Currently, social media websites like Facebook and Twitter are blowing up with outrage at what might be Generation Y’s first lesson in real-world politics.

Many people our age thought they were inciting hope and change four years ago by hitting the campaign trail with President Barack Obama.

They danced in the streets in November 2008 when Obama took the election. Twenty-somethings around the country patted each other on the back, believing they made history and took a step toward change.

Four years later, it appears some people who pushed so hard to bring “real change” to Washington have finally realized that all the door knocking and billion-dollar campaign efforts they helped propel were little more than business as usual.

The top contributors to Obama’s presidential campaign in 2008 included Goldman Sachs, JPMorgan Chase & Co, and Citigroup, Inc, according to opensecrets.org.

The top contributors to John McCain’s presidential campaign in 2008 included Goldman Sachs, JPMorgan Chase & Co, and Citigroup, Inc, according to opensecrets.org.

The same people contributed to both campaigns. Big businesses and special interest groups consider this kind of double candidate support to be sort of an insurance policy– They can’t lose if they’re batting for both teams. Unfortunately, that means regular people can’t win.

It’s a cold reality, which they seemingly neglect to teach you about in high school government class — that real-world politics are a lot more similar to songs by the Wu-Tang Clan than any episode of Schoolhouse Rock.

Instead of jabbering on about sitting on Capitol Hill, that sad little scrap of paper should have been informing school children that, “cash rules everything around me.”

Money is power, and there is no way around it.

Last May, after backing the blockbuster merger between NBC and Comcast, FCC Commissioner Meredith Attwell Baker announced her resignation without stating her future intentions. Shortly after, NBCUniversal issued a release stating that Baker would be joining their company as their new senior vice president of government affairs.

Yes, you’re reading that correctly. Baker sat in on a commission tasked with deciding whether or not two massive media companies should be allowed to merge, and four months after the deal was passed, she was offered a senior VP job with that company.

So, a few key web players decided to stage a protest Wednesday and it seems Generation Y is taking notice. Resources our generation has been raised to take for granted have been made unavailable to make users aware of what could become of the Internet if SOPA is signed into law, and it finally got our attention.

The sad part is that SOPA really could quite literally be the end of the Internet as we know it.

The average person has ignored the issue of Net-Neutrality for years, and now too many dollars have made their way into too
many pockets.

The average citizen stands to lose a lot of rights and conveniences with the passage of SOPA, but the average politician in Washington stands to lose a lot of money if they don’t appease the lobbies.

Unfortunately for the typical BearcatsFan4Lifee88s out there, when the issue of citizens’ rights vs. political money and power, the choice is almost always to clock them duckets.

Until Americans learn to vote with their wallets instead of being fooled by blues and reds into voting down political parade routes, we’ll only continue down this road of forfeiting our liberties.

Dollar, dollar bill, y’all.