Outrage in Society: How Apathy Keeps Us Timid As People

While it is MAJOR news, unless there is a massive uproar over these recent NFL Player incidents, all they will have done is distracted us from what is happening Globally

Am I the only one who finds it very strange that the Ray Rice and now Adrian Peterson incidents have taken so much of the news in the US that the beheading of not 1 but 2 US Journalists and a British aid worker by ISIS has almost completely been lost in the shuffle?

Yes what these NFL players have both been accused of and actually did was and is horrific but 3 men had their heads cut off by insane people whose beliefs are so “out there” that another terrorist organization that they had been affiliated with, Al-Qaeda, decided to distance themselves from them and wanted no part of these nut bars at all. When a known terrorist group full of CONFIRMED religious zealots admits you are crazier than them, then you know there is a problem.

Yet somehow this entire situation has been pushed off of the front page of newspapers by a thug and how he mistreated his (now) wife and how another player went WAY too far in disciplining his son(s). One has to wonder about just how fleeting the attention of the average person has become when outrage over injustice lasts only a few days. I’m surprised the Michael Brown incident lasted as long as it did given the fact that it is clearly a case of a white cop’s prejudice leading to the death of an innocent teenager who (as 2 MORE witnesses have come forward to describe) had his hands up and was not being a threat to the cop.

One of the lasting images of Ferguson, Missouri and how the badly mishandled the protests

Or how about the brutal apartheid regime that has been in place in Israel for nearly 50 years and how they actually believe they were justified in killing hundreds of innocent children in their recent “Offensive” against Hamas. Offensive is the right word because their justification should be considered “offensive” to anyone who has half a brain and can clearly see that the Palestinians have no real chance to ever do any real damage to Israel militarily (their “rockets” are nothing compared to the weapons the Israelis have at their disposal).

Then there is the Ukraine-Russian civil war that is about to break out. First Vladimir Putin has the balls to just “annex” Crimea by claiming it wasn’t him but “Pro-Russian Rebels” who wanted to return to “Mother Russia”. Then, even after international economic sanctions are levied against his country, these same “rebels” (most likely Russian army vets fighting out of uniform if you ask me) start trying to take over other parts of Ukraine to re-patriotize them back to Russia.

Sanctions haven’t worked to slow the situation down at all. When the Ukrainian government forces had the rebels on the run, a sudden “humanitarian aid convoy” from Russia was sent which actually was more of a distraction for real Russian troops to try to send aid to their brethren. If this Ukrainian situation continues along this course, it could very well trigger a much larger global war since nothing the world powers try to do seems to stop Putin or even make him understand that what he is doing is wrong: Undermining a sovereign nation.

Images from Kiev and other parts of the Ukraine as Pro-Russian "Rebels" continue their activities

All of these major world events are going on and these NFL player situations (as well as a possible NFL cover up scandal) are the top stories in the US. The simple reason why these incidents have taken over is because Americans don’t seem to care enough about the world as a whole. They worry and care about their neck of the woods first and foremost and to hell with whatever is happening half a planet away. More then half of the population couldn't even find where these events are transpiring on a map anyway so it becomes out of sight out of mind. The images of these events may register for a moment when they see them in the news or read about them online but once the story is done and the initial reaction has faded, it is back to life as it was for probably 85% of them.

And to be fair, that is probably the case for all people. You see something so bad, your first reaction is “Something needs to be done about that” . The reaction fades once you start to realize how much your life would need to change to actually “do” something about it and apathy sets in. The next thing you know, the struggles of your own life take over and the initial outrage over what you saw or read is gone. I am not saying this to make anyone feel bad, it’s just a fact of how our daily lives go about. Unless we are directly affected by something, it is more than likely that we will not do anything about it. Our Apathy is what allows big corporations to get away with (essentially) killing us with the products they produce.

Think about this for a minute. General Motors has admitted that over the last 11 years, they KNEW there was a problem with their cars to the point that there were people DYING as a result of the flaws in their cars and instead of fixing the problem right away, they had the audacity to fight lawsuits filed against them by the grieving families, threaten to ruin them financially and then, when the US Government stepped up their efforts to find out the root cause of the problem, they admitted their role and NO ONE went to Jail.

Where is the outrage over that? Why has no one been charged? Where is the coverage over this criminal behavior?

If you really look at the way some of our basic products are being produced (like cigarettes, alcohol, our food supply), it is obvious that big business has been cutting corners for years producing goods that are substandard and dangerous for us because they can cut corners and save money by making them that way. Cigarettes for example DO NOT need to have 3500 different chemicals in them. If you were to just crush up naturally produced dried tobacco leaves and smoke them, they would NOT give you cancer. So why put in 3500 chemicals into cigarettes then unless they;

a)      Makes people become addicted to them by adding in additive agents like Nicotine

b)      Make the company producing them more money that way

c)       Save the company producing money because the leaves are then able to last much monger

At this point, if you smoke, you really have no one to blame but yourself...and the Cigarette company for pumping all those addictive chemicals into each cigarette

Instead of always fighting the end result (Cancer), why hasn’t our government made the process used to create cigarettes sold in this country illegal? Why haven’t they fought the root cause of the issue instead of suing them for costs related to the end result of people smoking: Health care usage. Because we, the people, are not using our power properly.

We are divided politically on so many things that we do not have the capacity to unite for real change. Even in the US, when they thought they WERE doing just that, getting behind a man in Barrack Obama who SHOULD HAVE BEEN a transformational President in US history, big business interests stepped in (Republicans and The Tea Party racists in particular) and they bogged down Washington so much so that its nearly impossible to have bipartisan agreement on ANYTHING anymore while he is the sitting President.

He could have been great but with all the disrespect and racism he has had to endure, it is a wonder that the man has been able to pass any laws

Big business wants to and will continue to do everything they can to keep us divided. We will never again see the kind of 100% support we had from all people during World War II against Germany and the Nazis because of how fractured we are politically as a society. I mean there are people in our society today, living among us who will take the side of Israel right now and say that I have it totally wrong or they will say that the police officer in Missouri was the real victim and he was defending himself or even the side of ISIS or Putin and Russia for a multitude of reasons.

We have become comfortable and timid as a people. The vast majority of us live comfortably in Canada and the US compared to people in Iraq, Syria, Palestine and many other places. For the most part, we don’t have to worry about religious zealots threatening to kill us if we don’t leave our homes or convert to their religion. The majority of us don’t have to worry about police or military brutality against us or companies poisoning our drinking water (they tend to do their toxic waste dumping now far, far away where they can buy off politicians or have environmental laws shaped the way they want them).

We have it easy comparatively speaking and because of that, the only things we tend to worry about are the things that effect our own daily lives directly. We care about causes and will donate money that we can to help them but ultimately, and unfortunately it has been and will continue to be out of sight, out of mind for many things that we really should care a lot more about then we do.