America sings the Revolution Blues

I made a t-shirt to celebrate Election Day. I wanted to let my fellow academics know how I felt about a certain presidential candidate. The graphic was composed of a silhouetted soldier at arms above the words "We'll sleep sound when we're in the ground!" These words were written in a bold stenciled font in all capital lettering above the "McCain 2008" campaign logo with the little star centered between two bars. In my first class of the day, two students seated behind me became interested in my art. One asked, "What does your shirt mean?" While the other asked, "Do you support McCain?" I replied, "Yes. Yes I do. I support John McCain because I want to invade Iran and continue the needless killing of American troops." One student looked disgusted, the other looked ashamed, and a third person actually made that jaw dropped "only in movies" face of bewilderment. The teacher, upon witnessing the commotion, wandered over to stare at my shirt. In his analysis, he read the shirt's statement out loud and chuckled, which brought the shirt to the attention of the entire class. I got a few laughs, but it seemed there was a general sense of rage splattered across the entirety of the room. I was under the impression my message was easy to understand and I had no idea I would run into the disaster of being mistaken as a McCain supporter. I thought the nation was in a liberal leaning ideological state, especially on a college campus. But more importantly I thought people were not this moronic. My distress rose to a new high when a girl in this same classroom said something along the lines of, "Yeah, I'm not even voting, I'm registered, but I just don't know enough about either candidate to make a good decision." Did she live in the same America that I did? It didn't appear that she had gouged out her eyes or stabbed out her eardrums, but somehow she was able to avoid nearly two years of presidential candidates clogging up every inch of the media. We do not live in an America where political scientists and avid watchers of C-SPAN are the sole folks enlightened with the workings of politics. From CNN to Comedy Central, hours upon hours of airtime have been spent dealing with the ins and outs of this election. The world of the college student has been barraged with opinions about America's future. Every class I'm taking, from Elementary French to American National Government has touched on the presidential race. Groups like the College Democrats and the College Republicans meet regularly. There's even new group called INDIE that serves to invoke discussion and spread non-partisan political education that has been meeting on campus (I created this group and that was a shameless plug). Anyone willing to use his or her brain for a few minutes can grasp America's political situation. The issue here is that most students do not go to meetings. They actively avoid being informed. They intentionally paint themselves a world that is no bigger than the downtown DeLand bar scene. In the end most people would rather put more effort into being uninformed than they would like to put into rationalizing the impact of their decisions. We have lost the motivation of parent's generation had when they were in college. America paved the way for Obama to be president forty years ago. They stood up for people other than themselves, they took a challenging path, and made America a better place. They fought the battles and we signed it off. Our generation had a battle to fight, we had the opportunity to change America for the better, but instead most Floridians took the easy way out. Three states, including Florida, have put gay marriage bans on their constitutions. 59 out of Florida's 67 counties passed "Amendment 2" with the over 60% it needed to pass. We finished our parents' movement, but failed to start our own. Now we our children will have to live with a legacy of our ignorance. You don't get a free intolerance towards a minority card because you gave the presidency to a different minority. If we can accept Obama's message of change and join him to change America over the next four years instead of remaining ignorant then we still have a chance to save ourselves.

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