OCTOBER 1, 2019 – Today’s post features an experiment.
Quick quiz (with no “correct” answer): How would you prioritize the issues listed below?
- Impeachment (Or, “Democrats’ war against the president” (if you’re a Republican)/”The need to halt foreign interference in our elections” (if you’re a Democrat));
- Responding to climate change;
- Keeping out hordes and rounding up and deporting illegals (if you’re a Republican)/Granting asylum seekers at our southern border humane treatment and due process (if you’re a Democrat)?
- Improving access (financially and otherwise) to quality health care;
- Addressing out-of-control student loan indebtedness and the high cost of higher education;
- Adopting federal law requiring background checks prior to the sale of assault rifles;
- Ensuring the solvency of the Social Security system beyond 2030.
Okay, I now to encourage you to take a few moments to ponder your initial responses and, if so inclined, to change them and upon even further reflection, to adjust them yet again . . .
. . . Satisfied with your responses now? Sure? Okay, okay. Yes, you can change your mind again—nothing wrong with changing your mind, especially when you want to get things right.
Alright, okay. Now put down your figurative pencils and ponder the next question . . .
When was the last time we were scared out of our wits about Islamic extremists perpetrating “terror” on American soil?
Exactly. Few of us can remember.
Thanks to how the media operate, not to mention how our minds and nervous systems react, we eventually get over what we think is the issue of the day. Remember last hurricane before Dorian? Just wait until the next Cat 5 storm makes landfall on the continental U.S. Talk about the weather saving the “Weather President!” . . . At least for the duration of the hurricane or the remainder of his presidency, depending on which ends first.
But back to Islamic extremism. ’Twas a time when that was the scariest bogeyman. Now, I’ll bet good money that most people taking the above quiz today would not be asking in the course of it, “Hey, wait a sec! \Why isn’t ‘Islamic extremism’ not on the list?”
I’m not suggesting that Islamic extremists have vanished. They haven’t. Just last week, a professor in Pakistan was murdered by a student who thought the prof, a devout Muslim, had committed unforgivable blasphemy by suggesting a slant that didn’t conform to the radicalized student’s goofball ideas about the Quran. And I have no doubt that sects with equally crazy notions about Islam have been thinking, plotting about how they can make an ugly mark on the world—especially in places like, well, Pakistan and Afghanistan.
However, I find it interesting that while we are duly and unduly distracted by other concerns, a once leading concern has greatly diminished. We tend to prioritize the issues—and our focus—according to what occupies the current news cycle, the current crisis, the current sensationalism. What is no longer in our face drops in priority quite rapidly.
Bottom line: we should make sure that what we think are our national priorities actually are. Stay tuned for tomorrow’s post.
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© 2019 Eric Nilsson
