I Don't Know Why, But We Do

People love causes.  I don’t know why, but they seem to believe they are highlighting some wrong that needs to be fixed, or some social ill we can address if only we would send enough money, or create an environment where the problem is highlighted so everyone can adjust their approach.

Here in America, we especially love social or humanitarian.  It gives us a chance to just send money as a salve for our conscience.  We can send a few dollars to “Save the Seals” while we put on our fur coats against the winter chill.  We can write a check to “Adopt an Antarctic Orphan” on the same day we give Planned Parenthood our credit card.  We can feel good about ourselves because we are involved without bothering to leave the comfort of our easy chair. 

In the olden days, we would all tune-in to Jerry Lewis and the Muscular Dystrophy TV marathon to watch the tote board climb as millions of dollars were raised to fight a terrible disease.  To solicit the greatest sympathy there would be adorable children rolled out as “poster children.” We were told all those dollars were going to research and treatment so we could eliminate this plague when in reality only about 70% of the funds raised are spent on treatment or research.  By the way, the American Cancer Association Incorporated won’t even tell us how much of their fundraising goes to the actual work of curing cancer.  

Don’t get me wrong, all fatal diseases are terrible and if we could find a cure that would be great, wouldn’t it?  On the other hand, if we lived forever what would happen to the earth?  We are crossing approaching the 8-billion humans on earth number and it seems every day someone is complaining about how mankind is destroying the earth.  Some believe we need to end the use of fossil fuels and then everything would be green. Unfortunately, I am reminded of a line from the Muppets, “it’s not easy being green.”  At some point, all those people will displace all the farms and we’ll be condemned to eating Soylent Green as we send our elderly to the recycling centers.

Social media is the modern forum for soothing our need to seek social justice and improve the planet.  Now we can do so without having to actually spend a lot of time or money.  We can find a meme that speaks to our causes, post it so all our “friends” or the “public” can see it, and move on to address the next great social issue. Of course, if enough people all agree with this meme we can be seen as a social influencer and supposedly drive the conversations in the way we think best. The difference in today’s world is we want the government to fix everything, and one side will accuse the other of not doing enough or of causing the problem and the other side will call them names. I don’t know why politicians think this is a good strategy but it is the one they and the media are in love with.

For example, today I saw a meme that made me cringe.  It went along the lines of “You were never told to surrender your civil liberties; you were asked to help each other stay healthy and survive.” People write this, and worse people believe it.  I don’t know the thinking of the people who write this, but I can assume the people who post it don’t understand what civil liberty is all about for if they did the meme would die a quiet death. Every time a government demands a certain behavior from its citizens some restriction to civil liberty is imposed.  For the most part, a majority of us will usually agree with that restriction if we understand it is for a “common good,” but as the government becomes more draconian those small surrenders add up to a complete loss of some civil liberty.  To avoid this debate over what we should or shouldn’t do for the pandemic, let’s go back to the turn of the century when Congress rushed to pass the Patriot Act and, in the years, following only added to the act in the name of protecting all Americans. 

I can think of no other act that so obviously took away civil liberties, and expanded the nature of government spying on its own citizens in the name of security.  Our founding fathers in declaring independence from the English monarch declared all men had the inalienable right to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.  With the Patriot Act, our government clearly said liberty was less important than security and we’ve happily gone along with that view. 

Unfortunately, we average citizens let this happen by casting our votes for the same people time and time again.  I don’t know why, but we do.