History and Political Science have been an embarrassingly rude awakening to me. I knew about slavery, of course, and you would have to have lived on the moon to not realize we took a big dump on the Indians. Somehow, I still thought we were fairly well behaved as a nation. It seems this is not the case. I realized we had migrated away from the vision of government our forefathers held, but I had no idea the level of blatant self interest voter apathy permits in our elected officials. I had never reflected on the truth that a selfish, fearful population is the one most easily manipulated. I find myself alarmed, but try to keep in mind I am like a emotional savant, with childish expectations of virtue, and a petulance born of growing up in what counts for poverty in the one of the most prosperous countries in the world. I find myself considering political issues, and wondering at a lasting solution. It seems to me, probably the best thing we could do to straighten out politics would be to eliminate the middleman. The selfishness of the general population creates more than enough chaos. We want what serves us best, and to hell with the other faction. This makes the American Public easy to manipulate, and the political machine, which to me seems to include business, government, and organized religion, grows in wealth and power by siphoning these off of the American people. Most of us seem to realize that the roofies has worn off...we even know who is screwing us. We just can't seem to reach enough lucidity to do anything about it. A platform of specific reforms would be lengthy, and probably impractical after the editing required to get a huge grass roots movement to all agree on it. Perhaps just a few things at a time, is the ticket. we could chisel away at the problem rather than specific symptoms. I think the election process needs to be more about competency than money, and the name recognition /media exposure the money purchases. So from now on, no reporting on elections. every candidate gets equal time, his voting record on past issues is published, and media coverage is limited to live rhetoric or debate. Please do not analyze the candidates for us. We wanna grow up and learn to do it ourselves (I feel like I've been asleep).
I also think election campaigns should have a cap on spending. If we remove the need to compete for campaign contributions, the public interest will begin to have the same clout as the corporate interest, and citizens will be as important as lobbyists. And we pay them too much. Pay them less, and make them utilize public health care. They'll come up with a great plan, overnight. I promise. My little pea brain thinks this would completely change the political climate of America.
About the picture... I seldom go to the trouble to take a self portrait, but insomnia can take you out of your comfort zone. The right eye is A star similar to our sun that has exploded, and the left eye is The Orion Nebula, both taken by the Hubble Telescope and gathered from the Hubble website. Airbrushing them into my irises with Photoshop Elements, was the last thing I did after processing my mug. The HDR was done with Mediachance Dynamic Photo. I tried a little bit of burning, on my wrinkles, to add some mileage.
as to lighting, this was taken in the bathroom with me sitting on the counter opposite the mirror, which has a fixture across the top holding 6 bulbs. for this shot, a couple of the bulbs are unscrewed. It definitely qualifies, so I submitted it to the ghetto lighting pool.
as to lighting, this was taken in the bathroom with me sitting on the counter opposite the mirror, which has a fixture across the top holding 6 bulbs. for this shot, a couple of the bulbs are unscrewed. It definitely qualifies, so I submitted it to the ghetto lighting pool.
