one time in 6th grade they had us watch this like CNN for Kids news segment

 we'd watch it every couple of weeks in the middle of the day and I remember they had this story about this 'wacky' new charismatic leader of Russia called Vladimir Putin and they were like 'ohmygosh look at this guy! he's so popular! he has pop songs about himself!' And then they cut to these Russian women singing

something something in Russian Vladimir Putin 

And our teachers were like, wow. look at that guy, huh?

And then another time the teachers felt the need to tell the whole class that it was good that the US was invading Iraq. And it was something that needed to be done and we were doing it for the right reasons.

Fast forward like ten years and I would go to this open mic at this diner in Harrisonburg and there was this guy I really liked who would sing songs and he had this song called "Don't Trust the Government". I've written about this before. He also sang the first version of Nervous Tic Motion of the Head to the Left by Andrew Bird I ever heard. 

The verses in Don't Trust the Government were about all the sneaky corrupt things the government does and then for the chorus he'd sing in kind of a low spooky voice

dooooon't trust. the goooooovernment.

If you'd asked me at the time I probably would've said something like 'well yeah, sometimes the government lies. Or some people are corrupt, obviously.' But also, Obama was president. Clearly there were at least some people in charge who wanted to do the right thing. Or, at the very least, most people in the government have relatively boring jobs and are making decisions that most people in the same situation would make. 

That was probably the biggest counter in my mind to any sort sensationalist claims about the government or how the world worked-- well it's actually more boring than that. If you're getting really upset about anything, well, that's just being overly emotional and you should just let the machine roll on because being upset doesn't accomplish anything anyway and also it's fine. 

And then I was 34 and the president was a senile 79 year old man saying he wants to take over Greenland because he didn't win the Noble Peace Prize. And my whole life the message has been let it happen. you can't do anything about it. if you're upset it's because you don't understand. it's going to happen anyway.