A Quick Rant

A wise man by the name of Abraham Lincoln once said “America will never be destroyed from the outside. If we falter and lose our freedoms, it will be because we destroyed ourselves.” That seems to remain especially true today. America seems to be this impregnable fortress; a mighty symbol of freedom and equity protected by the latest technology, filled with millions of patriotic citizens itching to throw themselves into the line of fire. However, just because we’re surrounded by legions of faithful soldiers doesn’t mean we receive such protection mentally. Perhaps our greatest vulnerability today is not to an attack by sea or air, but one that subtly steals into the minds of our citizens, corrupting them from the inside. Furthermore, the worst part is that it’s already started to happen.

Instead of reaching for the phone lines when disaster strikes, we grab the popcorn and slouch on our sofas, casually glancing at pictures of calamity as we mindlessly scroll through our phones. Instead of donating and raising awareness, the most we can muster is a few hastily-typed hashtags. Global calamities are no longer something that evokes a global response from communities everywhere, they’re merely a spectator sport; a side show to our daily lives. If somebody’s planning an invasion, they’ve almost already won: America’s been weakened from the inside, softened by years of inactivity. Unlike Europe, we’ve almost never experienced the brutality of chaos first-hand, isolated on the other side of the globe from the horrors of post-Communist Europe. Perhaps it’s that total isolation which drives us towards this veneer of comfort; conflict is rarely a stone’s throw away, and if it is, we have a 100-foot tall fence standing in its way. We’ve become a shred of the global citizens that we aspire to be, instead become apathetic slugs, bound to our phones more than any global cause. In a way, we’ve failed to keep the flame of our revolution alive, letting it sputter to nothing.