APATHY - a growing epidemic

In America today, apathy is a growing epidemic. Everywhere you turn, you seem to get the message, "Why care today? Somehow the government will take care of it tomorrow." Sadly, this is not the case. Apathy is a dangerous trend.

Hundreds of thousands of today's youth have no clue what's going on in the world: politically, financially, or otherwise. They simply do not care. When asked, they will often times even respond to a question with, "I don't care."

Our generation needs to snap out of this apathy, and soon. In the next decade or two, it will be people from our generation being elected to political offices. They will be running things, and if they have an "I don't care" attitude, we will not be in a very good place.

In this election, the polls show the two candidates are still extremely close. This election will clearly show just how important one vote can be! We as the up and coming generation need to take action, and begin to research world events. We need to stay informed on the election. Instead of choosing one side and sticking to it, we need to have an open mind, decide where we stand on the issues, and then pick the candidate we feel would best represent us. We need to choose the next President based on who we think can do a better job, not just because they are a Democrat, or a Republican. We are a vibrant, and young generation, who is now being allowed to take on an extremely important civic responsibility - voting. Let's not take this for granted.

Let's go to the polls, and cast our ballots on election day, based on research and issues, not based on an "I don't care" attitude. An ignorant vote is a useless vote. It counts towards a candidate, but that candidate did nothing to deserve that vote, much less the great office to which he was elected do to that vote.

If we don't snap out of the apathy soon, it's going to continue as an epidemic. I fear that it may bring down the country - or at least our democracy.