Who is this silly child that is still scared of monsters under the bed, you ask? Is it little Timmy across the street? Or maybe it’s Tommy from school? What about Jeffie down the road?
Nope. It’s every single media outlet in the whole. freakin. WORLD.
Newspapers. TV news stations. Internet news sites. Commercials.
It’s almost like they enjoy peeing their pants out of sheer terror that the world is going to hell in a handbasket… And it’s almost like they enjoy peeing their pants out of sheer delight in making us believe their drivel. So we’re all Chicken Little and we just got hit on the head by a piece of sky. “The sky is falling! The sky is falling! The sky is falling!”
So now it’s swine flu… Swine flu. SWINE. FLU. Oh come on people! There are around 140 cases in the United States. CASES – not deaths. Cases of “H1N1 influenza A.” Only one person has died outside of Mexico…and that was a Mexican child who was visiting Texas!! Now Egypt has decided to slaughter all 300,000 of its pigs even though you don’t get it by eating pork! And the WHO (World Health Organization, not the band) raised the pandemic flu alert to phase 5, one step away from its highest level – that’s right, just below a full-fledged global pandemic!!
One death!
We are completely freaking out! The whole world has gone insane! Chill the heck out, mankind!
Am I being cold and unfeeling about human deaths and sickness? Probably. And I truly am sorry about that. No death is ever something to just glaze over. Not a single one, and several more have died in Mexico. But everyone acts so scared. The media feeds on that fear, cycles it through, and spits out more fear so we’ll keeep watching and buying and watching and buying and watching and buying. Whips the populace into mass hysteria and uses it to manipulate us for their own benefit. I saw a bank commercial, I think Chase Bank, that said “What matters most is protecting what matters.” Really? Seriously?? Let’s think about this… the thing that matters more than anything else in the entire world… is PROTECTING OURSELVES. How scared are we?!? I’m not even trying to get spiritual and say that “God has given us a spirit of courage not timidity” or anything. I won’t even get on my other soapbox that we shouldn’t even be afraid of death. I’m just talking about common-sense-quit-freaking-out-take-a-darn-breath-and-chill!
[Of course, death isn’t a big deal until it’s at your doorstep. Like Thrice sings, “The sky is falling, and no one will care as long as it lands overseas.” That’s why Darfur happens. That’s why the Congo happens. Or Sri Lanka, or Tibet, or any of the several countries in Latin America and elsewhere whose legitimate governments the CIA helps overthrow in order to benefit American interests. But that’s another topic for another time.]
We’re scared people won’t like us, so we buy the hippest brands, or we go to the coolest shows, or we go home with the hottest girl or guy at the bar. We’re scared we won’t be “successful” (whatever that’s even defined as) so we work and work and work some more…to make enough money, to get that promotion, to get that sweet loft downtown…and we walk over anyone in our way. We’re scared to make mistakes, so we don’t ever do anything radical or revolutionary or edgy or atypical, because heaven forbid, good little Christian boy that I am, I don’t end up with my best life now. And we’re scared of hurting, or feeling anything. But this band the Psalters sings that “We are all lepers here, overcome by our fear of pain, let us remain numb,” …and so we try to find solace in the supposed “freedom” that sanitizing and numbing brings.
Next time you watch TV, or read the paper, or even take a look society as a whole – think about these things. Look at how much of our lives are driven by fear, how much the media (both left and right) feed off that fear, how much the politicians use that fear to further their careers.
It’s a big scam. You do not have to be scared.
You do not have to fear.
You do not have to fear.
You do not have to fear.
