{"id":2607,"date":"2017-03-04T23:42:56","date_gmt":"2017-03-05T07:42:56","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/wesleyschan.com\/blog\/?p=2607"},"modified":"2017-03-05T22:21:49","modified_gmt":"2017-03-06T06:21:49","slug":"trouble-in-the-republic","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/wesleyschan.com\/blog\/trouble-in-the-republic\/","title":{"rendered":"trouble in the republic"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><em>&#8220;What&#8217;s the point? We&#8217;re all screwed anyways.&#8221;<\/em><\/p>\n<p>That&#8217;s what an old friend said to me in light of recent political events. (He didn&#8217;t vote in the recent presidential election. &#8220;It wouldn&#8217;t change anything,&#8221; is his justification).<\/p>\n<p>That\u00a0is his knee-jerk reaction to any situation he finds disagreeable &#8212; to disengage from the world and then rationalize it with an esoteric political rant he read on an internet forum. I grew frustrated with his nihilism and wondered where else such a view fetters in his life.<\/p>\n<p>Was that always inside of him, or am I only realizing it now?\u00a0How frustrating and sad it is to see former friends slip into apathy and cynicism. I fear I will fall into that same comfortable trap if I continue spending time with him.<\/p>\n<p>~<\/p>\n<p>~<\/p>\n<p>I can&#8217;t change my friend, and I can&#8217;t change the outcome of the election. But there&#8217;s still a lot in this world worth fighting for. Now is not the time to retreat into a cubbyhole.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>&#8220;What&#8217;s the point? We&#8217;re all screwed anyways.&#8221; That&#8217;s what an old friend said to me in light of recent political events. (He didn&#8217;t vote in the recent presidential election. &#8220;It wouldn&#8217;t change anything,&#8221; is his justification). That\u00a0is his knee-jerk reaction to any situation he finds disagreeable &#8212; to disengage from the world and then rationalize &hellip; <a href=\"https:\/\/wesleyschan.com\/blog\/trouble-in-the-republic\/\" class=\"more-link\">Continue reading<span class=\"screen-reader-text\"> &#8220;trouble in the republic&#8221;<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_exactmetrics_skip_tracking":false,"_exactmetrics_sitenote_active":false,"_exactmetrics_sitenote_note":"","_exactmetrics_sitenote_category":0,"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":true,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2607","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p3MSpn-G3","jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"jetpack-related-posts":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/wesleyschan.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2607","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/wesleyschan.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/wesleyschan.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wesleyschan.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wesleyschan.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2607"}],"version-history":[{"count":8,"href":"https:\/\/wesleyschan.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2607\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2622,"href":"https:\/\/wesleyschan.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2607\/revisions\/2622"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/wesleyschan.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2607"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wesleyschan.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2607"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wesleyschan.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2607"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}