The State of Things

I'm going to start with something I think we can all pretty much agree on and then branch out from there.

This is the United States of America.

Now when I mean this, I don't mean this blog, I don't even have a flag posted anywhere. But generally speaking, I'm there. You're probably there. This is the United States of America. And in the United States of America we practice a form of government known as, representative democaracy.

This is the United States of America, a representative democracy.

Representative as opposed to direct. Direct democracy meaning that citizens of the republic all directly vote on issues to decide what collective course of action they would take. In our busy lives, who has time for that? So we elect representatives to vote on our behalf a la councilmen, senators, members of the House.

This is the United States of America, where I am represented by someone!

Now we go about selecting these gentlemen and ladies through a process called voting. Every so often, we decide who it is that we'd like to represent our vote in Washington. Now...here's where I make my point. During the last string of congressional elections we elected a majority of Democrats to sit and represent us in the House of Representatives. We also elected a good deal of Democrats to represent us in the Senate as well, so much so that the Democratic party needed very little help from Republican Congressmen to pass the newly signed $787 billion stimulus package into law.

This is the United States of America, where a majority of my elected officials voted to pass a bill!

So when a few Republican Governors begin to talk about the idea of rejecting the stimulus funds bound for their states, you begin to wonder. Just where the hell am I anyway?

This is the United States of America?