at the Bali Conferences; “You need to lead or get out of the way.”

Our foreign policy has made us wealthy and culturally relevant, but its major flaw was that the path taken was a dead end cycle of puppeteering and damage control, and it really is ok to say “we were wrong” and lead another way.

Well thank Hollywood for doing just that, it seems that our entertainers pull the weight where our politicians fail. It seems as if actors have become the only real relevant players in new media, and maybe that is a good thing.

Although it’s disappointing and embarrassing that we need Chuck Norris, Oprah, Jon Stewart, and Bill O’Reilly to entertain us enough into caring enough about politics and the goings on of our elected officials in a country that holds the value of freedom so highly.

If only more people could turn on the news and be informed about the true weight and global importance of a vote for change, past the campaign slogans and race wars and to the issues at hand.