Final Essay. (Don't Ask Questions.)

This Essay Was Written Poorly (But By Whom?)
Every day in our country, there are people who are given citations for traffic violations that have harmed no one. There are people convicted of “crimes” in which the “victims” attest they weren’t even harmed. There are people convicted of victimless crimes. At the same time, major government officials are robbing the rest of us in the world blind and covering up for it with other policies which hardly help us, or even blatantly lying about the actions they have taken in an effort to convince us that they were in our interest. Finally, on a daily basis, millions of people across our country accept these lies, and we become more and more an ignorant, self-centered, gullible, laughing stock of the world. On the rare occasion that the majority of us see through the lies, responsibility is shifted elsewhere. We say, “oh, well it’s someone else’s fault whom I’ve never heard of,” or the blame is shifted off of the person speaking and we accept that some mysterious government supercomputer which no one can control made the decision.

A couple weeks ago, I was going 60 in a 40 on a street where the other 3 cars traveling my direction must have been going 55. It was about 11 a.m. on a weekday, and there were no pedestrians. A police officer pulls out of a side street and proceeds to pull me over and give me a ticket. He tells me, “I know no one’s around, but slow down, alright?” Whatever happened to no harm, no foul? I didn’t hit anyone. In the mean time, our president George W. Bush wages a war on people, who, um, uh… control oil fields that he wants? He’s using our military to steal from and kill others so he and his buddies can make money.

After September 11th, 2001, our military closed two of three escape routes from southeastern Afghanistan where Osama Bin Laden was believed to be. He likely escaped out the third. Who’s to know what really happened when media coverage is limited due to political interests?

In March this year, U.S. Attorney General Alberto Gonzalez stated, “Mistakes were made,” in an effort remove himself from the position of responsible party for the firing of eight U.S. Attorneys late last year. “Mistakes.” What kind of mistake is that? Whoever (certainly not Gonzalez) made these “mistakes” just accidentally hit the delete key in the U.S. Attorneys database? In a press conference on July 10th, George W. Bush looked to shift responsibility for our direction in Iraq saying, “I believe Congress ought to wait for General Petraeus to come back and give his assessment of the strategy that he's putting in place before they make any decisions. That's what the American people expect.” Bush also looks to show that he supports the American people in their desire to know what is really going on as well as attempting to change what most of us want to know, “what is the strategy in Iraq, “ from say, what we may have been thinking before, “why are we in Iraq.” In this way he keeps us concerned with lesser issues and also from questioning the war. In his essay, “Politics and the English Language, George Orwell says, “Political language… is designed to make lies sound truthful and murder respectable, and to give an appearance of solidity to wind.” (Orwell, 86) George Bush is saying, “We have a strategy, and it’s going to work, but if it doesn’t, then don’t blame me. We have a strategy, because this is something important to us that needs to be done.” Meanwhile, the question, “why?” has been further crammed in the back of our minds.

While our minds are clouded with lie upon lie and political actions taken by non-existent politicians, the gap between rich and poor increases, as does the gap between aware and unaware. Because citizens of the United States receive petty traffic tickets and criminal records for the use of marijuana, they are convinced that our government always promotes doing the right thing and does the right thing. If not, what are laws for? It’s a rhetorical question. Laws are in place for a good reason, right? Or are they in place to distract us from the real issues? Are we going to continue to assume there’s a good reason for everything, or will we learn to dig deeper and question authority? “Until they become conscious they will never rebel, and until after they have rebelled they cannot become conscious.” (Orwell, 73) We need to become aware of our environment if we wish to change it. Then we must act.

Bibliography
Orwell, George. Politics and the English Language. Taken from, “75 Readings across the Curriculum”. McGraw-Hill, 2006.
Orwell, George. 1984. Penguin Group, 2003.


***Here's My Pre-Writing.

Randy Herskorn
EWRT1A
8/9/07
Final Exam

Every day in this country, there are people given traffic citations for violations that have hurt no one. There are people who are convicted of “crimes” in which the “victims” haven’t been harmed in anyway and will even attest to this. There are people who are convicted of victimless crimes. All the while government officials are robbing the rest of us in the world blind and covering up for it with other policies, which hardly benefit us at all, even hurt us. If they can’t do that, they try to shift blame away from themselves, and even go so far as to blame someone else, i.e. George Bush in a July 10 Press conference this year, “And I believe Congress ought to wait for General Petraeus to come back and give his assessment of the strategy that he's putting in place before they make any decisions. That's what the American people expect.” It’s not George W. Bush’s strategy, now that the vast majority of the American people he speaks of appear to just expect our troops to come home and the unjust, losing war effort in Iraq to be abandoned.

Now, I've got a Macroeconomics final to attend to. :(