[djmcmath]

So I did my Saturday morning Men's Breakfast thing this morning at the local greasy spoon, and the TV in the background was playing the morning news loop. Some sex offender is out of jail, and we're quoting opinions from arbitrary people on the street. An 8 year old almost drowned in his neighbour's pool. There was a big accident on the bridge yesterday afternoon. A legislator is thinking about building another bridge, still.

I overheard the news for quite some time, with no references made to anything national or international, no topics of any real interest to anyone. It couldn't have been the local section of news, because it just looped over and over again for more than an hour. I finally commented to the group: "We have troops in Afghanistan and Iraq. There is a massive investigation going on into human rights violations on the part of US soldiers in Iraq. Hamas has dismantled Israeli bodies and hidden the component parts, sparking massive outrage, worse then it's been in quite a while. Syrian president refuses to expel terrorists from Damascus, in accordance with US demands. And it's an election year -- we're supposed to be picking a president in November, maybe someone who will make educated decisions about these things that are going on in the world. But the front page news is about some kid that none of us know who almost drowned yesterday?"

That was scary, but the thing that chilled me to the bone was the fact that nobody else cared. I looked around the table at a bunch of blank faces, deer-in-the-headlights "what are you talking about" looks. Nobody else was reading the news, nobody else was paying attention, and nobody really cared.

So once again, I'm just venting; I figured this group would understand, mostly being relatively well-read and up-to-date on the happenings in the world at large. My discovery of the morning is that the populace is, for the most part, completely out of touch, and worse, doesn't really care about that fact. Wow.


Dan