By The Editorial Board
There are certain moments when Americans seem to remember that we are, in fact, Americans.
This realization has come at many points throughout our history. It was the patriotism that followed Pearl Harbor, when Americans enlisted, bought war bonds and rallied behind a country suddenly thrown into a war it intended to stay impartial in.
It was there after Sept. 11, 2001, when American flags appeared everywhere and Congress sang “God Bless America” on the front steps of the Capitol. Most recently, and more locally, we saw it after Charlie Kirk was assassinated, as college students across the country gathered for vigils and prayer.
The problem is not that these moments brought Americans together; rather, it is that we seem to rely on moments like these to bring us together at all. Tragedy has a strange ability to pull our attention in the same direction, if only for a moment. It gives us something obvious to mourn and blame and condemn. It cuts through political disagreements, at least temporarily, because all of a sudden there is something so much bigger than our problems that it demands our attention.
But we should not need tragedy to give us permission to care.
We live in a time and country with no shortage of things worth caring about. Yet too often, an issue does not seem to matter until its consequences are relevant, immediate, visible or catastrophic.
A war thousands of miles away is an easy headline to scroll past; a local decision can happen without most of the people it affects ever knowing; an injustice can continue quietly for years if it never becomes dramatic enough to command national attention.
We are so accustomed to waiting for the headline-worthy explosion that we miss the smoke in front of us.
Don’t get it wrong — Americans are not apathetic because we have no opinion. In fact, we have plenty.
We argue about politics at the dinner table and fight with strangers online. We repost headlines that capture enough of our limited attention, criticize a line of a politician’s two-hour speech and spend far too much time explaining why the other side is wrong.
But democracy is more than having an opinion about what is happening in the country — it is participating in decisions about what happens next. We have become very good at confusing being loud with being involved.
It is easy to complain about Washington; it’s harder to pick up the phone and call a representative. It is easy to post about an issue; it’s harder to attend a city council meeting. It is easy to say something is unjust; it’s harder to stand outside and demand that someone listen.
And to be perfectly honest, sometimes it is easier to do nothing at all.
That does not mean we need more outrage for outrage’s sake. It means we need to stop allowing outrage to be the only thing that moves us. There is no way for a democracy to survive in a cycle of moments of collective grief followed by a year of collective indifference.
With that, do not let apathy make you oblivious to this world. The absence of a viral headline does not make an injustice less real.
We should be able to see something wrong before it becomes a national crisis. We should be able to care about something happening across the world even if the consequences are not at our front door. We should be able to look at the life we are living and ask what needs to change without waiting for someone else to tell us it matters.
And, if anything, let this November give you a good reason to start paying attention.
It’s an election year, but democracy does not begin nor end at the ballot box. Yes, voting matters, but so does everything that happens in between: calling representatives, standing up against wrongdoing, reading the news beyond a partisan headline, being angry when a situation demands it, educating yourself and others about the world and not letting tragedy be the only means for patriotism.
Do not complain that your voice does not matter if you are refusing to use it. Do not mourn a broken system if you stand safely outside it. Do not ask democracy to work for you if you are unwilling to participate. Do not demand change from everyone else while remaining unwilling to change something yourself.
We do not all have to care about the same things or agree on what deserves our attention. But we should agree that something is worthy of care enough to act on it. So, to make it simple, have an opinion, pay attention and get involved.
Do not let another tragedy be the only reminder that we are capable of caring.
