About Politics

Allow me to digress a bit. Politics, unless you choose being a public servant as a career, may not seem directly relevant to this project or forum. However, I'd like to share a few thoughts on the subject since I think it's very much part of the social frabric of our society and could, in one way or other, define who you are or make you a more matured citizen.

The following is what I posted on Facebook just now, morning after the election.

"As a matter of principle, I don't comment on politics on FB for the following reasons:

1. It's the single most divisive fault line of this great nation. Red v. Blue, You v. Me. The election heatmap indeed shows the divided states of America.

2. From my observations, people get very emotional when they talk about politics. This is great because people care. However, on the flip side, taken to the exteme, with emotions not checked, such discussions quickly become very personal, judgmental and irrational.

3. As average citizens, we are more than entitled to our own study and analysis of the challenging issues facing the country and voice our positions through our rights and action to vote. However, when our "public" discourses, on a forum like this, are reduced to sound bytes, sliced facts, rhetorical rants and worse yet, disrespectful personal attacks, I decided that I refuse to participate.

Nevertheless, this doesn't mean that I am cynical and doubtful of our political process. I firmly believe that individually we may make a decision incorrectly and even collectively we could make the wrong calls from time to time, however, in the long run, together, we will steer the course of this nation to a bright future... if we stay united.

And hence what I like about the message of President Obama's 2012 victory speech with the following excerpts:

"I have always believed that hope is that stubborn thing inside us that insists, despite all the evidence to the contrary, that something better awaits us so long as we have the courage to keep reaching, to keep working, to keep fighting.

I believe we can seize this future together because we are not as divided as our politics suggests. We're not as cynical as the pundits believe. We are greater than the sum of our individual ambitions, and we remain more than a collection of red states and blue states. We are and forever will be the United States of America."

March on...."


Here is Transcript, video of President Barack Obama's 2012 election night victory speech in Chicago (Click Me)