Which Side to Take?

1.       The American news media does like to rely on polls for political and social issues or to rate politicians’ performances. Since you cannot get out and interview every single American about their opinions of today’s happenings in the world of politics or social issues, polls have become a very convenient way to figure out a rough idea of what the public thinks and feel. However, convenience may lead to sloppy numbers that are not always particularly representative of the majority of the population. Besides, certain news media can be biased in their political mind set and, when creating polls, word them cleverly enough to help people pick the choices that the news media will want them to choose to provide cold hard “data” to back up their statements and beliefs. As well, these polls are completely voluntary, and it is usually people who have very strong opinions on the topic at hand are more likely to vote on the polls, and the polls are sometimes based on a small survey group. If you take notice at CNN’s recent polls, one of them is polling the percentage of the mixed views of Obama’s inauguration, but the poll was made up based on 408 adult Americans. That is not near enough people to take the poll completely seriously, especially with a margin of error at 5%.  It even states on the bottom of the website that the polls were taken using “CNN approved polling methodology” and then goes on to say that there are some polls that are put up that do not meet their criteria, which are then marked with an asterisk. That in and of itself makes it seem as though the polls can be twisted by the news media for a more favorable outcome. Now, not all polls are like this, and some can be very reliable, and in fact predict the outcomes of certain issues, such as the presidential election of 2012. The polls ended up favoring Obama near the end, and it was indeed Obama who won. People must simply be more careful about what these news media polls say, however, and should look for more unbiased polls, if possible.

2.       Political identification for me is not very important at all, and mostly due to the fact that describing yourself with your political ideology can create impressions for people who do not even really know you, leading them to either see you in a favorable or very unfavorable light. It’s a ridiculous way to judge someone before you even get to know them. Besides, should I really even care about those ridiculous political sides? Not particularly. Politics is important, but I don’t believe in playing into a certain side’s wants and needs and supporting their ventures just because I see myself as a Democrat, Republican, Independent, Libertarian, or whatever else I choose to be, and think that supporting them is what I’m suppose to do. It’s all a very “us versus them” mindset at the moment in American politics. If they choose to support something, then by God, we’ll oppose it! And so goes on a constant power struggle in American politics. However, everyone else around me seems to like playing sides. My parents and grandparents tend to be more on the conservative side, while my friends like to parade around with the sign “Democrat” blinking around their heads in neon lights. It’s all very tiring. Perhaps they find playing sides helps them to easier define themselves to other people, or maybe they really do believe in that political mind set, but I just can’t bring myself to do it.

3.       I feel that it is influenced by both economic and social issues, as both directly impact my life, and that sometimes they go hand-in-hand, but if I were to pick one of the two, then I would be more influenced by social issues . Obviously, I want to be stable economically myself, and to make sure that happens, I’m going to vote for laws and policies that I believe would promote growth in our economy. However, if such policies were to tread on a social issue, like making labor unions illegal (as they are in China), then I’d be against them, as I feel that infringing on people’s rights is an obvious wrong that should be avoided, and that their rights should always come first, because a wealthy but unhappy society is worthless.

I wrote on Gabrielle Miller, Jessica Tucker, and Elise Black's blogs.