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What Gets My Goat: US Political System

I don’t know one person who didn’t think the US election was a load of bollocks. And although it’s finished and over with, every media source continues to update on the most boring, uninteresting, drawn out political process I’m probably going to witness in my lifetime. Why am I going back over something that should be left dead and buried you ask? I need to fill some space and I feel like bagging someone - and Americans are always an easy target. To me electing another Texan to be leader of the so called “New World” is like electing someone from Dapto to run the World Bank. Al Gore isn’t a much better candidate however, so it was really a loss-loss situation. If the day ever comes when the Australian Prime Minister wears personalised cowboy boots, it will be the day I move to New Zealand.

There’s many issues I struggle to understand with the US political system and I do hope someone someday will be able to give me a logical explanation. For starters, if your country is in the best position economically it has ever been in, wouldn’t it be intelligent to give your President another term? Don’t give me that crap about it’s in the constitution to have a maximum of two terms, so it can’t be changed. What’s going to happen if you change it? Washington isn’t going to haunt the corridors of the Whitehouse. If you think two terms is enough, let the people vote him out. Which brings to me to the issue of voting.

Okay, let’s say the two terms rule does stay in place. The election is here, and only a small percentage of the population actually vote. There is no reason you can give me to justify why there isn’t a law of compulsory voting in any country, whatever system you think your country be under, whether it be democratic or capitalist. If a country allows people to choose whether or not they vote, it means only political activists will decide the result of an election bringing politics down to a level of sport where the welfare of the country is less important than a win for the side. Every single person should take an interest in how their country is run. I’m not saying you should be left or right wing, but you should take each issue differently and have an opinion on it. Skatalites biographer Brian Keyo said the only Skatalites member who voted was Tommy McCook and to me that’s something to be ashamed of. They complain about what happened to their music and how it’s no longer how they envisaged, but what right do they have to judge anything that happens in the future if they didn’t express their right to vote. People may say music and politics is separate, but in reality everything has some political agenda. The fact Jamaica has changed definitely has something to do with ska changing - everything effects something else however much you try to maintain islolation.

Finally let me ask how a group of people can go to a party in such numbers after a candidate wins an election. These people haven’t even seen what George Doubleya Bush will do for their country, but they are celebrating in the streets, what a crock! I can understand family and friends congratulating him, but huge rallies and parties? Two words - TOO MUCH