WHY BOTHER?

MY OPINION

I'm interested in politics to the degree that it effects the important issues in the world like nuclear war and global warming and feeding the hungry -education and our health care systems
Nations and people are too cynical. People are disgusted, turned off and disengaged, and has of recent evolved into meanness and fear.
There is a veil of impossibility over people particularly people of the south . We spend our time talking about what we can't do... I worry about where things will be when if we have the audacity to accomplish our dreams and hope
There is a deep deficit of apathy all over the world. People say "hello, how are you?" just out of politeness without any care, meaning or feeling.

In My 30s, life has gotten progressively harder for working people and those who want to work no matter where you are. As a child I could run to a neighbour’s house to eat, to ask for help if something was going wrong. Where on earth can I do that again?
I believe that people today really expect very little from their governments - to feel that they will be cared for if they get sick, to feel that they have a chance to send their children to school, and to feel that their work will be rewarded with a chance to retire with some dignity. If we even talk of retirement when I know for a fact that in my own country those that go on retirement mostly die still going after their pensions.
To be candid, People don't want much –they just want to be able to take care of their families.

Tell me about a country that of late has elected a president of the people without some nepotism and king makers behind.

I grew up having not much to eat but knowing that some other neighbour was sleeping in hunger which made it difficult for me to just eat without asking or finding out whether the neighbour had eaten.
I see the presidency and leaders as the ultimate way to try to make a difference for others. You don't sit on your blessings, and you don't give to people who already have more than enough, you reach out to the ones who need it.

While everyone struggles, in a country like mine, there is plenty of money to resolve the challenges most countries of the south face. It is not rocket science.
We all know what good schools look like, we have seen lots of them , have examples of them- but we don't have consistency. Public education is deteriorating, the cost of secondary education is growing out of reach. People can't afford to aspire to be a teacher or a nurse for caring sake BUT for money sake. Where is morality? Not to talk of a social worker. Have we ever heard of that in the south?

There is a lack of character in most of our current leaderships, and the result is that the plight of the poor is largely ignored. I know that our standards are measured by the weakest of us. By that measure, we should be ashamed of ourselves.
When shall we have the opportunities to choose candidates that we think are most likely to bring change and not just talk about it. We have got to go out and search for morality because MORALITY IS JUST NOT THERE ANYMORE.

But I also do think that people should take their right to vote seriously, I wish elections could be mandated as in Australie.Sometimes many of those good people that are still there get lost along the way because people GAVE UP their urge and will to vote for what they really want. Do they even remember that someone offered them something temporal? That they sold their futures and souls for? I think they always remember and regret. But then it is too late.

Look at Kenya, we respected kenya in Africa, and surprisingly, someone who defeated another in a democratic election turns around to say that democracy was only for the man he defeated. Is it selfishness? Power? Money? Or just plain wickedness? How much does the life of one striking kenyan cost.? And why does he think he is going to be poor just because he leaves the presidency? Do we encourage our presidents in the south?

In most countries the constitutions are being rewritten so that if you are in power, you stay in power. OF what use should we have leaders that live behind glasses? How much of our interests do they really represent? There is one in Cameroon that does not remember to even come out more than twice in a year. He is a president for the people and claims he won an elections I wonder how those that campained for him feel. And he has been there for almost 3 decades.

We can talk about the climate and how it is in peril…….BUT where is democracy? Why not return to the dark ages of monachies and empires and emperors? Because at least back then we knew that benevolent despotism was the other of the day. I am so pissed off today because we do not even know the type of governments that rule 75% of the world’s countries. What a lot of Shame!
Everyone wants a personal piece .Nepotism, favouritism, deseases, anger, hunger, wars, droughts, egoism end egotism is everywhere. As a result melancholy looms. Nobody is his brother or sister’s keeper anymore I wish there was a means of destroying everything to start again. God said he will come again not to detroy with water but with fire. Why is he taking so long?

Should I hope? Or am I just naïve?

WE ALL DREAM. DO WE HAVE THE AUDACITY?

I have been observing the American presidential primaries race for sometime now, and to give a summary of the man they call the audacity, the eloquence of truth and “the one” I would have to say something before I come back later. But I would have to say something today about Obama before the first caucus votes are cast in Iowa.

He effects me in a very positive way he just sounds like an unselfish person who wants to share his intelligence with aspiring peole and carries himself with dignity, speaks and addresses the issues so perfectly. I have put up with the cynics and those that have been preaching limitations for a long time now. Where are we now because of that cynism? you always hear, we can't, you can't. No one ever wondered why.
Barack Obama was president of the Harvard Law Review, a status that could have had him living as a billionair now. Instead, he chose civil rights advocacy. We all know from his CV what he has done up till now.

IF elected, he would become the first African-American president, has put himself in the running to win by stressing his willingness to reach across political divides and calling for an end to partisan vitriol.

"We can't have the same partisan food fight," Obama says

He has mostly avoided polarizing allusions to racial strife that energized presidential bids of Jesse Jackson in 1988 and Al Sharpton in 2004.

What is fascinating is Obama is not running on identity politics, he is attempting to transcend that and it has allowed him to have greater appeal."

His rejection of racial politics has, however, stirred dissatisfaction among some old-guard civil rights leaders, including Jackson, who in November accused Obama of not emphasizing enough "the plight of African-Americans."

But a few days later, Jackson's son, Rep. Jesse Jackson Jr. (D-Ill.), defended Obama. "Like Lincoln, Obama called on us to come together and face the new millennium together, as one people - as Americans," the younger Jackson, Obama's national co-chairman, wrote in an editorial.

To be sure, Obama has made frequent reference to slavery and his own African heritage. "I am running in this race because of what Dr. [Martin Luther] King called the fierce urgency of now," Obama repeats on most of his stumps. That he is standing where he is standing because someone somehwere stood up when it was unpopular, and then anotherperson stod up, and another. And finally a people is standing up for change. We all know what happens when a people stands up.

But he also reminded Americans that whites were among the abolitionists and today, are bonded with urban workers in Chicago, traders on Wall Street and immigrants in San Diego by a shared desire for safe neighbourhoods for their parents, good schools for their children, the freedom to chose their own sense of spirituality and a comfortable retirement when they are old.

That has won him passionate support everywhere in America where there is the new generation as he himself calls it though blacks are less than 14 percent of the population. Because as he says, there is no black america, or latino america, or white america, BUT the united states of america that has the same problems. That one voice can change, a city, a state, a country and the world.

In this day and age I wonder what the next few months hold for us descendants of the so called ‘inferior race’. But like Obama I would agree that what the people of the state of Iowa have shown in their presence at his rallies, defying the temperatures, the hate mails, the cynics to attend, is already a VICTORY for inspiration and the desire to mend the world. NO MATTER the outcome of the caucuses. And never in future will the Black man be regarded as the other anymore. Congratulations Mr. Barrack Obama

We all DREAM. And it is ok to dream. If not we would not be able to define HOPE.