I could write about Sarah Palin, but honestly, conversations on her candidacy, interviews, and recent resignation have all been exhausted to the point where I wonder, what’s the point?
Two wars abroad, a 9% unemployment rate, stories of homeless veterans, a military coup in Honduras, and a battle raging in Congress to determine the future of Universal Health Care represent a fraction of the issues we face.
It’d be easy to talk about Sarah Palin—but those conversations won’t bring us closer to reforming an education system that leaves children, and in some cases entire districts, behind. Those conversations won’t bring us closer to reforming our immigration system or to giving every young person who wants a college education a way to afford it. I get it, she resigned, her decision has sent the political world in a frenzy. But c’mon- how much more is there to say?
Over the weekend, the New York Times published an article on a paper that President Obama wrote when he was a student at Columbia. The paper focused on his hope for a world free of nuclear warheads. He spent yesterday, over 20 years later, with the President of Russia Dmitry Medvedev. After intense negotations, both countries agreed to reduce their nuclear stockpiles by over a third. It’s a historic agreement, and President Obama has indicated that he’s only getting started on his mission to work towards achieving a nuclear free world.
To think, he drew these conclusions based on papers that he wrote as a student. He went on to be a community organizer, a State Senator, a US Senator, and now as President, he’s able to act on concepts founded in his youth.
The way I see it, if we spend all our time focusing on Sarah Palin then we might miss an opportunity to start building our own foundations.
Twenty years from now, every one of us possesses the ability to do something significant. We might not be negotiating a draw down of our country’s nuclear arsenal, but the point is it starts with an idea. Except now, those ideas aren’t confined to the classroom. With blogs and twitter and facebook—any idea can be passed to friends and strangers within seconds. Your ideas can help change the world, now. Politics doesn’t have to be dull, we can and should bring our creativity to the conversation.
So…we could talk about Sarah Palin, or, we could speak up on just about anything else.
