Awaking from the American Dream

Who are you going to vote for this upcoming United States presidential election: Giant Douche or Turd Sandwich?
South Park producers present serious issues with parodies like season eight’s episode Douche And Turd. Addressed in this episode is the irony of the whole American republic: As Americans get caught up in electing a leader, we fail to realize the irony that the two people the race comes down to are among the most hated people in the nation.

It’s fairly safe to say that roughly half the country hates Barack Obama, and roughly half the country hates Mitt Romney. And we are diligently working to elect one of them to be the United States ambassadors to the rest of the world.

Unfortunately, when you’re a politician, the name of the game isn’t to address the concerns of the people: it’s to win. And winning doesn’t involve addressing issues; it involves convincing the masses that your opponent is even less qualified than you are.

This year’s presidential campaigns are especially brutal. While a select few lay awake at night worrying about whether Romney filed his taxes on time, the rest of the American people grow increasingly concerned over real issues like the growing gap in the middle class, which is arguably the idea our entire nation was built on from the beginning.

We citizens all want the same things: good schools for our children, affordable healthcare for our loved ones, and a healthy economy. But somewhere in the process of deciding the best way to go about achieving these common goals, we all get a little lost in the insidious game of politics.

Giant Douche and Turd Sandwich aren’t the only ones who are guilty of shifting focus from constructive discussion to destructive competition—we are all guilty of demanding Romney’s tax returns and Obama’s birth certificate, among many other efforts that do nothing but divide us in times when we should be united.

The notion of the American Dream is as old as our nation itself; it’s a life the people of the United States have forever identified with and aspired to for generations.

So no matter if our president is Giant Douche or Turd Sandwich, we need to get back to the things that make us a proud and independent nation.