In theater, a play is usually 5 Acts. In TV news, it is covered similarly: it begins on Monday with a fresh new story.. good v evil played out.. the drama building.. uncertainty over outcome.. Then, a contrived 'happy ending' by Friday afternoon.
Once again, look at Greece- Merkel capitulated to the will of France on Friday ending a 5 day storyline and everyone said 'Yay!'... Greece won't default so we can move on. This weekend showed the Greece default drama has many more twists and turns to play out, but in the US, the mindset is "I'm bored with Greece" and markets went up today in response.
People are good at ignoring reality. Perhaps there's ostrich somewhere in our DNA. We as Americans refuse to believe our nation is in a downward spiral that is not changing any time soon. The manufacturing jobs- they're not coming back unless of course one day our wages drop to that of Vietnam, Jordan and Bangladesh. America's biggest export?? -- Entertainment. We export our terrible movies, TV shows and manufactured pop stars to the world.
We also are blindly loyal to the political-party game. All politicians are Liars who had to do a lot of soul selling to get to the positions currently held. People will generally agree. But heaven forbid you tell a Democrat that Obama is just Terrible... Or tell a Republican that Reagan was just Awful, and you get closed ears; closed mind. Example: Congress is consistently given very low approval ratings on the whole, and yet the vast majority get re-elected. The voter mindset being "all those Others are corrupt and evil but my representative isn't that way".
People don't care about the possibility of the debt ceiling not being raised and triggering a default. They sure as shit cared about "Weinergate". Couldn't get enough of the salacious details- the texts, photos, so forth.. Of course the vast majority of people did not have a clue who Anthony Weiner was prior to the scandal.
Who would have known or cared that Weiner created the bi-partisan Congressional Middle Class Caucus and received an "A" on the Drum Major Institute's 2005 Congressional Scorecard on middle-class issues. Or he co-sponsored The Prevent All Cigarette Trafficking Act (PACT) making it a felony to sell tobacco in violation of any state tax law, and effectively ends Internet tobacco smuggling by stopping shipments of cigarettes through the United States Postal Service.
And if you are a loyal Dem or pro-Israel, you should be very saddened rather than feel joyous. He was a very loyal supporter of Obama especially during the Health Care debate, and Weiner at one time attempted to bar entry by the Palestinian delegation to the United Nations due to terrorist ties i.e. PLO. He also had the courage to state that Human Rights Watch, The New York Times, and, in particular, Amnesty International are biased against Israel.
All the common masses knew were playful puns on his last name.
And that's the depth and breath of most people's understanding of the world-- the surface. Never any interest or inclination to get to the meat of an issue.
Americans wonder why unemployment is so high, but don't take the time to follow politics to understand its because no job creation bills have been proposed by Obama or any member of Congress. Can't have jobs if none are being created.
People wonder why the National Debt is so high yet when told its because the banks and corporations received & kept it, and we're throwing away so much money fighting never-ending wars, there's no violent anger that stirs inside Americans to get up off the couch and rebel in any meaningful way like the Egyptians, Syrians, Grecians and Spaniards have.
People want to hope, which is a very negative, depressing word. It essentially means waiting for a positive outcome without having to do a single thing on one's own to make that end result happen. Take this blog for instance. We receive over 20,000 viewers daily, yet most never bother to take the time to write and leave a response, either to agree or disagree; to share a story, thought or offer encouragement. Passivity can only take a person so far in life.
If you don't like the world you're living in and the collapsing state of this nation, then Wake-up and do something about it. Start reading and really learning the issues you care about. Write to your editor when you disagree with a newspaper's content or spin. And when you read someone defending you and representing your point of view, offer words of encouragement and motivation. Find like minded people-- organize- galvanize-- protest-- be legally civilly disobedient.
If your life represents an automobile, and you the driver, only you can start the ignition and only you can guide it where you need to go. But you must begin to wake up and get that 'car' out of the garage because America is changing and its not for the better.
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