When my clock radio turns on at 6:20am, there is invariably a story about the Iraq war or the Middle East on “Morning Edition.” At the bottom of the hour, the news begins and it usually starts off with a story about Iraq or the Middle East. After the news, there’s often a story about the Iraq war or the Middle East, followed by a story about a soldier or an ordinary person who has been touched by the Iraq war or the Middle East. After a break for traffic reports, it’s time for a story about people losing their homes after taking out usurious loans, then some long-winded “perspective” from a whiner and a boring story about something uniquely Californian, an in-depth look at the root structure of an endangered plant or some such thing.
The whole time I am laying in bed listening to this getting more and more depressed, there is a single bird chirping outside my window. He seems to have taken up permanent residence outside my bedroom, and his chirp is monotonous and insistent; sounding like the annoying, incessant chirp of a smoke detector with a low battery.
This is the world in which I wake up every morning: the constant low-level hum of a region at war far away that does nothing to us back home but annoy; financial disaster; birds that don’t seem to understand that you don’t get enough sleep, what with the waking up 4 times a night.
As I lay there I often wonder… is this how people become disengaged from civics, estranged from politics, uninterested in their government? I’m becoming one of those people. I had thought it was because of the sunny weather and blue skies conspiring to give me other things to do; now I realize that I am bombarded by it day and night to such an extent that I tune it out.
Hopelessness, inability to change what it happening. That’ll be what gets written in the history books about this era in our history.
