How come it seems that every time someone comes along with an anti-Obama administration story to tell it never pans out? What I mean by that is, why do the president’s most fervent critics lack the capacity to execute a simple Google search before tainting the debate with their baseless accusations?
To set the story, I’m at work on 2/18, standing by the manager’s desk. I work in food industry. Toni, my manager, and Jimmy, a well-intentioned and helpful delivery driver, enter the scene to discuss a news story that rubbed them the wrong way. The facts looked like this; a little girl brought her own lunch to school, from home, but the lunch was rejected by a teacher during the lunch break. The teacher then directed the child to accept a government-sponsored meal from the lunch lady instead. Oh, the horror.
Still, the issue here was that the teacher character (and I say character here because this story is, of course, a story – by that I mean complete hogwash) overextended boundaries by forcing this child to eat a school lunch rather than the one provided to her by her own parents. The guv’ment thought the parent-prepared meal was nutritiously insufficient, so they forced the child to eat their Sloppy Joes (with a side of Bureaucracy fries, or so I’m told.)
“Next up are my civil liberties! That’s what the constitution is there for!”
“That’s Michelle Obama for you, though. They’re trying to force us to do what they want; all they want is more control.”
So here I am, standing between my two colleagues in a heated political discussion. Keep in mind, however, I have not said a word throughout the entire conversation. I never do. I never will. It’s a mistake to talk politics with most people. The reality of the situation is that people don’t care enough about politics to go out of their way in developing strong bases of political knowledge – most get their news from talk radio and move on. This, as you might guess, is really dangerous.
Citizens who refuse to learn the truth for themselves will in no time have their opinion banks instead filled with the rambling incoherence often found on the radio and television today. Differing opinions are not undesirable; dissent fuels the engine of democracy. Still, how foolish we would be as a citizenry to allow a small number of individuals to dictate the opinions and events that swim through the pool of public opinion. The burden to educate and articulate lies on the individual – no one else.
It turns out, after a quick Google news search, that the school lunch debacle was simply a misunderstanding. The girl needed a supplemental lunch, not a replacement lunch; she showed up to school with an “incomplete” lunch. The school has a policy to supplement “incomplete” lunches (home-made lunches that lack a snack or beverage) to make them “complete.” The teacher involved in this situation meant to send the little girl to the Milk line to grab a bag of Milk to drink, but accidentally sent the child to the full school lunch line. The girl went home with the home-made lunch uneaten, her parents contacted a radio show, and now dozens of new government-paranoid, anti-Obama acolytes are born.
The information is out there. What does it say about the state of American politics when we are unwilling to search for and understand information that is readily available?