Comfortably Numb
There used to be things that would outrage us. We heard it on the news, and all of us, as a society, would be shocked. It created conversations at the office and on the bus; media commentators spoke eloquently about how we needed to change. And sometimes things changed, and THAT event, whatever THAT event was, wouldn’t happen again.
But now there are actions and accusations that we just accept. The modern phrase is, “…it’s baked in the cake;” nothing that can be done. This week: a twelve year old is shot and killed in Newark, Ohio, the President accused of sexual assault, children abused by the Border Patrol; it’s all “just part of the news.” It’s not shocking, or disturbing to most. And to many, it’s called “Fake News,” the all-purpose excuse for ignoring anything that might be uncomfortable.
Unacceptable
What happened to us? How did we get so calloused to this awful reality?
President Donald Trump was accused of sexual assault this weekend. If it had been Barack Obama, or George W Bush, or when Bill Clinton was actually accused; the headlines in the papers, and the commentators on television made it the number one story. Here’s a challenge: without looking it up, who accused Trump?
Sure, we can Google it, but we have to. We didn’t have to Google Monica Lewinsky. Jean Carroll’s story hardly made a dent in the coverage. We accept a President who may have committed multiple sexual assaults. If you don’t believe he did, that it’s “fake news,” then at best you are accepting a President who answers the sexual assault charges with, “…she’s not my type.” So, Mr. President, if she was your type it would be OK.
A man shoots a child in Newark, Ohio, and the twelve year old dies. She was standing on the front porch on a summer evening. We know the eighteen-year old assailant has “blackouts” when he commits violent acts, but we don’t know how he got the gun.
There have been eight shootings at US schools this year (NYT), three killed and fifteen wounded. Sounds like casualties from a war zone. This is just part of the constant “hum” of news, it hardly makes more than a two-day dent. Nothing changes; no one is able to do more than “…thoughts and prayers,” or maybe suggest we need to arm students to shoot other students.
Too Much?
So what is it, what has completely numbed us to these horrific events?
First, there is the sheer volume of information that we access, everyday. It used to be thirty minutes between six and seven in the evening, delivered by Huntley-Brinkley, or Cronkite, or Jennings, or what we chose to read in the papers. We trusted their voices and their judgments on what was important, and they filtered what we cared about, and what we never knew.
Now we access everything. It’s not just twenty-four hour news: Fox, MSNBC, CNN and the rest. We are leashed to the Internet; to the alerts coming across the IPhone screen, and instant accessiblility to “search.” To use a well-worn analogy, we used to drink from a water fountain, now we are exposed to the open end of a fire hose. If we open our mouths a little, we are drowned with information. So we keep our mouths closed.
That’s an excuse, by the way, not a reason. We can be our own editors, what we trusted others to do for us in the “old days.” We can choose our sources, decide our concerns, and find out the stories. The sheer volume of information is a problem, but covering our faces and crying “fake news” isn’t the answer.
We Must Be Better
Yesterday I wrote about children being held by the US Government, without proper care. Some people commented on it, others ignored it (they edited me out.) This should be a moment of national outrage: Trumper or Democrat, news consumer or avoider. Instead, it too has been rolled into the volume of noise. The Border Patrol moved the children away; it’s over. Now, some are back.
Shouldn’t we be worried even more about where those children went? Supposedly, they are now in a tent city, in Texas, in the middle of summer. Are they being cared for, do they have air conditioning, showers, food? Don’t we have the right to know as Americans about what America is doing to the defenseless?
Surprisingly, I’m not a Pink Floyd fan. But they have the words to America today, from Comfortably Numb:
“the child is grown, the dream is gone
and I have become, comfortably numb”
America – this cannot be us. We cannot be so wrapped up in ourselves that we let all of this go on without comment, and without action. Americans cannot be drugged by “fake news” and go comfortably numb. We are better than that.
