The Big Issue Of People’S Unwillingness To Find Out For Themselves
It is often a daily occurrence in my life that I watch, hear about, or listen to any kind of news outlet or news update, CNN, Fox, MSNBC, Vice, or any number of media sources. Stories, coverage, experts, facts, opinions, debates, arguments, all of these things are common themes amongst news outlets, but the one that is most profound has always been bias. Find a topic, do some research, really dig and dive deep into what you’re looking into and watch and number of media outlets coverage about that topic and you will clearly see bias. Numbers, quotes, and statistics are always skewed, trimmed, have whole truth information withheld for the sake of whatever news outlet is using it to their advantage. While this is a major issue to the vast majority of people who are actively engaged in politics or even just people that want to know what’s going on in the world, the biggest issue at hand is willful ignorance.
In an era where information is consistently at the touch of our finger tips so many people choose still not to think and investigate things for themselves. I believe yes that media bias is an issue, but I also believe that people’s unwillingness to find out for themselves is an even bigger issue. Since 2016 we have seen America in possibly it’s strangest time in history. Our most presidential candidates narrowed down to quite possibly the three worst candidates we may have ever seen: Trump, Hilary, and Bernie. We were stuck with and undiplomatic, narcissistic, non-presidential candidate with Trump, a career lying and easily influenced by lobbyists politician with Hilary, and money hating socialism extremist with Bernie. It genuinely seemed to validate for me that in a time of access to such plentiful bundles of knowledge, history, and information people are just content with being uninformed. Everyone citizen of this country has the right to participate in our democratic-republic process and elect those who are supposed to represent us.
At our highest point, we elect the person who represent our country. So why if all of us our given the opportunity to influence who represents us and how they make our country look, squander the opportunity by not electing the most qualified peoples into positions of political power? At what point did America become a reality show that everyone is anticipation to see what the president of our great country tweets about, or wants to hear about the person he blocks next? When did it become so unanimously accepted and understood that stealing people money just because they have it and giving it to other people is a productive means to economic growth and stability? When did someone who was in part responsible for the way the banks got off without any sort of punishment for the atrocious way they let the housing bubble happen, pop, then let the entire economy fail leaving hundreds of thousands, even millions without jobs or homeless, be someone that we want to see running our country?
