The Death of Common Sense in America

Today's big news? VP Joe Biden knows the word "Fuck". Sure people are still talking about the health care reform law that just passed, but today it seems to be a little overshadowed by the VP dropping an F-bomb near an open mic. Now, I don't know about any of you, but this really doesn't seem like news to me. Who cares? The report I watched from NBC even included some seventeen year old kid that is the president of a no-cussing club. There's a song that I listen to by a band called The Birds and the Bee, "If you say it all the time, a dirty word will get its cleaning." Sums it up for me.
Recently I watched an episode of Penn and Teller's Bullshit from a couple of seasons ago. They changed the name of the show for that one episode to "Penn and Teller's Humbug". They did this to illustrate that a word now common and not considered profane used to be a cuss word.
Out country as a whole has taken to focusing on small, insignificant things and avoiding any real study of issues that are important. I don't want to hear repeated reports dissecting the ramifications of our VP using a "dirty" word. It has no real bearing on anything.
Earlier today I was talking to my sixteen year old daughter and her friend. Her friend was asking about the health care reform law because her mother told her it was a bad thing. When I tried to explain that, while it may not be entirely good, it wasn't entirely bad either. My daughter's response? "That's why I don't pay attention to those things, it's to complicated."
The youth of today don't want to have to think about the things that will impact their lives tomorrow. They want sound bites and sensation, a problem I blame largely on our media and the lack of good education. They are content to let others make major decisions.
I've heard both sides of the health care reform debate and I think both sides have it wrong. One side is screaming that big business is controlling everything and the other side is screaming that the government is trying to interfere to much.
Here's what I want to know, where the hell did everyone's common sense go? Do big corporations have to much power? Yes, but only because the complacency of the America public has allowed it. Is government taking to large a role in the daily lives of American citizens? Again, I would say, yes, but only so far as it seems to have become necessary.
People sit at home and scream and rant about how the government isn't doing anything and when the government does something that may not be entirely convenient, they scream and rant about how it interferes with their lives.
Grow up. The government controls how much money you get to keep, who you can marry, what drugs you can or cannot ingest, when you can drink, when you can smoke, where you can smoke, the fact that you have to wear a seat-belt in your car. The list goes on and on.
People are upset because they don't want the "choice" taken away from them, but they don't want to actually do anything about the problem for themselves. No one is going to stop buying cars from companies who pay their CEO's more than most of us will see in a lifetime. No one is going to stop using the insurance they have because the company that sells it is corrupt from the top down. No one will do anything that will overtly inconvenience them. We are a nation of passive/agressives.
Change doesn't happen without sacrifice and as long as we continue to focus more on what someone says instead of on what someone does, nothing is ever going to get any better.