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We all face one of the worst times our nation has faced in terms of an out of control government that may destroy this country if it is allowed to persist with its self-centered activities. In the past, citizens would be spurred to action to at some point say, "Enough's enough!" and our country would "correct" itself.
But today, it at times feels impossible to "wake up" ones' fellow citizens. Why is that? Do they not care what's happening to America?
Thom Hartmann offered recently one explanation. He felt that it was because today, we distinctly feel afraid that we are one "change" away from being totally broke or not able to get our college education, etc. because in this day and age, if one slips up once, you fall of the "fast track" and its not as easy as it was to recover as it was back say in the 60's, when someone could go to another school if one got kicked out of the one one was at, and not lose a lot of money doing so. One could get another job if one lost the one one had at that point. And so forth...
Many would say that today we're just too damned busy! We all are working, and have our kids in daycare instead of one parent staying home with them. Some say that lack of attention is screwing up kids too, and is not giving them personal guidance of what's really important.
Some would say that the level of "pleasant" and "addictive" distractions today are so much more than they were even back during the Watergate hearings. Today we have hundreds of channels of satellite or cable TV instead of a few network over the air TV stations that ALL carried the hearings in the afternoons. We didn't have video games, VCR's, computers, cell phones, or any of the other high tech devices, other than a phonograph player or a regular radio to use instead of turning in to the hearings on TV.
But there's one more variable I think that I feel is different today, and I think has more profound an effect than one might realize. We couple all of the other factors above with us having tons of more spam and telemarketing today than we did then. If we got junk mail in those days, it wasn't nearly as much and anything that even *smelled* of chicanery was reported to the cops or the better business bureau. We get five junk emails perhaps every minute today in our personal emails that at least some of them would arguably be trying to play some sort of scam that would be felt criminal and would have been taken action on as criminal activity just 20-30 years ago.
This morning my office mate was severely disappointed when she responded to what appeared to be a great deal for a vacation that was advertised as being for around $300, but when she signed up (and probably got onto the company's "spam" list, it was more like $1600 for this vacation in reality. You know, the old "bait and switch"!). This sort of thing happens to all of us often and could happen to us every day if we let it.
How does this affect all of us? How does it affect young people in particular? I think a lot of us get jaded to the act of "scam". A lot of us see it happening around us every minute. It almost seems legitimized by all of the spam and telemarketing, and even cheap ads or paid for programming that we have on the more "specialized" TV we have today. We are visually assaulted with ads every place we walk. The names of everything we come into contact now have a corporate moniker associated with them. We don't have time to complain about this. The prevalence of it around us is WAY beyond our ability to police it consistently when we see it. Our kids notice our inaction when it comes to saying "This sort of thing is bad. It should be reported to authorities." that our parents would have taught us about certain similar activities that might have happened on a far less massive scale when we were young. We were taught early a sense of ethics of what was good business practice and what was bad.
Aside from our senses, and our sense of morals getting messed up, who else suffers. Small business. That's who! The only real defense these days against getting scammed from many people's perspective is to go with popular and known brands when buying a product and service rather than going with a local or unknown product that someone is unsure whether it might be a scam or not and doesn't have time to research. Now in the past, it might have been a small business just trying to give you some grocery coupons or something like that to get noticed and get your business. It could be totally honest, and those that would take advantage of these offers would feel more in touch with their local businesses that they start to gain more trust in and like their business practices when they give them a good deal for being good loyal customers. Customers also didn't try to scam local businesses in the old days. Now with the big Wal-Marts and other larger businesses swallowing up the small businesses, big business feels less responsible to have a good relationship with their customers, and customers feel less loyalty or sense of ethics when doing business with larger businesses either.
Large businesses probably like this kind of mistrust and tuning out that more customers are forced to use when engaging any kind of business transactions that drive them to big business rather than small or local business. Since it is large business that drives our country's agenda through the institutionalized bribery of campaign financing, noone seems to prioritize fixing this problem. Politicians feel better off with this atmosphere too. They like that more people feel personally disempowered to do anything about things they see wrong with things like spam, and feel that they are better off with the apathetic voter that is lead to believe that there's nothing to be done about these criminal element, and a voter that is so jaded with what goes on around them with spam, etc. that they will also be jaded on what kind of corrupt political activity also goes on around them too, allowing the politician more freedom to have their pay to play politics not scrutinized like they might have been back in the 60's or earlier.
The question is, with this huge volume of content in the information age, are there ways to empower our kids with the ability to screen out on a mass basis, the kinds of spam, and other attempts to corrupt our lives effectively? Are there ways to actually feel empowered ethically to do so as well? If we can find a way to succeed with this, can we also translate those feelings of success in feeling that we have the grass roots to demand of our politicians that they listen to us, and not the corporate donors that have along with them scammed us for so long as well?
I ask you if there's a way to clean up the cess pool around us, and to do it effectively to get rid of the scam artists and find ways of rewarding those that do things ethically around us so that we make that more a part of our own ethos and what drives us to "take our country back". And to have our kids feel that they grow up learning how to be honorable again, and at the same time provide for the freedom of speech to those that are truly trying to provide us different perspectives and differentiate that from those that want to distract us or scam us that have driven us into a lull of frustrated inaction. To feel that those that are doing the scams aren't ones to be admired for their ability to "prosper" through these questionable practices, but instead when we see people that try to scam others get punished, perhaps we can also translate that into a wish to see political scams and corruption also get punished too, and not ignored or "respected".
I feel this is the core of what needs to be acted upon if we truly want to have a decisive change for the better in the coming years where we can get back to the Democratic values that made our country great in the middle of the last century. I think we need to come up with ways to shut down the spamification of America! Ideas?
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