Caught a few minutes of Morning Joe on MSNBC the other day.
The talking heads were discussing the effects of the government shutdown. They were debating if it was really harmful or not.
It always amazes me that even a topic this big does not have black and white consequences. You would think it would be easy to identify the effects of a government shutdown and its effects on society and to decide whether or not those effects are harmful or not.
Apparently I am a simpleton.
Something Joe Scarborough said pissed me off. He put it this way: "Yeah, there are people who are being hurt by the shutdown, people who are really struggling, but for most voters the shutdown will not have dire consequences." I am paraphrasing, but that is the gist of what he said.
I don't care if only one American is hurt by the shutdown. Shutting down the government willfully and unjustifiably with full knowledge that you are negatively impacting even one person's life is immoral, amoral, and vile.
The problem is these talking heads are removed from reality. They make a lot of money, they live privileged lives travelling in elite circles and they are far removed from the down and dirty business of trying to survive.
They cannot empathize with the working poor because to the talking heads the struggling majority are a concept, they are statistics, they are reflections in a poll.
They are not human beings.
The struggling majority are truly on their own. Nobody is fighting for them, nobody empathizes with them, nobody actually feels what they feel.
Even the people who put out the vibe that this country is screwed up, that the rich are getting richer and the working poor are getting screwed, the people who express outrage at the situation most Americans find themselves in, even these people are not accomplishing anything.
They care more about talking points than about fellow human beings.
No comments:
Post a Comment