Current Events and Social Media

I'm a little exasperated.  

One of the biggest problems ( I believe) in America today is that we are too self absorbed. Honestly, that's why I think other countries have such strong negative opinions of us. Facebook and other social media outlets make us feel important and certainly don't help. We care too much about the Kardashians and Real Housewives and too little about what's going on in our country and around the world. We're distracted by abortion and gay rights ( although everyone knows those things are important to me) in elections to worry about things like foreign policy and budgets. 

Currently, the "truth behind Sandy Hook" video is spreading like wildfire and people just believe it. If somebody can put a video together or write about it on the Internet, it must be true right? I'd like to give you all the benefit of the doubt that you all are smarter than that. Something you should be aware of? How about the fact that the government gives billions of dollars in weapons to Bahrain, who in fact uses those weapons against their own people to keep them cooperative? Why would we do that? Because we need to keep Bahrain as an ally so that we can maintain our military base there.  Nobody even talks about that tragedy. In fact, they show "look at how great Bahrain is" on CNN without telling you that it's a paid advertisement. How liberal is THAT liberal media? 

Nobody talks about the provision in NDAA ( National Defense Authorization Act) that now allows the governement to detain anyone suspected of terrorism for an indefinite amount of time without trial. You're thinking, HELL YEAH THIS IS AMERICA! LETS GET THOSE TERRORISTS! But who is that really a strike against? Journalists. You want to talk about the little step that snowballs? It's not the cracking down on gun control. ( oh more background checks? Sounds good. Stopping the loophole of unregulation at gun shows? Sounds great.) it's the fact that a journalist can speak the truth about atrocities and be labeled a terrorist. No ifs, ands or buts.

All I'm asking is that you take the time to open your world up a little. Read a book.travel. Step away from your Facebook, twitter feed and Instagram. Walk a mile in someone else's shoes. You're worrying about your guns being taken away, or your show not coming back on for another week. Someone else is worrying about not having clean water or the tear gas that is going to drop on their village in fifteen minutes. We are not AMERICA FUCK YEAH. We are citizens of the world. We have responsibilities to each other as humans. You need to take in all of the information that you can, but you need to filter it and know that EVERYTHING is skewed. You need to use your brain and your heart at the same time. 

I truly believe that the ultimate empowerment is education.