Apathy

Apathy, a puzzling and deplorable impassivity, and indifference to something that should excite interest or emotion.

Ours is at times a puzzling society. Our lack of activism is a double-edged sword. On the one hand, it tends to keep our society peaceful and quiet for the most part. We see other cultures like the French and many Latin nations that are in the streets daily protesting about issues that concern them. The government reaction to these protests are often militaristic and violence ensues.

Many of us, on the other hand, see a news story about the presumed drug gangs being rounded up by  the scores, chained up, heads shaved, and perp-marched off to a prison in a foreign country without so much as a hearing. In some cases, their abducters, presumably part of the ICE gestapo, are wearing masks like some gang in the Phillipines doing Duterte's dirty work.

We might cringe a little at the videos and tsk tsk, knowing that what we are watching is a blatant violation of our Constitution, but it's not our son, cousin, or son-in-law, so we change the channel and grab our March Madness bracket and forget that some of those men may well be innocent. It wouldn't be the first time innocent people were imprisoned, and that was after going through our judicial system.

We have risen up in the past, but not until a few million Africans had been kidnapped and enslaved for centuries. Or millions of Native Americans had been slaughtered or forced onto reservations. It took over a decade of our government misleading us into a war in Vietnam that cost the lives of 58,000 Americans and untold millions of Vietnamese to motivate us to insist our government end that useless war.

Now, we are sitting in front of our televisions watching a new gang of leaders shred our democracy. Trump has filled his cabinet and critical agencies with unqualified ass-kissers who have apparently sworn an oath of allegiance. We have an unelected, unhired, and untitled foreigner sitting at the right hand of our president and directing the firing of tens of thousands of honorable and lifelong civil servants based on nothing more than a suspicions of waste in our government and some heartless and non-feeling algorithm that drawing some arbitrary line in various key agencies and demanding that everyone below that line be fired.

This president has stacked the DOJ in his favor, again by hiring sycophants who he believes will not challenge him. He and the Project 2025 mafia are working tirelessly to seed our justice system at every level with like-minded autocratic judges. The Speaker of the House, Mike Johnson, has even floated the idea of doing away with some courts.

"“We do have the authority over the federal courts, as you know. We can eliminate an entire district court,” Johnson told reporters. “We have power of funding over the courts and all these other things. But desperate times call for desperate measures, and Congress is going to act.” https://truthout.org/articles/mike-johnson-suggests-eliminating-federal-courts-after-trump-rulings-blocked/

They have cowered major law firms, and thumbed their noses at judges rulings. They have put a lackey in charge of both the FBI and the Department of Defense. Trump has fired seventeen Inspector Generals. Not because of malfeasance or dereliction of duty, but because he didn't like them. He has turned the presidency in to a giant rapier that he is using to dispatch any and all who speak against him.

This should scare the shit out of every redblooded American. This should hit us like Pearl Harbor and 9/11. It is an attack on the very heart and soul of our democracy. And yet, the streets are empty. The townhalls are silent.

Have we grown so apathetic and comfortable, as long as the tyranny hasn't reached us, that we will sit idle and watch this political coup take place? We are more passionate about sports than we are the events that could change our lives and the lives of our children and grandchildren.

What Trump and the P2025 mafia have done is the political equivalent of Russia invading Ukraine, and yet I hear no outcry from the masses. Will we wait until it's too late? When, instead of civil unrest, protests, and voting en masse, our only alternative is violence?