I was talking with a coworker last night about Apathy. It's so weird to witness so many uprisings in the East about failing leadership and/or despotism. Our country has gone through many questionable changes in government and curious- downright outrageous events have surfaced with mild repercussions, facing a terrifying reality. NO ONE CARES. It seems like with the increased use of social media to convey news and entertain we are all losing a very valuable ability to acquire knowledge by reading more than 140 characters and feeling horrifyingly satisfied with that modicum of information. We also seem to be losing our sense of humanity and compassion. More than once I've seen something wildly inappropriate be tweeted about a celebrity, lacking an ounce of decency or tact, and all of this goes unnoticed save me (though I'm sure I can't be the only one). I always feel so self righteous (but also awesome) about responded to weird "twedlines" (I just made that up). For instance, a celebrity died and instead of writing something like "*Celeb name here* dies at *age here*" this fool wrote *Celeb name here* DEAD. With a little extra finesse that headline wouldn't have been so insanely devastating and careless, which is a perfect segue into my most controversial blog post that will ever grace the interwebs.
OSAMA BIN LADEN DEAD. *Commence patriotic bs*
Twitter was blowing up on that fateful day the human embodiment of terrorism died. Fireworks exploded, people were dancing in the streets, it was like a good ol' fashioned New Orleans funeral except everyone was literally celebrating the death of someone. It wasn't one of those parties held in memory of the departed. It was a crazy dance party in celebration of the end of someone's life, wishing them to the deepest depths of hell. I am by no means condoning any of the inexcusable, unspeakably evil things he did, but I am questioning the reality of it all. Though he is dead this does not mean terrorism will cease. All this means was that a figurehead has been taken away from a diabolical group of fanatical maniacs, but they still exist and we probably just pissed them the f&@k off. The causalities of his ceaseless tirade against America will not be brought back to life, their families may feel some relief and find a bit of solace in revenge, but ultimately those people that were lost are still gone. And now Osama's gone and there will probably be some kind of ridiculous retaliation against the US. Death and more death. Killing and more killing. I will never understand how power can be gained by taking lives. I will never fathom war and its important roll in what is means to be patriotic in this country. I will never forget how much I cried when I saw that episode of Intervention about a soldier who returned home completely broken after seeing his superior die, subsequently killing himself and his family slowly with alcohol abuse and severe depression. I will never forgive this government for sending all these young people to face an atrocity unimaginable to privileged upper class America, yet vehemently defended by the same blubbering bigots.
And all Americans seem to be good for is consuming while all of this happens. Instead of getting angry about billions of tax dollars going to a war more than half of the country has no idea is still going on, apathy has settled so snugly into the masses. Blanketing us so gently with its warm, blissful ignorance Apathy squeezes us ever so gently so as to entice Lethargy. In turn, we become empty shells ready to be filled with whatever garbage is deemed necessary to fill us with so we don't see the "big picture." Recently, the death of Bin Laden has been keeping us from wondering why there are starving children on the streets, why food production is so unsanitary and dangerous, why not everyone has equal rights, why education is more of a privilege than a necessity, why rent is so damn high, why our lives are dependent on green paper a metallic round things, why the hell Donald Trump would ever utter a word about anything remotely topical and believe he sounds the least bit intelligent. All of these things we are forgetting in lieu of one person's death. There's still a war going on, there are still people dying in mass genocide, there's still human trafficking, there are still giant corporations exploiting helpless people, the AIDs epidemic is still an EPIDEMIC. Instead of relishing in the death of this guy, how about we start a revolution and change this world for the better. Humanity can't be completely lost. Can it? Where's the love?
I'm out.
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