05.09.07
This story stinks for all the right reasons
A friend’s blog referenced this article on The Onion. Now, the article is satire but it strikes a particular and terrible cord: as we get older we become desensitized to violence and ineptitude. You get pounded day and night by the media spewing bad news and worse news. Murder rates, death tolls, domestic abuse, scandal, corruption…it gets to the point people don’t care - they simply want to get on with their lives. Then, when a particularly heinous crime is committed, they turn away, content to let someone else deal with it only no one deals with it.
As you get older, do you wonder why young people are so vocal and active? They haven’t built up their immune systems to the crap constantly shoveled at them. After so long, they throw in the towel and become “normal” people. I’m not talking about changing attention spans as in “what’s the crisis of the month?” - I’m talking about apathy towards everything outside of their immediate sphere (family, work and community.) A few folks are able to stay steadfast and stick with their activism. I applaud them.
Where this is particularly frightening is politics. Either GW is the most brilliant politician in US history or he really is *that* dumb. Clinton got impeached for oral sex. GW lied, lied and lied some more, got us involved in a war that has a cloudy outcome as far as democracy in Iraq and now he’s going to make a move to do the same in Iran. When most of the population suffers from the apathy I described, the political leaders will get away with whatever they want because they know the people won’t do anything to stop them.
What is it going to take to slap the stupid out of people and get them to act?
