PAY ATTENTION

Hello, it’s me. Your local passionate writer who sometimes seems like she’s the only student who thinks outside of Western Pennsylvania. Yes, our lives can be pretty hectic here in good old Saxonburg but it always seems to render me absolutely speechless when a kid in school is asked a basic question about the news (for example: ‘Who is our Vice President?’) and they’re completely unable to answer. So please, if you are one of these children, hang on tight because I’m putting you on blast.

I understand that the news can be boring. GROW UP!!! We are getting pushed to become adults by junior and senior year of high school and mommy and daddy aren’t gonna be there to hold your hands and shield your eyes from scary things anymore. SIT DOWN, SHUT UP AND PAY ATTENTION because THIS IS THE WORLD WE ARE IN!!!!!

Maybe this is just my opinion, but the reason our world is going straight into the dumpster is because we’ve become so focused on the Kardashians, Xbox VS. Playstation, James Charles controversies and whatever other stupid, petty things pop up on our various feeds next that we don’t even realize what is really going on.

There are tiger farms in Laos that chop up these animals for their “magical powers” (SPOILER ALERT there’s no such thing) and they, in turn, sell each organ, bone and body part for thousands of dollars through the black market. This has lead the asian population of these tigers to drop from 100,000 to fewer than 4,000 in just this past century. If you are actually interested in learning more about this, a Washington Post journalist, Terrence McCoy, went to one of these farms and videod the conditions that these animals were being forced to live in and turned them into any major official that he thought would help end the practice.

Another story is that of the Filipino government sending out kill squads to shoot “drug users/ dealers” without having anything more than anonymous tips sent in by people that did like someone and wanted them gone as evidence (see my last published article). No repercussions have been set in motion even after their President, Mr. Duterte, has publicly said that he is the one in charge of this and is completely okay with it. Our own President, Mr. Trump, has even congratulated him on his progress of cleaning up their cities in the short time of his two years in office.

These are all happening right now and I promise you, over 80% of the people reading this (I don’t actually know these stats but please prove me wrong) probably had no idea that either of those things are actually occurring at this very second.

What I’m trying to get across is that this world that we have is MESSED UP and only a small portion of our population is really listening to these terrible true stories. I’m not going to sit here and lie to you saying that I don’t fall into a social media black hole every once in a while, but for some, that black hole is all they know and it’s a serious issue.

But hey, who am I to say anything. I’m just a frustrated newspaper editor from a quiet town in Butler County that just wants to know a little bit more than what new flavors of juul pods are coming out soon.