A Civics Lesson in 7 minutes or Your Money Back
I never thought I'd say this but...for once TV got it right.
http://www.wingsofjustice.com/06/03/woj06012.html
The clip posits a good question - why AREN'T more people mad about what's happening to our country? Why AREN'T more kids doing something about it? I spent part of my brother's birthday dinner arguing with his best friend about the non-existence of Haliburton-funded poltical detainee camps and whether or not George W. Bush will willingly leave office in 2008 and now, I think I understand why. It's not laziness or stupidity or a glacial shift in social attitudes or mind control lasers that breed this apathy. It's 2 things - the impenetrability of our republic's bureaucracy, and post-modern anomie.
If you tried following any of the recent elections, or even politics in the US anymore, it's become clear it's all a game of smoke and mirrors. Unless you have CSPAN plugged into your brainpan 24/7, there's no way you can track what's happening in our government. We have drifted from the lean, small democracy we once were to a bloated, lumbering republic, where we must trust that the men and women we elect to office mean what they say on the campaign trail and that that they have our best interests at heart. As we have seen in recent political scandals as recent as Tom Delay's campaign fraud and illegal rezoning of Texas political districts to marginalize his competition, this is not the case. We just have to *hope* our government is doing the right thing in a time when ideology is at its most stringent, when the ruling party has emphasized solidarity over conscience, when our leaders have vested financial interests in the political actions they take. And that's foolish and dangerous at the same time.
Moreover, it's become clear the individual can no longer rise up to be a leader without money and pedigree and lobbies and a host of other vestments only afforded to those born with a silver spoon in their mouth or the ability to sell out all but their core beliefs to get there. For the outsider - that's pretty much everyone outside of the capitals of this nation - you can't even expect a reasonable accounting of all actions by governments, what with riders and subclauses and all the other bullshit that has crept into a system built on the simple system of audit and checks and balances. To know the machine you have to live it, and frankly in our economy and world of audio-visual assault who can afford the time and still live?
This leads to point two, anomie. Webster's defines it as "personal unrest, alienation, and uncertainty that comes from a lack of purpose or ideals", amongst other things, but let's use this one. I'm not talking about Values (with a capital V that is bandied about by politicians), but an sensory-emotional overload that comes with the shock of a true global community. Let's face it - the world's a pretty shitty place. Make no mistake, I love the world, wouldn't want to live anywhere else, but our history has been defined by our ability to do Bad Stuff to one another. Warlords starve and rape innocent countries in pursuit of wealth and power; natural disasters like the Asian tsunami (or Hurricane Katrina, for that matter) set back communities decades; governments engage in costly wars as a result of saber-rattling and posturing; cops torture for confessions; kangaroo courts try men for changing religions; priests declare war on entire hemispheres in the name of God...it pretty much sucks, but in spite of all that, our first human instinct is to try and care about it. That's not wrong, but it is impossible. At some point you have to shut it off so you don't lose your mind. And as our world gets bigger, as the problems pouring out of the media come into our homes - children murdered by their grandparents, priests molesting their youthful charges, drug dealers going to war in bedroom communities - the problems start to overwhelm your senses altogether.
Then the question comes - how does one prioritize sympathy? Does caring about one thing mean you get a pass on the rest? These are tough questions with no easy answers, and what most of us do is start to shut down to everything. We want to care but we can't, at least, not in a way we can really effect change. And so when the president sets up "free speech zones" where pro-presidential ralliers are supported and anti-presidential ralliers arrested, can we really try and put that above babies dying in AIDS epidemics?
I don't have any answers on how to fix this. I don't know if you can. The only thing we can do is ask the hard questions and say to ourselves, "You know, I don't know what's wrong with the world. But by God, I want to try and fix it anyway." That's hope - something entirely unique to us, and I'd like to think that that's what defines us as a nation, and as a species.
I never thought I'd say this but...for once TV got it right.
http://www.wingsofjustice.com/06/03/woj06012.html
The clip posits a good question - why AREN'T more people mad about what's happening to our country? Why AREN'T more kids doing something about it? I spent part of my brother's birthday dinner arguing with his best friend about the non-existence of Haliburton-funded poltical detainee camps and whether or not George W. Bush will willingly leave office in 2008 and now, I think I understand why. It's not laziness or stupidity or a glacial shift in social attitudes or mind control lasers that breed this apathy. It's 2 things - the impenetrability of our republic's bureaucracy, and post-modern anomie.
If you tried following any of the recent elections, or even politics in the US anymore, it's become clear it's all a game of smoke and mirrors. Unless you have CSPAN plugged into your brainpan 24/7, there's no way you can track what's happening in our government. We have drifted from the lean, small democracy we once were to a bloated, lumbering republic, where we must trust that the men and women we elect to office mean what they say on the campaign trail and that that they have our best interests at heart. As we have seen in recent political scandals as recent as Tom Delay's campaign fraud and illegal rezoning of Texas political districts to marginalize his competition, this is not the case. We just have to *hope* our government is doing the right thing in a time when ideology is at its most stringent, when the ruling party has emphasized solidarity over conscience, when our leaders have vested financial interests in the political actions they take. And that's foolish and dangerous at the same time.
Moreover, it's become clear the individual can no longer rise up to be a leader without money and pedigree and lobbies and a host of other vestments only afforded to those born with a silver spoon in their mouth or the ability to sell out all but their core beliefs to get there. For the outsider - that's pretty much everyone outside of the capitals of this nation - you can't even expect a reasonable accounting of all actions by governments, what with riders and subclauses and all the other bullshit that has crept into a system built on the simple system of audit and checks and balances. To know the machine you have to live it, and frankly in our economy and world of audio-visual assault who can afford the time and still live?
This leads to point two, anomie. Webster's defines it as "personal unrest, alienation, and uncertainty that comes from a lack of purpose or ideals", amongst other things, but let's use this one. I'm not talking about Values (with a capital V that is bandied about by politicians), but an sensory-emotional overload that comes with the shock of a true global community. Let's face it - the world's a pretty shitty place. Make no mistake, I love the world, wouldn't want to live anywhere else, but our history has been defined by our ability to do Bad Stuff to one another. Warlords starve and rape innocent countries in pursuit of wealth and power; natural disasters like the Asian tsunami (or Hurricane Katrina, for that matter) set back communities decades; governments engage in costly wars as a result of saber-rattling and posturing; cops torture for confessions; kangaroo courts try men for changing religions; priests declare war on entire hemispheres in the name of God...it pretty much sucks, but in spite of all that, our first human instinct is to try and care about it. That's not wrong, but it is impossible. At some point you have to shut it off so you don't lose your mind. And as our world gets bigger, as the problems pouring out of the media come into our homes - children murdered by their grandparents, priests molesting their youthful charges, drug dealers going to war in bedroom communities - the problems start to overwhelm your senses altogether.
Then the question comes - how does one prioritize sympathy? Does caring about one thing mean you get a pass on the rest? These are tough questions with no easy answers, and what most of us do is start to shut down to everything. We want to care but we can't, at least, not in a way we can really effect change. And so when the president sets up "free speech zones" where pro-presidential ralliers are supported and anti-presidential ralliers arrested, can we really try and put that above babies dying in AIDS epidemics?
I don't have any answers on how to fix this. I don't know if you can. The only thing we can do is ask the hard questions and say to ourselves, "You know, I don't know what's wrong with the world. But by God, I want to try and fix it anyway." That's hope - something entirely unique to us, and I'd like to think that that's what defines us as a nation, and as a species.
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