What to Believe?

As a could-care-less, uninformed young voter (basically who this article was repetitvely directed towards) I felt this article proved my already existing beliefs toward the political system and the whole campaigning process. This was just actual evidence and facts that I can now use as evidence to credit my beliefs. Furthermore, I also gained a respect that I didn't have before for McCain. I had heard a brief summary of his POW story and had also heard that his body to this day is still showing the effects from it, but I never had actually read into all the details of what happened. I know at the beginning of this article, the author says that this is intended to be non-biased toward either party or candidate and strictly informational, but as with all things, I understand bias still could be incorporated unintentionaly. Knowing this, my gained respect for McCain comes mostly from the story of what he did as a POW. That story in itself is enough to back his honest, sincere image that his tour was campaigning.

Overall, I feel this article was well done and was very insightful for me and my voting situation. My stance on voting has always been that you shouldn't go pick a candidate unless you have done full adequate research on the election. I think this article completely proved that idea. With all the "sales" going on in the candidates trying to persuade people to buy into their ideas and ultimately give them their vote, you can't fully believe anything they say. So because of this I feel you need to do extensive research from multiple different sources before you choose and argue with people over which candidate is better. Dig up information from the root of these people, where they are coming from, whats the story behind their campaign strategy etc. I feel had I of done this on this election being studied in this article, I would have ultimately came away voting for McCain. I would have chose him because at his point, how can we really know what the candidates are going to do in office and what they actually stand for. Even if McCain's strategies for healthcare, tax-reform, or fixing debt problems aren't as solid as other candidates, I think its more important to at least be able to find some kind of sense of trust in the candidate were planning to put into office. I think that will ultimately go further in office than what their "selling" as strategies they will implement to fix our countries problems because those strategies are only said to sound as good as possible to attract their target audience. This might be because this is how I choose to view most situations on people in that (with some exceptions) its not what the person said, it who the person is behind what is said. Meaning if a friend of mine says something stupid that I'm completely in disagree with if I feel I know the person well enough and know bottom line he means well and has similar views as me, I am capable of disregarding the statement over what I know about the person. And relate this to other people and situations by using as much as you know about them for their "who the person is behind what is said" and if you don't know enough about the person to make a fair judgement of their "who", this is where the exceptions come in and just use your best judgement.

From all this it comes down to the problem of what do I do about voting. I understand that much research needs to be done before I can be an educated voter, but do I care enough to actually take the time to do it, or believe enough that my one vote will make that much of a difference. To me, even after this article, the answer is no. The reason is just because this article just proved that the whole campaigning and election system is just a whole messed up bunch of bs. I don't know if I want to participate in a system that knows they have problems, recognizes what those problems are, knows that they could be fixed, but yet choose not to fix them because in some messed up way it benefits certain parties involved. On the other hand, by me recognizing this problem and choosing not to do anything in some kind of way to help fix it, I am being hypocritical in saying that I am not going to support it because by not doing anything is supporting it. I did like the idea the author brought up about even if your not voting your still voting and actually your probably even voting for the exact person you don't want to be voting for. This brought up a valid point and you know, who knows what I am going to actually do in the future voting wise. I guess beween now and the next election well see how much my motivation changes towards becoming an educated voter. Bottom line, this article helped put things in perspective and might serve as a first step in a direction towards becoming a more aware citizen involved in the political and voting processes.