How Do We Get Distracted?

Below is a list of things being thrown at us to distract us from more important issues we could be paying attention to, the issue I think they’re trying to sidestep when they mention them, and my personal solution to that issue.

1. Distraction: Gas Tax Holiday- woo! 18 cents a gallon is sure to make up for the $2 a gallon increase over the last 18 months.

Issue: Oil companies are paying civilian contractors an obscene amount of money to “keep the iraqi oilfields in working order” and are still managing to record record profits, in the 30-45% range depending on who you ask. Prior to the war, they were making profits in the 15-25% range. So the price doubled, and their profits almost doubled. That’s called price fixing. It’s illegal and we’d rather freeze a beneficial tax than confront them about it.

My Solution: Any profit they make over say… 20% should be taxed at a rate of 99%, and watch the gas prices fall back to a reasonable level. Keep in mind this is 20% PROFIT… after overhead. They still grow making this, they just won’t be able to gouge us as much to do it.

2. Distraction: Democratic Nominee hooplah. You know McCain is loving every minute of it, because the closer we get to the election with the democrats still fractured, the less chance they have of winning.

Issue: This one falls under the same headline as every partisan distraction tactic used by both republicans and democrats ever since the media became a cheap and easy way to manipulate our opinions. That being one aimed at hiding (in plain sight) the fact we’re currently in a country that’s being run by an unofficial two-party duopoly that is a complete bastardization of everything the constitution’s framers intended.

Solution: Eliminate the antifusion statutes that currently prevent a viable third-party candidate from appearing. Not being able to run with the support of multiple political parties will always favor the two most extreme and/or polarized parties because people will side with them out of fear that if they don’t, the other extreme will win. This lends itself towards the polarized feeling that purveys America. Now, if these statutes were to be removed, what could happen? Compromise. Without having to pick an extreme, there’s a chance politicians might calm down and seek a rational compromise instead of the “my way of the highway” crap they spout now. If one of them could, reasonably, draw the approval of multiple third parties, we might even break free of the two-party duopoly we’re mired in. (yes, this is a nearly word-for-word quote from my comment on Lofter’s blog)

3. Distraction: War in Iraq. I’m not saying it’s a good thing, but try to look past it for a moment and you’ll see what it’s really hiding from us.

Issue: Just look what we’re ignoring because they’ve given us something more selfish to care about. Haven’t heard much about Burma or Darfur have you? The former is having a huge human rights crisis, and the latter is undergoing an ethnic cleansing on almost the same scale (per capita) as Hitler did in WW2. But because we’ve been too distracted by our troops first being deployed and at war in Afghanistan, and now Iraq… we’re just blinded to it… in fact only one news program I’ve seen even mentioned it… and it was entertainment tonight, because Jim Carry said something about it. That’s just sad.

Solution: Quit letting the media choose what you hear. Seek out the truth and seize it. You know if we’d spent the money we did going into Iraq helping Darfur instead fewer people would hate us? I’m just sayin.

Thats all for now. My brain is tired and I have one more final to get through tomorrow. Maybe I’ll think of more things to list later.

Peace.

Vic Veritas