My purpose/ Thanks for commenting
744 words by Whitney Davis
After reading the comments that you gave me about my project, I have come to see that most of you did not actually understand what I was writing about. In essence, most of you thought I was urging people to vote, however, I wasn\’t. My goal is to just inform the younger generation of political issues, just so we can be aware. I sent an e-mail to Jason White describing how I felt about the matter, and I think it sums everything up pretty well. Here it is:
Jason,
Firstly, I would like to thank you for commenting on my blog. Secondly, I\’d like to thank you for making the comment that you made. Your comment reaffirmed what I hoped wouldn\’t happen. When I sat down to write this blog, I set out to write how I would improve political awareness. I had no intention of turning my project into a voting campaign. Sure, voting is important on some level, but my mission is not to get young people to vote. My mission is to get people aware of what is going on in politics. By the way, I appreciate your decision not to vote, and I too was debating whether or not I would participate in this year\’s election. But back to the point. Basically, it is clear that our country is in turmoil (in many aspects). After reading Thoreau\’s \”Civil Disobedience\” in English class, I realized that if there is something that I disagree with, I should take it upon myself to change it. But in order for me to make changes to something that I think is wrong, I have to know all of the facts about it in order to knowledgeably resist it. In this case, I am speaking about our government. In essence, I know that something is wrong, but I am not knowledgeable enough to know exactly what it is, or all of what it is for that matter. Similar to how you don’t like the election/voting process, I don’t like many of the policies we have here. But I need to know more about them in order to change it. With this in mind, I thought of the plans that I mentioned in my blog. The plans I made to help inform the youth, again aren’t to insist that they vote, but instead just to inform them in case they too disagree with policies and want to change them. In a sense, I want to fuel the fire. Just as you and I, I know that there are many youths who disagree with some of the aspects of our society. The ideal outcome of my plan is for young people to know just as much as some politicians, so in the next generation (or even in this one) we will know what to do and what not to do. So, to steal a little from you project; we, as a generation need to critically think about where we want our country to be heading in the future, and we need to think about how we logically can change things. But in the mean time, I do think you should consider voting, only because some key issues will be brought up in this election (one concerning the reinstatement of the draft, which will essentially effect you). Don’t get me wrong, I completely understand your reasoning behind not voting, but in this case, we have to choose the lesser of the two evils (even though I think Bush will win regardless ex. Florida 2000). And this is exactly why I agree with Thoreau on the point that he made about not wanting to put our rights and liberties in the hands of the majority. It sucks, but that’s the world we live in. And it’s our responsibility to make changes in the future, or to advocate change even now. Again, thanks for your comment. I will now make the necessary changes to my blog.
- Whitney
I hope this clears everything up. By the way, thanks all of you who wrote comments: Stephanie, Mary, Misunique, Jason, and Jade. You all made some things very clear to me. The comments were written very nicely, and they informed me that I was not as clear as I hoped to be because all of you thought I was writing about voting. But thanks again, and I hope I did not offend anyone.
October 14th, 2004 at 5:21 pm
I am glad you clarified what your project was but don’t attack people publicly like you did because we are not the only people to see this web site. An example is when someone read one of our blogs and wrote that we didn’t have good grammar and didn’t like to work. In other words it reflects badly on all of us, not just you. I think your project is a good start. I wish we could educate every voter because it seems as though some voters vote just to be doing something. The world is filled with choices in which we must choose the lesser of two evils. It’s just a part of life. When you get ready to pick your boyfriends and you have more than one to select from is a perfect example. Being that they are people they all have faults or things you do not agree with so you normally pick the one with the least faults or the one you could better deal with. Right?
To morrow is based on the decisions of today. So you’re right; we must advocate change now. By doing so we are able to change tomorrow.
October 17th, 2004 at 7:52 am
I\’ve got to disagree with the last comment. I don\’t think Whitney was attacking Jason by any means. And the thought of being nice to the point of dishonesty because there might be other people reading this stuff? I think that is one of the problems with the media today. Everyone is too scared/cautious to call it like it is. Instead, they say candidate X says the world is flat, however, candidate Y says that it is round. Back to you, anchor.
October 30th, 2004 at 3:06 am
I don’t know exactly when your project was created, but I hope you had enough time to implement it to some extent. I agree with you that it is very important that the issues be discussed with all voters, particularly those who are voting for the first time. Only a couple of months ago did I have that mindset that I would vote for John Kerry just because I did not like George W. Bush. When I started paying attention to some of the issues of debate, particularly those dealing with education, voting became much more important to me. Now that I think about it, I do not recall any kind of organization that, instead of trying to urge people to vote, informed them on what they will be voting for. I do not think you stated exactly how you were going to inform people about the political issues, but in my opinion, it doesn’t even have to be anything fancy. As long as you know what you’re talking about, and people actually take what you say into consideration, everything should be great. On the other hand though, you just might have to do some kind of crafty event to draw a crowd. Well, your project sounds great. Good luck!
October 31st, 2004 at 8:30 pm
I don’t know exactly when your project was created, but I hope you had enough time to implement it to some extent. I agree with you that it is very important that the issues be discussed with all voters, particularly those who are voting for the first time. Only a couple of months ago did I have that mindset that I would vote for John Kerry just because I did not like George W. Bush. When I started paying attention to some of the issues of debate, particularly those dealing with education, voting became much more important to me. Now that I think about it, I do not recall any kind of organization that, instead of trying to urge people to vote, informed them on what they will be voting for. I do not think you stated exactly how you were going to inform people about the political issues, but in my opinion, it doesn’t even have to be anything fancy. As long as you know what you’re talking about, and people actually take what you say into consideration, everything should be great. On the other hand though, you just might have to do some kind of crafty event to draw a crowd. Well, your project sounds great. Good luck!
December 10th, 2004 at 3:07 pm
I don\’t think that you were attacking Jason at all, you were just clearing a few things up. Anyways, I\’m glad that you are trying to educate people about the issues that are out there and I hope that you chose to vote on election day. I don\’t think there is any sense is knowing and complaining about the issues/system when you don\’t really try to solve them.