Zombie Nation

Why don't Americans stand up for themselves anymore? I look around, and I see our civil liberties being eroded left and right, and relatively few people are complaining.

The U.S. government can hold you indefinitely without legal representation. All it takes is a supposed threat to national security (real, imagined, or fabricated), and you can be locked away for a very long time. Most people I've spoken to about this think it only happens to bad people, such as terrorists. Our government has become so secretive, who knows?

Orlando has an ordinance making it unlawful to feed homeless people. An activist group has intentionally violated the ordinance, and now at least one man is facing a judge and jury. Activists rarely achieve hero status, however. They're usually demonized.

It's not just government bodies behaving badly. I saw an article yesterday where schools are banning any kind of physical contact between students, whether it be holding hands or giving someone a "high five". This is ridiculous. I guess we are all supposed to exist in these little bubbles of isolation. It's stupid, not to mention unrealistic. The students should band together and all hold hands one day to show school officials they are not going to stand for it.

I doubt that will happen, though. No one wants to make waves and stand out. We've all turned into a bunch of consumer zombies. We're all too busy talking on our cellular phones, playing Playstation 3, watching HDTV, listening to our iPods, and surfing the Internet to care what goes on around us.