Cynicism - gift of my generation?

On my way to work this morning, I saw a sign that got me all fired up, but not in the way it was intended. It said "Lower gas. Vote Cannon."

I sat, disappointed in the people who actually believe that a single congressman can have any kind of an effect on the price we pay for gasoline. It's one of those possibly comforting lies that our government representatives try to sell us. How many people actually believe in those signs? And in this election year, we're getting a lot of promises for change, assurances that life will be better under one president than another, but I'm highly skeptical.

Don't get me wrong, I think that things will probably be a little different than they are and different from if the other person is elected instead, but there are so many forces that affect a society's development and health that one person in the government isn't going to have that big an impact on me. Or any other citizen. I kind of feel sorry for George Bush, because he's going to be a scapegoat for a number of things that were products of our own hubris and greed. He's got a lot to answer for, himself, but I'm not sure that he's really accountable for all the things that have happened during his presidency.

This distrust of The System, I think, is one of the strengths of my generation. The trouble is, we don't care enough to try to fix it. I'm staring at my desktop wallpaper picture of Solid Snake and have come up with a parallel. The kids of Generation X are a lot like Solid Snake. We feel like watching the fight break out and sneaking around the side to do what we want while everyone else is focused on the gunfight. We don't join a side permanently, just long enough to get back to what we were doing. But maybe that's just me. Maybe I'm the cynical one and I'm an anomaly. I still don't think a politician has my best interest in mind all the time.

Back to gas prices, though. While I would definitely not mind having cheaper gas, we're still not paying as much as other countries for gas and this gives us a good incentive to think about living more sustainably. I mean, think of the Dutch settlers who saw all those dodos and shot them for fun, or the settlers of the American West shooting as many buffalo as they could. With the benefit of hindsight, we look at that and go "What were they thinking?" I think that in about a hundred years, future generations will think the same thing about us and our consumption of gasoline and other natural resources.

And now you're wondering what this rant has to do with my writing. Well, if you're one of those people who feels that history or economic influences shape art and literature, this is some good background towards the ideas I'm compiling. Just another brick in the foundation of the mind creating a story about people who don't exist, as far as I know.