This Indifferent Country: The Devastating Price of Ignorance
Ignorance is the lack of access to, an unwillingness to accept, and the willful denial of wisdom submerged in submissive indifference.
It is also the definition for this self-provoked, hellscape of 2020. I liken it to a cultural micro — an abusive family refusing to acknowledge, address, or heal a collective trauma experience.
Journalists decreeing empathy for a president who has refused science and endangered himself and others is a product of our enablement of ignorance. We cannot structurally resist an authoritarian who has left our country open to a deadly virus, unless we deal with and end our submissive coddling of bullies.
We cannot move forward until we walk backward with an awareness of what has been done.
Our country holds belligerent fools in higher esteem than science and facts. The loud and flamboyant are considered titillating and entertaining. We’ve reached an apocalyptic level of uncritical thinking largely due to a severe indifference to the importance of intelligent, social responsibility. The Senate, religious institutions, and the excitement-malleable press have given credence to a governing-platform built upon lies, propaganda, and bullying tactics that shove resistors and truth out of the mainstream. This has led to a recent “good people should” instruction: mass atrocities must be overlooked for a president who has been felled by a virus…even if due to his own inaction and venal disregard.
First walk backward, collect an awareness of what has been done, and then firmly hold onto that knowledge as enablers and propagandists relentlessly attempt to shut down critical thinking.
We are in the middle of a cold civil war — a war between wisdom and intentional stupidity. A war pitting reason; boring, logical reason against an addictive, suicidal level of ignorance. Wisdom stands between our humane selves and the entrance to our unevolved, pre-frontal lobe selves abusing each other for scraps discarded by tyrants. To protect that dividing line between thoughtfulness and unrelenting crudeness, there is only one option. Fight back. Turning the other cheek and maintaining superficial politeness enables bullies. We have no cheeks left to turn. Our battered cheeks carry collective trauma that’s actively eviscerating our future.
I have been bullied by several different individuals. Family members, kids at school, teachers, co-workers, bosses, and even friends. Many times, I fought back and many times I didn’t. Even when I resisted, my body trembled, my voice cracked, and tears threatened to lay me bare. Fighting back is the antithesis of how I was modeled, the clay of me tucked and nipped until I succumbed more often than I want to remember.
2016, pre-election, I shouted warnings on every medium available to me, my historical wounds deep, wisdom streaming like blood sent to warn of impending doom. I often relish being right, coveting the tragic lessons tattooed into heart and brain as a warrior displaying battle scars announcing my survival. I have no enjoyment of this ugly mess my wisdom foretold; a wisdom garnered from living with a poor man’s Donald Trump.
A seer is someone who foretells the future, extrapolating from available information what is the most-likely outcome of a situation. Wall Street is littered with self-proclaimed versions relying on win-loss ratios as banners for successfully guessing market trends. A seer does not self-proclaim, they instead advise while understanding that the end result, regardless of their accuracy, is out of their hands.
Bullies are prolific in this societal landscape, our soil lacking sustained pushback and consequences severe enough to matter. Bullies and tyrants sown in families, businesses, and government, kudzu swallowing thoughtfulness whole. I wrote about this in August 2016 in an article on the Huffington Post platform: The Real Authoritarian Deal — America Under Donald Trump’s Boot.
I am not a prophet. I’m a see-r. I see how the past impacts the present and how it inspires or diminishes our future.
This is a vital, pivotal time in our collective lives. Either we careen off a cliff, carried along with disturbed lemmings blindly following their leader or we put a stop to this suicidal stupidity and fight back.
Do not doubt your own earned-wisdom. Trust it. Inform others. Gather. We are between here and there. The future will be written with what we do next.
Vote early in-person or deliver mail-in ballots to the office of the county clerk. Go with friends or family. If lemmings attempt to bully you at the polls, call the county clerk’s office with the number programmed into your phone. Video their behavior and post it online. Write about your experience with bullies to remind others we don’t have to live this way. Bullies are not the majority, humanity is.
Fight back.
