So much news coming at you so fast and so many places to follow it all! It is becoming increasingly impossible to focus on any one singular issue and churn its deep meaning until a consensus, general conclusion emerges.
We are bombarded with not a trickle but a firehose of pertinent, important news tidbits followed by countless hours of talking heads repeating a slight variation of the same headline until another one shows up; and so they all move to the new headline, leaving the old one in the dust, inconclusive and without resolution.
It is challenging to make individual sense of it all; and infinitively more challenging to know what it all means to the collective well being…
Surely we could look the other way. Surely we could say it does not impact us individually. Surely we could disregard it all as ‘inside the beltway (Washington, D.C.) speak’.
Surely we could do for the collective good what we can, focusing on our traditional networks, friends, and families; helping out with our own homelands of yesteryear and favorite unfortunate spots of today as if nothing has changed, as if today is no different than the recent past.
After all, we are all so busy, right? We all have lives to live; sports to watch; events to attend; rituals in which to participate; and a future to plan for.
… all of this murkiness will eventually play out. All the craziness will settle down. Impact on our individual, personal life will be minimal…
… there are lots of people that know much more than we do taking care of our collective well-being. They know best. They will do their dealing and wheeling to benefit themselves and we will continue existing on the crumbs. That’s just the way it has always been and will always be…
And surely some else is calling the politicians, writing the e-mails, and attending the rallies. I don’t really have to do all of that. I am busy with my individual life. America has been through much worse turbulent times.
I will just tune it out. Stop watching the news. Focus on the family.
Until.
Until your pregnant friend cannot access insurance because pregnancy is considered a pre-existing condition, no longer covered except at high costs.
Until your niece who thought she had bought into the social compact guaranteeing that after working for a non-profit for 10 years her $120,000 student debt be forgiven, but now that is not so anymore.
Until vacationing in National Parks becomes impossible because of lack of staff and appropriate funding.
Until real news becomes impossible to access because of a combination of self imposed censorship and the government Orwellian tactics.
Until you wake up to realize that the tax system has been simplified to favor the 1% and screw the rest of us.
Until world leaders say out loud what they have been sensing recently: The political leadership in the US is laughable and simply does not merit respect – or trust.
Until crime spikes as a backlash to the top down law-and-order mandates and practices.
Until economic activity begins to be directly impacted by a serious labor shortage easily averted with reasonable immigration reform.
Until our children grow up being taught to question the legitimacy of climate change; and Canada warms up so we all simply move there to escape this madness.
Fearmongering? No. A reality check.
Individually #resist so we can collectively #survive