The bad implications of a media driven activism

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One of the problems for a country where media drives activism, where the entire focus of our moral outrage is determined by whatever news stories happen to break today, is that it discourages long-term, sustained, well informed, effective engagement in critical issues. This leads to a situation where moral outrage on a particular issue might only last as long as the story that provoked it continues to be deemed newsworthy, and another lets-all-get-mad news story breaks and everybody compliantly moves on to it. Eventually there comes a point where people won't even be able to tell you what issues they will be inflamed with moral outrage over even a week or two into the future.

A friend's answer: "Yes, there is truth to that but Trump started this whole thing by tweeting about something no one was even thinking about to distract from other things going on. He has done this over and over again. You are right the press jumps right on these things at that point even having panels of people commenting on how whatever it is isn't news worthy."

My reply: "My point exactly. If Trump does it, as you say, "to distract from other things going on," which had certainly occurred to me, then how pathetic is it when everybody unreflectively reacts by falling right in line with it and behaving absolutely as expected or even hoped?"

 His response: "yes it like the ADHD dog on TV 'rabbit'."

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