Today, it's official. I am now old enough to be the President of the United States.
35 years old! In my mid-30s. Approaching middle age!
Time has flied too fast!
Here's a few thoughts
1) It's all made for those younger than me now
All that pop culture stuff? It's all made for those younger than me now!
It's
not about me saying "everything new sucks, I want to just stick with the stuff of the past".
There's always good music coming out and there's always new interesting technology coming out. It's just marketed to those younger than me now!
2) Feeling old on a college campus
While I'm a graduate student working on my master's, I am usually working in the daytime, and going to the UH-Manoa campus in the evenings! That plus the weekends. Usually at those times when the campus is nearly empty. That's how it's mostly been for the last 2 years.
But for this semester, I'm on the UH-Manoa campus during the daytime twice a week for an on-campus internship! So now, I'm on the campus when the campus is full and
when the undergraduate students are out in full force. Yep, I'm surrounded by those who just come out of high school................
who were born when I was in high school!
I mean, I was already used to a generation gap when I was working as a substitute teacher, but that's because I was working with kids! Now, I'm feeling the generation gap with young adults.
My generation didn't grow up with social media, smartphones, laptops or tablets (ie iPads, Surface)! The Internet didn't even become mainstream until I was in high school, though I didn't use that until
after high school! The new young adults experienced using all of those things from childhood!
Even though I'm using online technology (especially to write this blog post), I still write most of my notes on a paper, and would rather read from a paper than a screen. I still be reading from a newspaper every morning. Yeah, I share articles on facebook, but the newspaper has them all together (or at least what the editors feel is appropriate to add).
3) Now on to the Presidency
Now that I'm old enough to be President, here's a few things on my agenda
- withdraw troops from overseas bases. Time to defend America first, and time for the rest of the world to pay for their own defense
- Legalize all immigration ............or at least make immigration policy much more lenient!
- End the militarized war on drugs. Sending SWAT teams to stop drugs is a waste of resources and has come with too much risk of violating civil liberties (ie mass incarceration, racial profiling, police brutality, raids at the wrong house, etc)!
- Don't give in the anti-gun activist. People have a right to armed self-defense! Enforcing gun laws comes with too much risk of violating civil liberties (ie mass incarceration, racial profiling, police brutality, raids at the wrong house, etc)!
- Reduce corporate taxes! Even the so-called "socialist" European countries have lower corporate taxes.
- De-federalize certain policies. I'll let each state determine their policies for things like minimum wage, education policy, drug policy, health policy and more!
- Environmental policy with sanity! Yes go after those who pollute lakes, rivers, streams, etc. But don't give in to those who want to ban plastic bags or plastic bottles. Those things don't litter themselves! Stop picking on innocent users just because of some guilty ones!
- Legalize hemp so that people can make paper out of hemp! Hemp takes less space than trees to make the same amount of paper, and it's stronger too! Who cares if hemps looks like a leaf from the "Chronic" album?
- No more of these laws with 100+ pages! All they do is invite lobbyists to make special exceptions for themselves, as well as add stuff that will penalize civilians who don't have time to read over every law in existence. I wouldn't even sign a law with 10+ pages, and even if needs more pages (I doubt it), make the extra pages a separate law!
- Allow all U.S. "territories" to vote if they want independence. If they want to remain a part of the US, allow them to have VOTING representatives in Congress. Also, allow D.C. to have VOTING representatives in Congress!
- Allow Hawaii to vote if it wants independence, but allows ALL residents (not just those with native ancestry) to vote on that! After all, non-native residents were allowed citizenship of Hawaii before the US took over!
There's more, but screw it, it's a start!
Though if Hawaii becomes independent, I'll just go for being President of Hawaii. We can have our own military and not worry about the feds writing our policies. Most of the stuff on that list will still apply I become the President of an Independent Hawaii.
