Is it a co-incidence that the societies that tend to think this way, which is to say any culture that has successfully invented the talk back radio show, are also the ones that have it pretty good right where they are?
It's no use coming up with alternate forms of energy - those other bastards won't do anything and we'll all get done over.
No point paying taxes - our dirtbag politicians will just waste it all anyway.
Screw doing anything about the ongoing obscenity that is large chunks of Africa - THEIR dirtbag politicians will just steal it all, turn it into bombs and send it back to us strapped to some boat person.
Do you reckon the farmer who gets up every day in some country where they wouldn't know what to do with a triple soy latte if one landed in their laps, to tend the 13 cows that are the life of not just him but his or her entire family, can afford to think like that?
For that matter, do you think those struggling up the Kokoda Track, or carving a living out of the Australian bush or insert whatever other noble endeavor you like at this point, had the luxury of thinking 'Ah f**k it all, what's the point it's all going to end up being wrecked by some other incompetent anyway'.
The hell they could.
We can of course. Because if we do nothing we still get to have our TV's and our cars and our lattes (yes I am aware that the use of the latte to illustrate 1st world hubris is a tired and much beaten about cliche) and our 2 thousand dollar mountain bikes.
At least until the guy with 13 cows notices we have all this stuff and seem to be taking no action whatsoever to try and maybe cut him and his family in on the action and decides maybe he and his mates should do something about that....
Or...
Maybe we stop making the excuse that someone else is going to put all our good work to the sword and demand that they don't. Instead of asking our Politicians over and OVER what the price of a litre of milk is or whether they got pissed in university or whatever. Instead of demanding they adopt position B instead of position A over and OVER and then calling them back flippers entirely lacking a moral backbone when they do exactly that. Instead of that, maybe we could make the assumption that most of them didn't get into politics with the specific aim of screwing us all over and get them to accomplish a few things.
Maybe we adopt the attitude of all those people from our past that we profess to worship and make the decision that a bit of sacrifice today is a small price to pay for the entirely self serving opportunity to look back in 30 years and say as a generation....
'We built that. Now say nice things about us on your radio show.'
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