The New American Revolution

The 2008 presidential election has opened my eyes up to changes that are going to happen. No, I don’t mean the whole Barak vs. McCain thing; I’m talking about the whole political process.

In the past, when people are younger they are liberal but as they grow older they tend to grow conservative as they get older (this is how a lot of people are, not all, some are conservative form the beginning and others stay liberal their entire lives). We even see this with our elected, Republican (conservative) candidates tend to be older while Democrat (liberal) candidates tend to be younger (we’re seeing this exaggerated in our current election, if elected Barak would be the 5th youngest president ever and if elected, McCain would be the oldest president ever elected (ahead of Ronald Regan).

I’ve noticed that the largest demographic in the US (baby boomers) are also the most conservative; I don’t think many people would argue that point.

Over the next few elections, as the baby boomers start to stop voting and more younger people start to vote, we’re going to see a serious swing in how our elections are handled. People are getting tired of the same old stuff that we get every 2, 4, and 6 years from the people who supposedly represent us. Votes are going to become more in-tune with “today”. Today’s technology, today’s politics, today’s world. They’re asking questions where the older generations took things for granted. Generation X started all of this but we were labeled as “whiners” and “babies” who didn’t know what we want. Now, though “generation Y / the MTV generation” are becoming more and more noticeable in today’s political world.

I think a good example of what could happen is the “Velvet Revolution” in the former nation of Czechoslovakia. High school and college students staged peaceful protests and gained popularity with their nation. It took only weeks for their communist government to step down and make way for elections which held until the country peacefully sprint into the Czech Republic and the Slovak Republic.

No, I’m not saying split the US into two, but peaceful protests and demonstrations can get the attention of governments, small and large. Unfortunately, too many people in the US want to turn peaceful protests into violence. Very rarely do we have a large peaceful protest stay that way, there are always bad eggs out there who want to promote violence and use innocent protests to get their own agenda going (which always ends in police intervening and ending what was a peaceful protest).

I also see this accelerating if McCain is elected. Conservatives usually don’t protest and fight, liberals do. We will see these changes coming faster and when they come, most of us won’t know what happened.

What changes? I think by 2020 (yes, only 3 elections away, 2012, 2016, and 2020) we’re going to see a strong representation by non-traditional parties (Republican and Democrat). We’re also going to see the promotion of unity (just look at the “divided we fail” ads). Right now, I think the worst part of our government is the political parties. The fact that we have just two and you will rarely see people working together from different sides. As other options come up and gain in popularity, we’ll see more cooperation between the sites.

I also think we’re going to see more politicians listening to us and not just spewing out what we want to hear. In the beginning (2016 and on) we’re going to see a lot of short term senators and representatives. They tell us one thing and then do another, they won’t get voted back in. As they catch on that people won’t take the smoke screens and stretched truths, they’ll start to stick with their word and deliver with what they promised us.

We have the tools now, Web 2.0 (interactive web). Anyone with an internet connection can get a blog and write their own stories, rants, and agenda. More advanced people can get sites and forums up to promote communities. The younger generations are quite adept at these tools while the older generations are having a harder time adapting. Who knows, maybe this will be the medium where the new revolution happens. Not on the streets but on our computers in our blogs and forums.