We are too complacent these days. Technology has advanced our world in innumerable ways, but it has come at a great cost: we are now content to sit and watch our lives happen to us, rather than making things happen ourselves. We are too content to let our fingers do the walking across a keyboard, when our feet should be walking and marching across the pavement!
These are desperate times. Every day I see the country dangerously inching back toward the hostile, polarized social climate of the 1960s. Racial, political, and socio-economical issues are derailing our way of life in such a way that demands action by the American People. History has shown us that two things get results in this country: Money and Emotions. Look at the Civil Rights Movement (CRM). The Montgomery bus boycotts integrated the public transportation system how? By hurting the pockets of the transit companies. Many people were able to organize without the use of more than a telephone, but imagine if there was only an online petition against the segregation policy. Nothing would have ever changed because anger and internet “outrage” affects nothing in cyberspace. Had protesters simply started an online blog collective to protest segregation instead of being at sit-ins, getting hosed by the police, etc., and allowing the subsequent melee to be broadcast on TV, they never would have gained the support of Northern sympathizers. Who knows what the outcome of the CRM may have been???
Because of technology, idiots like Sarah Palin are allowed to interact with the media via Facebook and Twitter. How self-deprecating for a news organization (even Faux [Fox]-News) to engage in her little game. Even the despicable piece of flotsam that is Rush Limbaugh gives interviews to the media and allows them to ask him questions that aren’t pre-screened beforehand. But noooo, the entire news world plays into Palin’s game, reporting on her tweets and Facebook status updates as If that is considered news. She refuses to give interviews to anyone but Faux News and does so because she is incapable of putting together coherent answers unless asked about “commonsense, conservative solutions”.
The aforementioned practices, not technology in and of itself, are what’s damaging the fabric of our society. It may seem hypocritical of me to write this on a blog on the Internet, but I’m not saying stay offline, just use it wisely! Harness the Internet’s interconnectivity to organize, but in order to mobilize, sorry my dears, you’ve got to GET OFF THE COMPUTER.
These are desperate times. Every day I see the country dangerously inching back toward the hostile, polarized social climate of the 1960s. Racial, political, and socio-economical issues are derailing our way of life in such a way that demands action by the American People. History has shown us that two things get results in this country: Money and Emotions. Look at the Civil Rights Movement (CRM). The Montgomery bus boycotts integrated the public transportation system how? By hurting the pockets of the transit companies. Many people were able to organize without the use of more than a telephone, but imagine if there was only an online petition against the segregation policy. Nothing would have ever changed because anger and internet “outrage” affects nothing in cyberspace. Had protesters simply started an online blog collective to protest segregation instead of being at sit-ins, getting hosed by the police, etc., and allowing the subsequent melee to be broadcast on TV, they never would have gained the support of Northern sympathizers. Who knows what the outcome of the CRM may have been???
Because of technology, idiots like Sarah Palin are allowed to interact with the media via Facebook and Twitter. How self-deprecating for a news organization (even Faux [Fox]-News) to engage in her little game. Even the despicable piece of flotsam that is Rush Limbaugh gives interviews to the media and allows them to ask him questions that aren’t pre-screened beforehand. But noooo, the entire news world plays into Palin’s game, reporting on her tweets and Facebook status updates as If that is considered news. She refuses to give interviews to anyone but Faux News and does so because she is incapable of putting together coherent answers unless asked about “commonsense, conservative solutions”.
The aforementioned practices, not technology in and of itself, are what’s damaging the fabric of our society. It may seem hypocritical of me to write this on a blog on the Internet, but I’m not saying stay offline, just use it wisely! Harness the Internet’s interconnectivity to organize, but in order to mobilize, sorry my dears, you’ve got to GET OFF THE COMPUTER.
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