The family above can be from anywhere in the U.S., it doesn’t matter. They represent what may be our problem. I don’t know their politics and for my purposes it really doesn’t matter. They may demonstrate one of our problems. The kids aka grandkids. They’re a blessing and a distraction. The distractions come from the parents working to provide for them and keep them busy. The need to keep the kids doing something.
Keeping the kids busy means the parents are also busy. And for many of them that means they feel/think they are too busy to pay attention to the events going on around them that may affect their children’s lives more than little Billy making it to hockey or karate practice. So during this important election cycle the parents consumption of news came from FB, X, Tik Tok or some other social media platform. Snippets and trends or whatever Janie at Little League told Susie she should check out. No in-depth analysis, shallow OMGs and WTFs without understanding any of the depth behind any of it.
Distraction leads to ignorance. Merriam-Webster defines ignorance as:
: the state or fact of being ignorant : lack of knowledge, education, or awareness
Examples given were:
His racist attitudes were born out of ignorance.
an appalling ignorance about other cultures
And IMHO, ignorance causes many to default to their deeply held biases and bigotry. Bigotry takes many forms. Misogyny and racism happen to be the pair taken this year. Misogyny and racism combine to form misogynoir.
And it’s from these combinations we had many voting, or not voting without fulling understanding the impact of this election on their distractions, their children.
The pundits all want to talk about the candidate or candidates and what they did or could have done. Who they needed to reach out to, to better understand. The problem isn’t reaching out, the problem is reaching them at all.
You can’t overcome ignorance if no one’s there to hear. If they think their lives are too busy to pay attention, or enough attention.
