RATIONAL APATHY –
THE SLOW DEATH OF OUTDOOR RECREATION
By Del & Stacie Albright
America has become a society of media hype, slanted education and brain washing, starting with kids in daycare
school learning to hug trees, tolerate excessively and not listen to their parents’ teaching. At the same time, interests like outdoor recreation are being pushed aside for looming other priorities, some real, and some media-induced distractions purposely intended to keep us spinning in circles. We quickly lose sight of our passions and don’t
even realize there is a slow death occurring.
One of our heroes, Chris W. Cox, NRA-ILA Executive Director recently wrote about “rational apathy” when it comes
to the erosion of Second Amendment Rights (gun ownership issues). In his January 2014 column he talked of how
people can be concerned about only so many things at once, “so unless they perceive an immediate threat to their
own interests, they ignore small infringements on their rights, allowing them to accumulate over time,” Mr. Cox
said. Certainly, this is a slow death for outdoor rights and access, particularly in our off-road world.
America is being distracted politically at nearly every turn. When something life-changing or threatening occurs,
it seems we have something more pressing and near-and-dear to our hearts to deal with – and I’ll leave it to you to
fill in the political blanks. We are at war, but all of a sudden our housing market collapses. We lose people overseas
and the economy looms over our very ability to earn a living. Unemployment jumps off the charts, and all of a sudden a state enacts a law restricting detachable magazines in rifles. And the distractions continue on and on.
So yes, we get rationally apathetic. Rational means we have reason, or understanding. Apathetic means not
having much emotion or interest. So when we combine these two terms, we see some Americans justifying – or
rationalizing – not paying right now their membership dues in organizations, or not making donations right now to
charities of concern, and in general being distracted by other issues that seem more pressing. In the meantime, the
slow death permeates every crease and corner – eventually destroying a part of our rights and access.
In reality life gets in the way and we are all distracted by one thing or another. It’s been interesting to watch how
there are plenty of scandals going on and the media is constantly using distraction tactics. Remember Benghazi,
Fast N Furious, and Extortion 17; and did Osama Bin Laden’s body really get a burial at sea? Every one of these topics and issues has had their share of smoke and mirrors as well as media hype, while putting us in media overload.
So once again we go about our everyday lives of working, trying to sort out our priorities, and surviving by telling
ourselves that somebody else will take care of it and that there is only so much we can do.
Meanwhile, the anti-access busy-bodies