We’ve been hearing all about Lebanon’s elections, Iran’s elections, India’s elections, this country and that’s elections, all sorts of information about what these things mean in the grand scheme of things. Everything but why should care about any of this. We don’t get to vote in those places and whoever wins can’t do anything about our pet peeves. And will any of these places be transformed by these elections? In Iran, the president isn’t even the boss, some irritable old fart in a Lawrence of Arabia costume and a God complex runs the show. When they have elections in Saudi Arabia maybe we’ll sit up and take notice. Or not, since that’s not our country either and none of our business how silly a form of government their people put up with. They seem pretty okay with their king and the 5,000 princes hogging all the oil trillions for themselves, so why should we care?
There’s a lot to not care about. Too much caring about things we have no control over is bad for the nerves. LIke the fact that China is insisting that manufacturers install censorship software into every computer sold in their country from now on. So what? We live here, not there. Sounds like O.P.P. – Other People’s Problems. And is this surprising to anybody? This is the Chinese government we’re talking about here! Oh, but what about the dilemma that presents to the Western corporations who manufacture these machines? What dilemma? They sold 40 million computers last year in China. Of course they’re going to cave in and install the censorship software. There’s big money involved there. Money talks, ethics walk. No skin off their nose, they don’t live there either.
And now that some addled old jerk shot and killed somebody at the Holocaust Mseum in Washington, do we have to worry about a rash of these things happening and a whole lot of people all of a sudden denying documented history? Do the words “isolated incident” and “troubled loner” mean anything? It was a regrettable, horrible thing to happen, but not likely to start a trend. Does anyone but completely ridiculous people deny that the Holocaust really happened? General Eisenhower knew the day would come when blowhards and demagogues would attempt to deny the truth, and towards that end ordered his men to document the death camps with as many photos and films as possible and to also preserve the meticulous records of the murdered millions kept by the Germans themselves. Serious people don’t doubt the obvious and the well documented. Jail the crazy old coot and move on.
There’s a lot of good not caring going on. The Republican party eating itself in front of our eyes, for example. A party that once boasted brains like William F. Buckley, Hennry Cabot Lodge, Jacob Javits, Dwight D. Eisenhower, Henry Kissinger and founding member Abraham Lincoln is now run by a group of delusional mental midgets. But why care about them? They’re rich as hell, they’ll be fine. If they want to argue about creationism, torture and reviving the fiscal policies that got this country into such a mess all day long, let them! They had their shot, blew it big time and are the outside looking in now, wishing failure on their own government and making one moronic statement after another. How much sleep is anybody losing over these toothless fools?
While we’re not caring about stuff, let’s forget about worrying about the swine flu. More people have died from the bee stings, but the public health officials who predicted a pandemic that didn’t happen have declared one anyway, dammit! They won’t be made to look like fools, by Jiminy, and if we refuse to cooperate and die off in droves, well, to hell with us, they’ll have their pandemic anyway! Besides, it takes the heat off of having to do something about real pandemics that just won’t go away, like the 13.4 million starvation deaths every year, the AIDS plague, 5 million annual deaths from tainted water sources and drug-resistant malaria strains that kill hundreds of thousands every single year without the benefit of anyone calling them any sort of emergency.
Of course those things are a tad too obvious and no one can take proper credit for alerting the public, so they sort of get swept under the world’s carpet while blowhard public officials tell us the sky is falling. So let’s not worry too much about what we’re instructed to worry about. Those are invented distractions to keep our eyes off the ball while people with money and power do as they please. There’s no shortage of real problems everywhere you turn to waste our caring on alarmist nonsense. Keep your eyes open and on the ball. Only you know what’s important to you and what you care about. If you’re a grown person and need someone else to tell what you should care about, well, there’s no reason to care about you either. Sheep are generally not a huge concern for anybody but shepherds and other sheep.