It’s not that I can’t relate to the sentiment.
Believe me, I can.
When I’m going through the comments on one of my Star Trek videos and I see that someone
has expressed their disappointment or exasperation because I made mention of contemporary politics
in what they had expected would be an apolitical video, I sympathize with them.
To a point.
The world is such a dark place right now.
The blatant bigotry and creeping fascism of the Trump administration.
The urgent, potentially catastrophic threat of climate change.
The frequency of gun violence in general and mass shootings in particular.
Endless stories of sexual misconduct, survivors ignored or silenced, perpetrators allowed
to continue their lives and careers with few if any consequences.
Police brutality.
Racial injustice.
Gender inequality.
Religious intolerance.
Denigration and dehumanization of LGBTQ people.
Vilification of immigrants.
You know I could go on.
It’s exhausting.
It’s demoralizing.
I get needing a break every once in awhile.
I can relate to that.
I can respect that.
Here’s what I can’t respect.
I can’t respect not wanting to hear about it, or talk about it, or think about it, ever.
You need to take a break?
You need to practice self-care so you don’t burn out or sink into misery and depression?
I would hope that’s okay with everyone; it’s definitely okay with me.
What’s not okay with me is apathy.
What’s not okay with me is willful, permanent disengagement.
Because, hey, you think deciding that you don’t want to deal with this shit won’t
hurt anything.
But it’s not just you.
It’s millions of other people.
And you, and those people, and me and everyone else, we don’t live in our own private universes.
What we do, what we don’t do, the examples we set, they affect other people.
If you make a point of being an involved, informed person actively engaged in trying
to make the world a better place, you model that for those around you.
If you make a point of doing nothing, you model that, too.
If I had to point to one thing that I hold responsible for the shitty world we find ourselves
in right now; if I looked at the inequality, the injustice, the intolerance, the oppression,
the obstacles to progress that we as a society have erected and jealously defended for decades,
and I had to attribute all of that to one cause, that cause would be the normalization
of apathy.
Maybe Trump isn’t the best president ever, but come on, is he really as bad as those
extremists on the left are saying?
Impeachment proceedings?
Congressional investigations?
Bit much, don’t you think?
Look, if Republicans survived the Obama administration, I think liberals and progressives can survive
the Trump administration.
Maybe climate change is a real thing, maybe it’s not.
We don’t really know.
But even if it is actually happening, what can we do about it?
The climate is beyond our control.
Why should we alter our lifestyles — and potentially hurt the profitability of our
businesses — over something we can’t change anyway?
And you know, this level of gun violence we have in the United States is just the price
of freedom.
It’s a shame that these things happen from time to time, but mass shootings and the various
other kinds of gun-related deaths, they’re just the natural consequences of the many
wonderful liberties we enjoy.
Besides, if we did pass stricter gun laws, they wouldn’t work anyway, so . . .
Take any pressing social or environmental concern and there’ll be people on one side
saying “This is important, we need to do something,” and people on the other side
saying “Don’t worry about it, this is nothing.”
Doing nothing is presented as a viable option.
Doing nothing is recommended, even.
Doing nothing is okay!
And what I want you to understand, if you don’t already, is that the second group
of people, the “let’s just do nothing” gang, are not neutral.
That’s another root cause I could point to, by the way: the fetishization of neutrality.
It’s not that I think a neutral position is always necessarily bad; it’s that in
many situations, the neutral position doesn’t actually exist.
It’s an illusion in which we indulge to soothe our consciences when we don’t want
to think of ourselves as doing harm, but we don’t want to actually go to the trouble
of trying to help, either.
Martin Luther King Jr. said that someone who accepts evil without protesting against it
is really cooperating with it.
He also wrote, in his Letter From a Birmingham Jail, “We will have to repent in this generation
not merely for the vitriolic words and actions of the bad people, but for the appalling silence
of the good people.”
Donald Trump is President of the United States today not only because of those who voted
for him, but because of all those who would have voted against him, but decided they’d
rather sit that one out.
Climate change is wreaking potentially irreversible havoc on our planet and our civilization.
The blame for that rests not only with the polluters who wounded our planet to swell
their own fortunes, or the deniers who spread misinformation and propaganda, but also with
everyone else, from leaders on down to ordinary citizens, who were aware of the threat but
decided they’d rather just not think about it.
Hatred and intolerance are normalized, fascists and white supremacists and rape apologists
and actual rapists are allowed access to mainstream media outlets, because we perpetuate this
conceit that, well, you know, not everything has to be political.
Last week it was announced that Sean Spicer will be a cast member on the upcoming season
of Dancing With the Stars on ABC.
This understandably elicited some protest, from viewers and from celebrities, including
Krista Vernoff, the showrunner of Grey’s Anatomy, which also airs on ABC, and even
the host of Dancing With the Stars himself, Tom Bergeron.
Spicer responded to this backlash by saying that he hopes the show will “bring people
of really diverse backgrounds together to have fun with each other, engage in a real
civil and respectful way and maybe show millions of Americans how we can get back to that kind
of interaction.”
He also said that he hopes the show will be “a politics-free zone.”
This is Sean Spicer, the first press secretary of the Trump presidency, Trump’s original
Joseph Goebbels — I have to say “original” because there have been several subsequent
Goebbelses since Spicer left the White House two years ago; Trump just doesn’t have Hitler’s
knack for retaining staff.
This guy, whose job it was to meet with journalists and tell them the lies Donald Trump told him
to tell, this guy who is still supporting Trump and other Republicans, this guy who
helped the most corrupt, criminal, intolerant, inhumane, and incompetent presidential administration
in American history write and disseminate its self-serving bullshit narrative, this
guy just wants to be able to go on TV and dance and have fun!
And there are lots of people who think we should let him!
Because not everything should be about politics!
Now, look, I’m not saying every one of us needs to dedicate our lives to activism.
God knows I don’t.
I make YouTube videos.
There’s barely a day that goes by that I don’t wonder if I’m actually doing good,
or merely bloviating to make myself feel better.
Maybe if I had more money, or more courage, I’d do more.
But this is what I do, so it’s not for me to decide how much you should be doing.
But I do think we should all be doing something.
Even if that something is just staying informed, so we can be a resource when it’s needed,
so we can be the one to raise our voice when otherwise there would only be silence.
Just as the apathy of individuals can add up to a nation of ignorance and indifference,
those small acts of engagement can accumulate and help to make an impact for the better.
We can’t all do as much as we might want to, or think we should.
And we can all become overwhelmed and find ourselves needing a break from time to time.
But we should all at least be paying attention.
Willfully turning our backs on injustice and suffering and looming catastrophe just isn’t
acceptable.
If you really want to disengage and just keep your head down and pretend that all of this
stuff isn’t happening or that it somehow doesn’t apply to you, I can’t stop you.
But I’ll be damned if I’m gonna help you.
I’m under no illusion that these videos I make on this channel are all that important
or relevant, but I won’t make a virtue of irrelevance.
I’m not going to aid you in pretending the rest of the world isn’t there.
Making YouTube videos is my job, and helping my audience bury their heads in the sand ain’t
the job I want.
Whether the context is Star Trek, or superheroes, or a goofy skit starring myself and a bunch
of stuffed animals, I’m going to talk about politics, I’m going to talk about social
issues, I’m going to give my opinion and I’m going to take sides.
I’m not going to be nonpartisan, and I’m not going to provide you with intentionally
mindless escapism, so if that’s the only thing you’re interested in, watch something
else.
I’m not going to tell you it’s okay to just not care.
It’s not okay.
Not caring is not an option.