Social Media and Moral Self-Licensing
When did posting to Facebook, Twitter, Instagram and the like become equated to a social consciousness? We have another tragedy involving terrorism and I see people changing their icons or profile photo to show support for the offended. But honestly, what does it really do? For most people that do this, the icon changing is all they do. It lets them feel like they are off the hook because they changed it to say they did something, when in reality, you likely did nothing. It gives you a moral self-license to say you do something and makes you feel better.
So those that choose not to change their icons or profile pictures, does it mean they are not offended or fail to show support for the cause d'jour? Most likely not. Perhaps those individuals have contributed to an aid fund without making the fanfare about it. Perhaps they are helping people in the community affected. Who knows? If you are basing your opinion on whether someone has superficially expressed an opinion on a social media platform, then perhaps you might be spending way too much time on those platforms.
Now, for the crisis at hand. How many people realized that Paris was not the city where terrorists attacks occurred. Beirut had a terrorist attack attributed to ISIS, as a state allied with Iran, which is fighting ISIS in Iraq. Turkey, a NATO ally and the base of Syrian anti-ISIS actions, thwarted supposedly an attack on the same day as the Paris attacks. Remember the possible terrorist bombing of the Russian airline 2 weeks ago? Another Syrian ally fighting ISIS in Syria...Where is the outrage and the support for those victims? Why are we more aware and supportive for the Paris victims than for the other terrorist attacks? (Rhetorical question).
How many people were aware of migrant crisis in Europe before the attacks? The civil war in Syria has flooded emigrants to other countries. Not only is ther about 1.5 million refugees over the past 2 years in Europe, another 2 million have emigrated to Turkey, 1 million to Lebanon, 650 thousand to Jordan, and another 150 thousand to Egypt. Syria is a complete mess and ISIS (Da'esh) has taken advantage of this vacuum of power in this 3 way civil war. The world has a mortal enemy now, and ISIS (Da'esh) needs to be taken care soon as a world, no matte what race, creed, or citizenship.