Our generation seems to be about as enlightened and informed as a herd of cows, and in light of the president’s recent State of the Union address, the feigned outrage that I saw endlessly in Facebook and Twitter status updates has me asking one question:
Where has all this “outrage” come from? I saw status updates about how we need Reaganomics, how Obama is a liar and has enough “-isms” to fill a dictionary. Somehow, though, in the space of time it took Obama to get elected and in office, many people have gone from blissfully apathetic to enraged.
To borrow a line from our egalitarian former university president “Doc” “I-am-the-decider” Foglesong, it’s time for some straight talk. Well, McCain said that too, but I like to make fun of Doc more.
Quit believing every talking head you see on TV, every pundit who rarely offers a solution but is the Joe Montana of armchair quarterbacks, and go out and form your own opinion. Quit thinking of news as a commodity and that you get the whole story in a convenient 45-second sound bite.
Not only are you failing yourself, but you’re failing the country. Believe it or not, and whether you like it or not, it’s your duty to at least be halfway informed in order to know how to cast your all-powerful vote.
But are we doing that? This is the kind of hypocrisy we revel in. We put no more than the minimal effort into learning about the things that affect us and then turn around and are outraged at how things are. Get a damn clue. While you’re at it, get two.
I am in no way defending Obama: yeah, the guy has not done the greatest job, but he is not the only one responsible. The whole Washington system is to blame and Obama called shenanigans on these hacks and rightly so. Obama is not the point here, though – you are.
Where was the outrage when no weapons of mass destruction were found in Iraq after we embroiled ourselves in a war and sent thousands to their deaths? Where was the outrage when the government was illegally spying on U.S. citizens? Where was the outrage when the CIA was allowed to spy on U.S. soil? It wasn’t there because it wasn’t on the “five o’ clock news.”
I’m not suggesting that there’s a Democratic or Republican problem. It’s an American problem. We’re getting dumber and led around by the nose every day. I wonder why there’s so much resistance to health care; maybe it has to do with insurance and pharmaceutical companies paying more than other companies to lobby Congress. Maybe it’s because that if there were a cheaper alternative it might hurt those companies’ balance sheets.
That’s what it boils down to nowadays. Profit. Simply profit. You think it’s bad now? Wait until these big corporations take the new unlimited political campaign contribution law out for a spin. You haven’t seen anything like we’re going to get to see in the next few years. I guarantee it. Corporations are not boogie men by any means; but whenever the balance sheet and what’s right and fair diverge, guess what gets canned? We can’t even see the forest for the trees and that’s the way the powers that be want it.
You think you’re mad now? Just wait. It’s only going to get better.
Back to Reagan and his administration. Read any decent book on foreign policy and economics and you can see the beginnings of our 21st century crisis formulated by Reagan’s staff that wound up being recycled for eight more years with George W. Bush. Why did Iran and Iraq all of a sudden become the bad guy when Bush-43 came into office? Because the same people that were under Reagan were running the “W” White House.
And a final word: Yeah, by now you might have ascertained that I’m a little liberal, but I swing both ways – politically speaking. I don’t think the government should be in everything, but I think that there are some things the government can do better than a corporation who has to be subservient to a profit margin.
Some things should be done for the public good, not because they are profitable. That’s the trap so many in the right wing fall prey to. Why do we have to put a price tag on everything under the sun? You want Reaganomics back, you say?
The “trickle down” moniker immediately scares me. In this metaphor the cash is the flow that “trickles” down, meaning that those on top are sodden while those of us toward the bottom get a trickle. Hmmm. If I want to go swimming, I jump in a pool, not stand under a shower.
David Breland is a copy editor for The Reflector. He can be contacted at [email protected].