2016 Election: Odd Memes

citizenA family member posted this the other day and then I noticed that a few other people shared it as well. Generally when something is shared by three different groups of friends on Facebook, I feel it is worth a look. We shall work from the top to the bottom.

First, it looks like someone decided to open a text box in Microsoft Paint on top of whatever was the title originally. I tried to search for this elsewhere and all I could find was that the top once said “This 4th of July…Here is all I want.”

We move down to Obama. Ctrl-U. OR highlight Gone! and click the Underline symbol. It just looks stupid. The subject on the left is underlined and black, whereas the response to the rest of them is red and not underlined. See how simple it is? Keep the aesthetic the entire way through.

Look, you can hate Obama all you want. It is now 2016. He has been the President of the United States for eight years. You are going to get your wish, he will be gone. The country is still here. I know, some of you will say that it is in shambles, but the United States of America still exists. We are not some crazy Islamic State or something. The country is not called the Soviet Union of America. You may not like some of the stuff, but my side could say the same thing about the Bush years, but we did not say that America was ruined or anything insane.

How closed of borders does this person want? I agree that we need secure borders. And I think for the most part, the government does a good job. It is not like we have had someone fly a plane into a building or anything in the past fifteen years. I consider that a win. Does this person want us to become a completely isolationist country? Not allowing anyone into the country at all? Yikes, that seems like a bad idea. Also, if that is the case, we may need to up the education level since so many doctors, engineers, programmers are immigrants.

Why does English have to be the chosen language? We were originally British colonies, so I get that many of the people that came here spoke English, but what about Spanish? I mean, the Spanish did set up the first colony technically (if we count Florida). But really, when you think about it, there were already people living here. They did not speak English or Spanish. Shouldn’t the language of America be the same language spoken by the native population? And seriously, 79.2% of the people speak English in this country. Only about 4% of the people in this country do not speak the language at all.

The next part is extremely confusing to me. How does one celebrate the Constitution and Bill of Rights as culture? Am I missing something here? I know from anthropology that culture can be a somewhat murky thing to define, but looking at the standard, dictionary definition: “the arts and other manifestations of human intellectual achievement regarded collectively.” Granted, the Constitution is a superb manifestation of human intellectual achievement, but is that the only aspect to which the person wants us to celebrate? Maybe they meant in a more governmental form that the culture of government should stick to the Constitution. However, the Constitution is a fairly complex document. Some of it is hard to know the original intention and how it applies to today. That is the one of the main roles of the Supreme Court, they decide whether something is Constitutional or not (probably a gross oversimplification to which someone will say “that is not what they do!”).

Next we have the drug free part. Look, some states have tried this and it just does not make sense. I know it sounds great since people seem to think that anyone on welfare must be a lazy, drug addict just trying to scam the system. However, that is not really the case. The states that did this? Spent a ton of money in order to catch a very low number. In Missouri (2014), it works out to about less than 1% of the welfare recipients and yet the testing cost over $300,000. You can read about it if you would like (although, I feel like most people will say that this is just biased).

It is hard to understand what they mean by “no freebies to non-citizens.” I understand why someone might say “I don’t want any of my money being spent on a non-citizen!” I suppose that makes sense. It is hard for me because I have compassion, but whatever. The problem with a blanket statement like that is who and what does it mean? Are we talking foreign aid? Are we talking about those times when we give benefits and assistance to illegal immigrants? How much of our actual budget does that really affect? Again, this is one of those things that sounds really good, but when you look at the numbers, it does not make a huge dent. I can think of other budgetary spending issues that make me more angry.

After that we have a few blanket statements that I think most people would agree with like a balanced budget and tax reform. However, the next one is about term limits for Congress & Senators. Ughhhhh. Look, Congress is made up of the Senate and the House of Representatives. They could have just said Term Limits for Congressmen. Or perhaps they could have said Term Limits for Representatives and Senators. Either one would be fine. But, wouldn’t term limits for Congress go against the culture part a few lines ago? You remember, the part about adhering to the Constitution. Nowhere in Article I does it say anything about term limits. It is specific about age and how long they had to be a citizen, but it does not say they could not keep being elected. So how can the person creating this meme be true to their Constitutional culture, but want to change it?

Last, but not least, we have the 86% will send this on. Where did they come up with that number?

Okay, I had fun with this. This election cycle has definitely given us plenty of “fun” memes. Sadly though, 86% of the people consider those memes to be facts. Here is another fun fact for ya: only 19% of the people reading this post will finish it and then share it on Facebook.

Author: Ngewo