Arment: American apathy
May 17, 2010
Do you know when the Kool-Aid guy jumps through a wall yelling “OOOHHHH YEEAAHHH,” in his dark, creamy, sexual chocolate voice?
I hear that exact thing in my head every time I think about it; the disaster in the Gulf just keeps getting better and better. If the problem climaxes in the Gulf and actually catches fire, making it the world’s largest oil fire, my head might explode.
It’s not that I’m being malicious, or that I actually think what’s happening in that region of the world with the oil spill is a good thing. It’s just that after years of saying going green doesn’t matter or that using reusable shopping bags and holding your nose in the air doesn’t change anything, I can’t help but gloat.
By all means, don’t call your government representatives and demand to know why we haven’t started a viable alternative to petrol fuel. Instead, you should make a show of how much you care by using a cloth grocery sack. Get a sticker that says how green you are and put it on the back of your car; hell, paint yourself green. Completely neglect to think about how much that doesn’t matter if we keep using gasoline.
Oh, but that problem’s too big, isn’t it? Just like the national debt, just like world peace, just like gun control, abortion and any other issue that matters ad nauseum. It’s just too big, why bother caring. You just can’t figure it out, it’s too complicated. Besides, you could be too busy, going to the bar to get smashed, watching TV, or gossiping about things that don’t matter. No way no how are you about to think about anything that’s relevant.
I get a real, “I told you so” rush out of some things. I know it’s kind of weird. Maybe I should see someone about it. The more upset people get about something, the more I like it. It gives me this warm fuzzy feeling that’s somewhere between opening a fight with a headbutt or holding the trigger down on an automatic, belt-fed weapon. You didn’t care when you should have, and now it’s time to reap what grew from the seeds of your apathy.
Maybe that’s why I can’t help but crack a smile at the Gulf disaster. Now it’s being found that the leak is substantially worse than the government and BP led us to first believe, according to the New York Times.
Not only that, but as reported by the New York Times, BP representative Tom Mueller said, “We’re not going to take any extra efforts now to calculate flow there at this point. It’s not relevant to the response effort, and it might even detract from the response effort.”
Listen to that wise corporate man. How he points out obviously that knowing anything about the current situation at the actually sight of the flow of oil would be a bad thing. Not only would being equipped with more knowledge be bad, it would hinder the response effort. Orwell said it best when he wrote, “Ignorance is strength.”
Why wouldn’t BP blatantly lie to us though? If I were BP, I’d lie to us. I’d tell us that the oil spill is a good thing. That it’s actually helping the environment. Even if it’s laughably obvious what’s actually going on, the American public isn’t going to say anything. We’re just going to keep going to the mall, watching TV and caring way too much about sports. Relevant things don’t matter to us.
Remember when everyone cared about Haiti? How it was a huge deal? How we were going return Haiti to its former glory of third world country by texting $10 to them? Why aren’t people texting money to oil clean up bank accounts at something to the tune of $100 a pop? Because we feel entitled to that oil, and if something goes wrong others will pick up the pieces.
So you’ll have to grant me my moments of dark humor, because in the end the humor is the only thing that makes me feel better about horrible things that are beyond my control. Until the American collective, the silent majority, decides that they are going to pick up their phones and call their representatives, nothing is going to change.