Why am I apathetic?
This is a question that many young people stricken with apathy never ask themselves because they, well, just don't care. I would know, because I don't care either.
So what is this phenomenon called apathy? I was talking to a few coworkers of mine the other day about the conflict in the Middle East. And I asked them, "What do you guys think about Iran going nuclear?" Their words were wavering and their reasoning, craterous, but I understood very clearly the Parthian shot they both employed at the tail of their response: who really cares?
I asked 21-year-old St. Augustine resident, Garett Rix, what he thought about current politics in the United States. The first thing he told me? That he doesn't trust politicians.
"You know, I don't really care much for politics right now," Rix said. "The people who run the show, the politicians, most of them I think are swindling and distrustful. They make it difficult to genuinely care."
This is a problem. If people think that the politicians governing their very lives are intolerable scumbags, shouldn't some dire action take place? Back in the day, people would throw tea in the harbor or write moving pieces about the angry and downtrodden soul of America. But now? Now, people simply just don't care.
Lets be real here. It isn't the politician's fault that the American youth is plagued with apathy. Politicians have always been rulers of the Washington billiards, sharking the political tables, hitting the cue where it matters and hustling voters in dollar amounts. Scapegoats used to reason with apathy and avoid the alligator pit of responsibility. What else could make people not care?
22-year-old Flagler College student Ross Schettine thinks that people just don't know enough to vote intelligently.
"I think people don't vote because they don't know what they are voting on," Schettine said. "How are you supposed to care about something when you don't know anything about it?"
Perhaps apathy is simply a manifestation of ignorance. A facade people wear to conceal their own lack of knowledge. I mean, who wants to go to a voting booth and play eeny meeny miny moe with the ballot cards anyways? It's hard enough hiding your ignorance from others, is it really necessary to reveal the fact to yourself that you can't recognize any of the names up for midterm elections?
Maybe young people aren't affected enough by current issues to care about who gets elected into office. What if, perhaps, the voting youth were given a little incentive to get going on the vote, to start caring some more. In an article for the New Statesman, Mark Thomas of Great Britain proposes a hilarious idea that centers on rewards to get the British youth to vote.
"Have fun with it. Introduce prizes and offer air miles for each election voted in. Make sure every election broadcast and debate has a swimwear competition," Thomas said. "Introduce tear-off coupons on the bottom of voting slips that offer discounts on popular brands."
I mean, shit. If I was offered a chance to see the Obama girl duke it out with some other brand slut in a mud slinging, bikini tearing wrestling match, I'd probably show up. Insert diatribe about the deterioration of American morality and conscious here. But really, as outlandish as it seems, those kinds of voting incentives would probably work, especially for the youth. For the wrong reasons maybe, but at least people would get out to the polls.
Maybe the American youth isn't growing up fast enough. Maybe we have to be thrust into the confines of responsibility to fully realize the importance of political policy. Perhaps then we might feel compelled to do some research, get out to the booths and vote in hopes of our country taking a direction that will benefit us most.
However, this is America. We like to draw from the money tit as long as we can to get "settled" in life. In the meantime, we can keep up with the news, or something like that, and prepare ourselves for the time and moment when all of this political drivel will "matter" to us. Then maybe, just maybe, we can punch some holes in some ballot cards.
Or, as Rix puts it, "I'll just let the other people do the voting."
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