When I was growing up I was always taught that you respect your elders. You say "Yes Mam," and "No Sir." You respect your brothers and sisters. You respect those around you because they are human beings. People can be sued and do time for extreme cases of disrespect.
So why do we seem to give little to no respect for our own President of theUnited States? George Bush is a target, laughable in the media, the punchline for thousands of blogs, u tube videos, and television spoofs. If we as a nation are expressing our utmost disrespect for our own president, how can other nations respect us. We laugh at our own leader, and make ourselves look bad in the eyes of other nations.
Every human being makes mistakes and every human being is equally entitled to respect.
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
9 comments:
I think it is sad that this country has gotten to the point of disrespecting the President of the United States. It is a disgrace to other countries. I couldn't agree with you anymore.
However, be mindful of why people are disrespectful. Our politicians have basically sold us out and they lie to us, including the person who occupies the White House. If that is hard to believe, just look at where all of our jobs have headed to. (China/India, etc)
The gap between the rich and the poor is continuing to increase, it is harder and harder to make ends meet, our schools have been constantly under funded partly because of our politicians generous supply of corporate welfare, we are way behind the rest of the industrialized world in many fields including education, and finding alternative energy sources.
Lets face it, if you want to be honest to yourself, you could go on and on about why people are disrespectful. But the bottom line is, many our leaders don't care about us one bit. They seem to be more interested in the small minority of wealthy corporate owners. Just look at New Orleans and Hurricane Katrina. It has been many decades that politicans have ignored the levee system there, knowing that it needed an overhaul. No one wanted to touch that one because it wouldn't get them votes. And Mr. Bush's response to the event, along with other agencies and people, was unbelievable, talk about an embarrassment to the rest of the world, we can invade other countries with our smart bombs, but we can't take care of our own. Just think about the poverty in our own country, we can loan billions to other nations, yet 47 million Americans are without health insurance, many are way below poverty level, etc.
Yes, it is ashame, when I was growing up, the office of the Presidency was held in much more respect than today, which was even less then when my parents were children. But then again, when I grew up, gas was 30 cents a gallon, you only needed one wage earner in the family, people had more time to be respectful. Now we can hardly breath with the meaningless hectic pace we are all on. Be well, I really do appreciate your sentiment. Things will get better, and hopefully, we can restore the image and actions of the U.S., the way it ought to be, world leaders, not a world embarassment.
We disrespect our president because, as you said, he IS a human being. Tell me, if your best buddy began lieing to you, spun a web of mostly refuteable BS around himself to keep up that lie, and when called on it, simply mumbled some incoherent garbage about those punks down the street egging his car before going back into his house--wouldn't you, and all of the other kids you know, go around ripping on him and talking about how annoying/stupid he was behind his back?
I sure would. We can only change a situation by looking at it and saying that there is somehting wrong, not by sitting around saying "Yes, sir." and thinking that tomorow things will get better, or that someone, or a system, will just wake up on their epiphany toilet and say "Well, I went about this all wrong!"
I agree with you. I doesn't matter who the President is, or even what he has done or will do, he is the President, our President, and we have put him in a place of leadership, and we have to respect that, even if we don't like it, just as we will have to respect the next President of the U.S., whoever he or she might be.
The truth is, though, that the president has always been disrespected, this is nothing new. No president has ever lived without these type of attacks. In fact, presidents used to make these kinds of attacks themselves. A good collection of quotes can be found here. In particular, check out the letter from a citizen to Abraham Lincoln on the second page of quotes -- it can't be reproduced here...
>It is a disgrace to other countries.
Probably not. Most other countries do this as much, if not more than we do. In a number of countries, leaders are burned in effigy. Also, our leaders are less popular in almost every country in the world than they are here, so it is probably taken as a positive sign that people attack our president.
The Professor is right. You think this is bad? Jamaica doesn't just dis-like their leaders they straight up try to kill them, over and over and over. Infact its expected and no secret at all. The political leaders are only left with the question of when are they going to be attacked. And from what I can remember George Bush was ridiculed more and more over time. Therefore my principle may be correct. Your given a certain amount of respect and play a large role in if it rises or lowers. Respect is given but mostly earned. If my mother wasn't good at her job of being a mother I wouldn't call her by that title, it's just the way things are.
>People can be sued and do time for extreme cases of disrespect.
Only if that disrespect becomes violent.
>Every human being makes mistakes and every human being is equally entitled to respect.
Were Saddam Hussein and Mother Theresa equally entitled to respect?
Good, well-grounded people deserve respect. George W. bush is a good person, a good leader, and has stood his ground for what he believes in. For that, George Bush does deserve people's respect.
>Good
>well-grounded
>good person
>a good leader
>stood his ground for what he believes in
These things are always opinions and people will always disagree over them. No president ever has universal (or even remotely close to it) support and never will. Whether or not someone like the president deserves respect, no president will ever get it from everyone.
Don't forget, most people agree that Abraham Lincoln was the best president in our history and they killed him.
Post a Comment