Comment on Colleague's Blog (Blog 6)

     Eric Wang's article, which can be found HERE, discusses the voter participation rates in Texas compared to those elsewhere in the nations. Overall I enjoyed his writing style and his discussion points. In fact several of them I voiced on my Exam number 1, such as the fact that failure to vote gives a voice to a less and less representative part of the population. Ultimately that can "break the system," as Eric put it, by listening to the voice of only a few when the system itself is built upon hearing the voice of many.

     Although I am confident Eric was throwing some hypothetical ideas out there as a possible resolution I will have to disagree with his notion that " maybe the only way to jolt the public awake from their deep sleep of apathy is for the government to something so unpopular and controversial that a major public backlash would ensue, sparking an interest in local and state government as a defense mechanism towards the government. " 

     Does this type of thing not happen quite often in the government? It seems like nearly every time I turn on the news, on any channel, there is some sort of nation-wide scandal involving the public, business, or government. Perhaps it is these very events that one would think to "jolt the public awake," is in fact putting them into a deeper and deeper sleep. I cannot speak for everyone when I say that I personally stopped watching the news because I got enraged and eventually bored with their continuous efforts to make every event overblown and taken out of context. Their constant coverage of political, racial, and economic scandals became too much to bear. 

     This is similar to the "scary world syndrome" which local news stations are mostly guilty of perpetuating. In this instance however, the national news which covers most of the election, propositions, and other political happenings tend to create a "conspiracy world syndrome" (if that phrase hasn't been coined yet) where we are made to feel like every piece of information is wrong, misused, misleading, and ultimately the person disseminating it is of unethical character.  It teaches us to trust no one. 

     And so I conclude. Well written blog Eric, but I don't agree that a major political event or scandal would do anything to improve the situation.