"Why are you like this?"
"Like what?"
"Like how you are."
I've been having this type of conundrum a lot lately. Nearly everyone you encounter would agree that things don't seem to be going all that well in our country these days. Maybe that's an ever-present existential complaint because there's always something going wrong. But while the summer kicks off with wildfires, droughts, a potentially worse-than-usual hurricane season, GOP debates with less-than-impressive candidates who can't seem to take advantage of a sitting president with low approval ratings and a tottering economy, the usual raft of civil wars plaguing Africa and the Middle East, our news media has kept us focused on... a Weiner. And while it can have been expected for this to have grabbed our attention for a day or so, the fact that it's been such a story for over a week now is really a bit of insight into the current American psyche. And clearly we need a distraction.
So what does it mean? Why, when so many people are willing to share a decent and informed opinion, do we so consistently return to such ludicrous minutiae? Why, when the loudest cries from both liberals and conservatives seem to revolve solely around how much intrusion into our lives we're willing to permit the government, do we always become rapt by the most extreme voices filled with nonsense? Why are we like this?
"A person is smart. People are dumb, panicky dangerous animals..."
Does this explain it? Have we simultaneously become a country of individuals... yet so desperate to be a part of something that we're now settling for the easiest solution? Fearful of every bogeyman that the media throws at us. Smart people make bad decisions all the time. But that doesn't make them evil, or even dangerous. Well, except to themselves.
Why are we like this?
Like what?
Like how we are?
