Hate and War

I think I may attempt to name all of my blog posts after Clash songs if at all possible.

But anyway....

War is a weird thing. My entire generation has lived through and known war all our lives and it is something as natural to us as breathing. The majority of our lives have been post 9/11 which means we have grown up with our country pretty much policing the world and sending out millions of troops and spending trillions. Saying that this has no reflection on our culture is ridiculous. The whole point of this week of class was to be able to answer the question "does war have an effect on our culture" and that's my answer. I have grown up underneath a waving American flag and a large percent of our population thinking anyone from the Middle East (which includes everything from northern Africa to India for a lot of people) as terrorists and a threat to our safety. Our culture has become one of hate because we have had a philosophy of "us vs. them" thrust upon us from a very early age.

Nowadays the rise of social media has made it easy for everyone to put out their opinions on the internet. Blogs are everywhere and everyone has opinions on everything and posts them on the internet all day every day. This has led to an inundation of information but most of it is incredibly uneducated and based upon very little fact. Put this together with the ever shortening attention span and we have the equivalent of a room full of middle schoolers shouting at each other about quantum physics. So few people try to be informed and rational because it takes time and effort. We are full of information on pop culture and lacking in information on much else, so maybe people should think twice before posting their opinions everywhere.

The reason I haven't been posting blogs so far is because I've been waiting for something that I think I can speak articulately on. I don't spend a lot of time researching politics or anything, but I need to start writing blogs or I won't hit my quota.