Am I the only one who doesn’t think this is funny? There seems to be a genuine phenomenon occurring at every level of democratic process that continues to make an absolute mockery of the one value we’re supposed to uphold.
What I’m talking about is this ignorant complacency when it comes to very real and very incredible political occurrences. It’s amazing how apathetic we are to truly unbelievable stories, and it’s amazing that they’re simply not a big deal.
It’s almost ironic that nobody seems to be aware of this desensitization towards the surreal.
It’s as though we’ve succumbed to the normalization of the abnormal and we’ve allowed it to become nothing more than a humorous dialogue at the water cooler. Did you hear about that racist and homophobic mayor that smokes crack and runs the largest Canadian city? Ha ha ha ha ha.
It’s amazing that nobody seems to realize how incredibly ridiculous this apathy is. It is the occurrences that everybody’s aware of and everybody knows are intrinsically wrong, but everybody also knows there’s nothing you can do about it.
At Trent, for instance, it’s the decisions being made by the few that should be made by many (yes, I’m looking at you Trent Central Student Association). It’s the voices that are supposed to be held to a level of public accountability but only seem to be accountable to those within their circle of interest (still looking at you TCSA).
It’s the loaded votes that will take even more money from students so that the administration can build its desired student centre (I feel like it’s obvious who I’m critiquing at this point).
Maybe I’m the naive one for not realizing that this is just the way it is here at Trent.
More broadly, it’s the fact that it’s an acceptable political strategy to play dance around an issue rather than face it head on (pretty well every politician is guilty of this).
It’s the fact that when someone is the prime minister of a country and they don’t like what kind of questions the media are asking, they can just ignore them all together and avoid any non-scripted question.
It’s the event in the House of Commons last week that should have induced vomit in every Canadian that considers their country democratic (if you don’t know what I’m talking about, google “house of commons Iraq exchange”).
It’s our blind Israel support. It’s missing aboriginal women. It’s pipelines. It’s neocolonialism. It’s neoliberalism.
It’s our barking and humiliating Prime Minister. It’s first-past-the-post politics. It’s obvious yet denied mission creep. It’s ebola misinformation. It’s abandoning those who need social assistance. It’s homelessness. It’s individualism. It’s apathy and it’s ignorance. It’s what you know is there but for whatever reason isn’t considered important enough to get mad about.
I’ll stop here because the examples I could list are endless and I’m not really offering any advice on how to proceed.
I’m not really offering anything, actually, it just amazes me that nobody seems to acknowledge how far this apathy epidemic has gone. It amazes me that these trespasses are the status quo and that’s just the way it is.
If I were to offer anything, it would be this one piece of advice. Take the blue pill, step down the rabbit hole, and ask yourself this What the fuck is going on?