One thing that sticks with me from this week, by far not the most important thing, but a sign of the trials to come - I saw a lot of people, even friends and relatives, jumping on Facebook to say the attack on Congress wasn’t any worse than rioting during the BLM protests
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It made me so angry at first. I kept thinking, how could you just scoff at the news that our nation’s Capitol was under attack? How could you watch the footage and not feel what we felt on 9/11? Because that is exactly how I felt
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It baffled me. But I’m from a military family. Not my parents, but theirs. I’ve had civics and politics pumped into my brain my whole life. We talked about the Clinton impeachment. On 9/11 I was 10, and knew enough to ask if my sister was safe because she lived in FL’s capital

Not everyone is that into politics. We have a culture in this country of being disinterested. Of it being a taboo topic, unfit for polite conversation. How many times have we heard “let’s not talk politics”? Where did that come from?

Our founders certainly talked about politics. People during the civil war too. The Greatest Generation, the hippie movement, for gods sake the Civil Rights movement. It’s all people getting involved and giving a damn about civics

There have always been those who remained apolitical, the residents of the 13 colonies were divided roughly into thirds after 1776 - patriots, loyalists, and other. Today, it’s the same thing. Why have we not learned from our past?

For some I think it’s privilege. For others, ignorance. But I believe these have the same root cause - capitalism. Some of us work too hard to care about politics, we’re too tired trying to make ends meet. Others are content, fat on good food and easy entertainment

Others are sidelined, they have a place but they’re poor. And so the wealthy fan the flames of racial hatred to make sure that poor white people care more about being white than they do about being poor.

But I’m concerned about the everyday folks here - the normies. Your yuppy cousin who watched The Walking Dead and has a weekly DND night. Your dad who rolls his eyes and says “they’re all crooked anyway”. Why do these people feel nothing when they see the Capitol attacked?

Are they desensitized from 9/11? From a year of almost 400k deaths? From Trump’s repeated abuses and the constant inability of anyone to hold him accountable? Are they instead molded by Fox News and Facebook to suddenly care a lot about property damage?

I don’t know the answer. I’m sure sociologists will study this phenomenon in future years. As much as we study the silly British and Americans who thought “that Nazi stuff isn’t a big deal”. But then, when Pearl Harbor happened, those Americans went to war.

In 2021, as our Congress gathered to confirm a presidential election, they were attacked. And a lot of Americans were just as concerned as if they saw a random person on TV break a window at Target. I can’t think of a better metaphor for how lazy, consumerist, and dumb

Our society has become. We have a lot of work to do. Fix news standards, improve civics education, keep up the momentum the Dems had in outreach like in Georgia. Make people get engaged, or they’ll just sit there and yawn as our country burns to the ground on live TV.