Please read it the whole post (especially the last paragraph) before you fully make your opinion on it, and feel free to correct me if I’m mistaken on any stats I brought up or facts I mixed up.

Obama gave his State of the Union speech last night.. I didn’t care to watch it. I dropped a video for the song “Letter To The President” off my album so I figured most of the people that know me already know where I stand on presidential affairs and I didn’t feel like speaking on the address. That was until I logged into Facebook and saw this:



Several other people had copied and pasted the same thing, word-for-word. I feel it’s so obvious what’s wrong with those people doing that that I shouldn’t have to break it down, but I will anyway. To touch on some of those points:

• 1. Osama bin Laden’s body has never been shown to the public, and even if he really is dead, how does his death really benefit the American public? Was he really the big of a threat to us anymore? And is killing him a real solution to terrorism?
• 2, 3, and 4. The unemployment rate may be down, but 55% of americans are now living below the poverty line. What does that tell you?
• 5. There is still a war in Afghanistan which is barely spoken about or shown to us in the media.
• 6. He repealed Don’t Ask Don’t Tell (gays in the military bill)… cool… but he signed the NDAA. Not cool.
• 7. Okay, i’m cool with this one, whatever.
• 8. Did we really need Obama to know that there were racist Republicans? There are plenty of racist Democrats, too. Why not address the racism that goes on daily in our schools, justice system, etc?
• 9. Just because the majority of black voters are voting for him, that doesn’t gaurantee that he’s going to do the right thing as president. If most voters paid attention to his campaign speeches, they would see a lot of the same empty promises he made being repeated in this State Of The Union.
• 10. Okay for one, how can anyone prove that he’s never cheated on his wife, and more importantly why does this matter? The more faithful you are the better of a leader you’ll be?
• 11. wow…
• 12. You could say he “saved the auto industry…” or you could say he used federal money to bailout two big corporations, General Motors and Chrysler. Not quite the same thing.
• 13. He helped overthrow another country. Who’s running Libya now? are they better or worse? See this post for more info.
• 14. This never made sense to me that the president of a country that was fighting two wars at the time won this peace prize. And doesn’t it seem weird that a guy who this person praised for  “killing” Osama & overthrowing Ghaddafi would also get praised for winning a nobel peace prize??
• 15. Almost 2 million homes were foreclosed in 2011, and the housing market is still not improving.
• 16. See #2, 3, and 4- If 55% of us are below the poverty line, that means there’s not much of a middle class left.
• 17. I’ll wait until the healthcare actually kicks in before I celebrate this one.

Now, if you’re still with me, I’m not writing this because of my political affiliation, or even because I don’t like Obama. I’m writing this because I’m absolutely heartbroken at the lack of motivation people have to question the information they receive. The whole point of the State of the Union speech is to reassure you that everything’s going fine- not necessarily to tell you things as they truly are. This is an election year and Obama has to make himself look good and his Republican opponents look bad, plain and simple. People have been blindly copying and pasting that Facebook status I showed you, but I was able to easily counter most of those points by drawing on facts I was previously informed of and by doing just a few minutes of research. I doubt that anyone posting that status took the time to verify anything that it said.

I thought that was bad - until I hopped on Tumblr and decided to search “Obama.”

I saw images like this one:



I also read countless “I love Obama! He’s so cool!” type of posts that really disappointed me because no one was breaking down the facts and researching the claims he made in his speech- well, except these guys: http://whatthefuckhasobamadonesofar.com/ If you looked at their website at a glance, I guess it’s pretty impressive. According to the site’s operators, he signed some pretty cool bills this year. This one stood out to me: “Issued executive order to close the prison at Guantanamo Bay.” Last I checked, in 2012 Guantanamo is fully operational. I clicked the link the website cited. It was from 2009 and said that he had ordered the prison be closed within one year. Kind of an epic fail on this website’s part. But countless people are going to websites like these, looking at images like the one above, and reading tweets and status updates like the one in the beginning and taking their word for it.

At the end of the day, I’m not writing this because I think you should vote for another candidate in the next election- even though the main purpose behind this speech was to persuade you to give him your votes. I can honestly say I prefer Obama over someone like Mitt Romney. But in the end, if you really look at history, every American president has served the ruling class and their agenda. They might throw us a bone here or there and sign some bills that appear to benefit us; or sing Al Green or play the sax like Bill Clinton; or deliver some really inspiring speeches (most of which are written for them by their staff), but in the end every president we’ve ever had has allowed (if not perpetuated) the same social inequalities and imperialist conquests that America has been responsible for since it was created.

The point I’m trying to make is that the president and the government aren’t the ones who are going to make this world a better place for us- we are. The function of the government is supposed to be to serve the people. If we accept everything the government tells us and don’t let our own voices be heard, how will anything ever change? In college I was taught that often, students learn about the Civil Rights Movement of the 60s and are given the impression that social change was achieved because John F. Kennedy and Congress passed some bills and made reforms, when really social change was made possible by the people who went out and demanded it. I urge you to go out and do the same, and to become informed on the issues we’re dealing with today on your own. Do your own research, don’t blindly accept the things people tell you- including me. If you can prove me wrong, go for it.

And if you do think things are changing for the better, go visit some of the communities all over the country that have suffered the same for generations under Obama, Bush, Clinton, and Reagan alike.

Don’t sleep.

Peace.