Level The Playing Field

There’s something intoxicating about getting new likes on my Facebook fan page.

People from all over the globe, whom I’ve never met taking a moment to look at my page and give me the thumbs up.  And if any of you happen to be reading this now, let me give you a very sincere THANK YOU.  As a Singer/Songwriter, I’m trying to connect with as many people as possible.

When I step back and think about it, I guess getting new likes is the easy part.  The hard part is to find a way to keep these folks engaged and give them something worth their time.

I’m still new to the social networks scene, but I think I’ve discovered that people don’t seem to like answering poll questions.

Now, I was thinking to myself, “Hey POLL questions!!! This is GREAT!”, it seemed to me to be a quick and easy way to engage folks, get them to respond to something and I thought at the same time give them an indication of what some of my thinking is.  But I would put up fairly innocent polls and I wouldn’t get very many responses.  Things like “tell me your favorite singer”.  And I wouldn’t get much feedback.  Now I wasn’t using Polls all the time and as my only means of communicating, but I’m thinking that people don’t really care about hearing that I had pizza for lunch.

 I often seem to get more responses from wishing everyone a “Happy Friday!”, which I suppose that I can understand from a certain standpoint.  I certainly LOVE me some FRIDAY!  But I thought I was being more engaging with a poll question.

Maybe people are concerned about government monitoring and don’t want to be scooped up by the NSA eavesdropping on our interaction.  Heck, maybe I should be concerned about that too.  I would not enjoy being declared a militant or enemy combatant or some such and find myself indefinitely detained without access to legal representation.

And before any of you get worried, I’m not a militant.  But really…what is a militant?  I’m someone who wants to sing about the human conditions that I see.  Now, sometimes that’s happy stuff and love songs, and children, and birthdays.  But sometimes that’s also recognizing that things are what I call “jacked up” for a lot of us.  There’s a lot of inequality, and suffering.  There’s a lot of anxiety about making ends meet, war and poverty.

The Elite have it GREAT!  The rest of us…not so much.  It’s not about class-warfare as some would have you believe.  It’s about fairness.  Having a level playing field.

We’ve all heard the old saying “The Rich get richer and the poor get poorer”; or perhaps more to the point “The strong do as they please, while the weak suffer as they must”.

But we need to remember that there is strength in numbers.  There is power in coming together and deciding that the status quo is no longer meeting the needs of the many and that it’s time for real change to a corrupt system.

You don’t have to be an expert on “Credit Default Swaps” or “Collateralized Debt Obligations” to know that the Corporate/Financial Elite received trillions in bailouts, while everyone else was essentially told to “Have a Coke and a smile”.  And all you have to do is ask yourself “Do You Think That’s Fair?” The answer to me appears obvious.

And the problems are essentially the same everywhere.  The media referred to the Arab Spring.  We like to give names to things I guess.  I’m hoping for a “Global Awakening”.  I’m hoping that the 99% of the planet decides that the evidence before their eyes has become indisputable and that it’s past time to level the playing field.

Hey, I’ve got to go eat a pizza now.

Please visit me at http://www.leemanuel05.com