The opposite of love

[greybeta]

Just as a reminder, I use my blog to improve my writing/editing skills. And I happen to write for my college newspaper.

I'm still a bit unfocused, but this is the best I can do given my time constraints.

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The opposite of love
Daniel Tu

If someone asked you what the opposite of love is, what would you say it would be? The obvious answer would be hate, but that would not be the correct answer. Love and hate are merely strong emotions separated by a very thin line. The opposite of having a strong emotion would be having no emotion at all, i.e. indifference or apathy. Therefore, the opposite of love is not hate but apathy. Time and time again, apathy has proven to be a major source of disappointment for those involved with politics.

When John Kerry conceded to President Bush in the recent presidential election, Americans across the nation shook their heads in disbelief. How could this have happened? We found out that the majority of Americans will vote more strongly on social issues than their economic or foreign interests. Bush isn’t an idiot; moreover, he knew which issues would push voters and which issues would not.

Let us not blame the politicians for everything. We the people elect our government by voting, but a little over a fifth of our nation determined that George W. Bush should serve a second term in the White House. If the American people felt that a change needed to be made, then Bush would be the one giving a concession speech. Instead, Kerry’s many supporters bemoan the fate of our nation.

Speaking of supporters, volunteers and low-paid workers provide the bulk of the manpower in a political campaign. They invest their time knocking on doors and making phone calls for donations. They attend endless meetings to coordinate efforts between candidates on the local, state, and national levels. They eat bad food and work long hours to ensure their candidate has the best chance of winning. Some of them may have a business interest in doing so, but the majority of them do the grunt because they believe they can make a difference.

Once someone has invested a lot of time and effort for a candidate, it’s heartbreaking to see that candidate lose. They hate to see their guy lose because they would love to see their guy have a chance to do things the way they think things should be done. Nothing aggravates a losing volunteer more than someone who gave up his or her constitutional right to vote, for that person failed to realize the importance of the power entrusted in him. Hopefully, that volunteer will become even more determined to obtain that vote in the next election.

Personally, neither Bush nor Kerry satisfied me, and it’s a sad day when I realized that I had been cornered into a lose-lose situation. Half the nation considered a Bush victory bad, and the other half considered a Kerry victory just as bad. I despised this feeling that I couldn’t bring myself to fully support either candidate. I refused to give up my constitutional right to vote, so I chose the candidate that I felt would lose less for America. To put it in another way, I chose the lesser of two evils. But the lesser of two evils is still evil.

Comments

[greybeta.livejournal.com]

Yes, Iraq and terror were major issues. But I'd agree with a lot of the political pundits that same sex marriage and abortion played just as big, if not as visible, a role in the recent election.

[usmu.livejournal.com]

Yep, Conservative Christian South. It's easy to forget about that bit.