The Status Quo

I read a lot of letters and articles on line, view videos on YouTube and check posts on Digg.com and Reddit.com. From all of this, I had gotten the impression that a majority of Americans feel like Howard Beale from Network, i.e. "I'm as mad as Hell and I am not gonna take this anymore!"

At the beginning of the nominating process, there were four candidates that actually represented a change from the old way of doing things. I know, nearly all candidates talk about change, but look at their platform and you will see which ones are really interested in change and which ones are gonna promote the status quo. The four who actually represented change were Mike Gravel, Dennis Kucinich, Ron Paul and Bill Richardson. They certainly had differences in their individual platforms, but based on their positions, I believe that anyone of them would have, if elected, tried to make a change in the way our country is being run. If you total up all of the votes that they have received so far, I think you would find that it amounts to about 10 percent of the total votes cast. That tells me that there are about 1 in 10 of us that share Howard Beale's sentiments and are willing to do something about it. Everyone else, regardless of what they say, are satisfied with the status quo.