[quote=CardiffBaseball]What’s cool for me is this. I grew up a political junkie, even went to “buckeye boys state” and all that fun stuff. Used to pay attention to every little thing, subscribed to New Republic, read the Nation. Finally flipped back to my conservative inner thoughts in mid-20’s (meaning truly never was a lib, but loved arguing with fellow AF troops, and voted Dukakis-Clinton).
Then I used to get riled up as a CON.
Now I am so out of touch, I don’t know a single thing about Glenn Beck’s rally or this one. For me this is much better. Outside of the off-topic forum here at Pigg, I have no clue. Baseball, college football, work, lift weights with the boys, pitch BP to the kids, eat with the family, lather, rinse, repeat. No FoxNews, No MSNBC etc.
Not for everyone I am sure, and probably off-topic to Urban’s point. It took me years to get to the not-give-a-shit phase, and it’s helping my career, helping my sleep etc. (that and eating Paleo and getting sleep).
So I am glad you all had a good time, and just taken aback that I have reached this level of indifference. Really if I just watched Colbert I’d probably be in the know as to all this stuff, but just too damn busy.[/quote]
I understand completely. I think there are a lot of people these days going through the same thing. When you sign off, and don’t tune into this stuff anymore, you definitely sleep better and enjoy life more.
But it can also lure you into this sense that everything is okay. And the situations you were stressing about have actually resolved. That’s happening to me: I’ll get involved with other stuff, and don’t have time to check in on the political sites (and I use the word “political” loosely, because I think many of these are “I have an empty life” sites, or “I need more excitement” sites, or “I need to feel important” sites, or “My wife and my boss cut my nuts off, and I need to sound off here so I can pretend I got them back” sites)
But then I check back in, and find that things are worse than ever. Not with the government. That’s pretty much at its usual sub-par level. No, the panic-mongering is getting far worse. It’s absurd. You’ve got people who are absolutely addicted to spreading fear. I’m not talking Rush Limbaugh and Glenn Beck and Ed Schultz. They get paid to do what they do, and paid very well. I’m talking about the great unwashed masses on the internet who live to find the next life-threatening world-as-we-know-it-ending thing that they can then send out to their 1764 friends on Facebook, who then immediately forward it to theirs, and before you know it, everyone is sure that Obama is personally rounding up Christians to have them eaten by lions in exhibitions on the National Mall. It’s gotten so bad that they don’t even stop to read the first sentence of these “must-read” articles that they send out. And with all the stuff that’s out there, courtesy of the television, radio, print and internet media, it still isn’t enough to satisfy the slavering beast. You’ve got everyday people making up completely false stories, trying to outdo everyone else on the panic scale. And all of a sudden, you’ve got the sweet little old lady next door, who used to give you homemade cookies on your way home from school, talking about strapping on an AK-47 and mowing down all the godless liberals down at the senior center.
That was the point of the rally. There’s nothing wrong with people thinking differently. What’s wrong is that some people feel like their message isn’t getting across to enough of the population, and feel justified in “amplifying” their message with information that is, often, wildly exaggerated or just plain untrue. Many of these same people believe that they are in the majority, by a very large margin (80%-20% is what I heard yesterday, which means tomorrow it’ll be 95%-5%). The turnout at Saturday’s rally would indicate that, perhaps, this isn’t quite the case. However, if these same people, on either side, don’t get out to vote, tomorrow and on other election days, their voices will go unheard.
The rally attendees don’t have a problem with people who think differently. They are just upset with the way they are trying to get their message across. It’s affecting the freedom with which the population can make a political decision. And it’s generating and perpetuating an atmosphere of hate and divisiveness, which will weaken any nation, even one with the largest best-equipped military in the world.
