It Matters

If I had a dollar for everyone someone has told me “Oh I don’t watch the news” and then offers some reason as to why they don’t (too depressing, politicians are a bunch of liars etc) I would be able to pay off my crippling student loan debt tomorrow. Don’t get me wrong I understand that bringing up politics in certain social settings (meeting the parents for the first time, power lunch meeting with the boss, you get the idea) and I know I drive my friends nuts whenever I bring up the latest bit of nonsense that is going on in Washington. But I can’t help but feel part of the reason we have become so partisan and  have had such staggering lack of progress over the past few years is due to us as a society sticking our heads in the sand. 

  By simply throwing ones hands up in the air at the first hint of a sensitive subject we limit ourselves to another viewpoint and hearing actual legitimate facts. We can’t be too hard on ourselves though, ignorance is bliss has been engraved on many of us at a young age. Thanks to No Child Left Behind things like civic (government) classes have been cut from the curriculum and many schools only feel the need to teach American History. And if there is any mention of any foreign history it is WWI, WWII, and Vietnam (after all we fought in those wars so therefore they are important). I myself am guilty of this level of ignorance. I watched Waltz With Bashir when it first came out and instantly went on google to do some more research about the Lebanese Civil War.

But this policy leads to a dangerous level ignorance that often leads to inaction. Every year there is some news channel, often on a slow news day that will do a story about how many Americans cannot pass the Citizenship Test and name simple things like rights guaranteed under the Bill of Rights (because after all the only important one is the 2nd Amendment and over mah cold dead body is anyone taking mah gun!). By breeding a ignorant, apathetic population we are doomed to elect people who have only their own interests at heart while the masses sit blindly complacent to what really goes on. 

Flash forward to the 2012 elections where the Tea Party Candidates took their seats in Congress and were given tremendous power and opportunity to do significant damage to this nation. To fully explain the point I am trying to make I am going to point to Michele Bachmann. This woman was elected and is a  Representative in the United States House. She was a potential Tea Party candidate for the 2012 Presidential elections. What makes her so dangerous? This http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IAaDVOd2sRQ! Michele Bachmann actually stood on the House Floor and said Carbon Dioxide is a harmless gas and continued to spew bogus science. Now the huddled masses that elected this woman are not the type to do any type of fact checking and will believe almost everything she and Fox News presumably says.

And why shouldn’t they? She is a member of Congress, surely to be elected to high office it is only logical to assume that a certain level of intelligence is required. Wrong. Due to campaign finance laws it really only matters how much money you have to spend on a campaign. In order to get money through Super PACS it is necessary to pander to corporations (they are people after all). I have a sinking suspicion that Koch Industries http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Koch_Industries had something to do with Ms. Bachmann ignoring all logic and scientific fact and denying Global Warming despite being proven true time and time again. 

This is why paying attention matters. This is why who we elect matters. It can be an uncomfortable conversation at times but I think it is worth it. America used to be a great nation. For those of you playing at home I used the past tense of that word. Right now Congress is playing a very dangerous game with the shutdown and the Debt Ceiling. But we elected these people. We have no one to blame but ourselves.