Along with the rest of the internet world, a few days ago I watched the Kony 2012 video by Invisible Children on youtube. It's spreading really quickly--when I watched it the day after it came out it already had 7 million views. Today (Friday) it has over 56 million. For some reason I didn't get the same adrenalin rush and excitement from watching it that everybody else seemed to get. Instead it made me really uncomfortable and I couldn't figure out why. I thought about it more today and here's what I came up with.
The video by Invisible Children is brilliantly done. After studying rhetoric last year when we learned about different kinds of appeals, the classical structure for a discourse, different types of conclusions that bring different reactions, ect. The Kony 2012 video was definitely made by somebody who knew what they were doing. It seems to follow the structure of a classical discourse (first an introduction, then giving the background and all the facts, followed by the main argument, then refuting all of the common arguments against your position, and finally a conclusion that ties it all together). They use emotional appeals that get a reaction out of you (the pictures of the children in Africa holding guns, the heartbreaking story from Jacob, and even his adorable son). The conclusion is designed to call the audience to action. The video does all of this so well! It's effective and convincing and brilliantly made.
However.
There's still something unsettling about it. It almost feels like propaganda. There is a correct time and place for propaganda, but we still need to be aware of it. The video made the situation in Uganda seem like the worst thing in the world, and if we could fix this problem then the world would be perfect. I have a friend whose family has adopted boys from Africa who come from similar situations as Jacob's and is a lot more informed about it than I am. She pointed out that Kony is not the only man like that. There are people just as evil as him doing similar things, and by giving such emphasis to Kony we risk forgetting about them, even letting them off the hook. If we get rid of Kony, then do we have to then go after all of those other evil people?
That opens a whole new door, a dangerous door. Should America really be the police men of the world? It makes us responsible for far more than we need to be responsible for, it gives the government way too much power, it sounds too imperialist, and it leads right into the one world government idea. Is it the government's job to step in and fight people like Kony who have nothing to do with them? I completely agree with Invisible Children in that what Kony is doing to these children is horrendous and needs to be stopped. No human being should be treated that way, and especially not children. I get angry thinking about that. But I'm still undecided if it's the government's job to fix all of the world's problems. Is the government playing God when they try to punish the wicked? While what is happening in Africa is heartbreaking and should make us incredibly angry, I don't think our government (or any government) can solve all of these problems and fight all of the bad guys.
There's another side of me that is uncomfortable about the Kony video. It's becoming very popular and even politically correct to support the Kony 2012 movement. Yet at the same time it's still politically incorrect and considered downright offensive to stand for the children in our own country who have no rights, no voice, are "invisible." There may be a part of me that's jealous that that movement got to be the cool one this week and the pro-life movement still isnt' cool, but there is some merit to this. How can we stand for 30,000 children on the other side of the world by posting a video on facebook, but then call it offensive when somebody stands for the 5 million killed by abortion in our own country? It's wrong not to stand for child soldiers in Africa yet alright to allow women to choose whether or not to kill their children. It's politically correct and culturally acceptable to give a voice to the 30,000 Invisible Children in Africa but politically incorrect and culturally unacceptable to stand for the 5 million invisible children in our own land. (For a really good article about this, go here. It's definitely worth the read.)
And one last thing. That chart they show at the end of the video when he's talking about how it used to be the influential people with the money who made the decisions for our country, but now for the first time ever the people have a voice. That freaked me out a lot. Don't Americans already have a voice? We've always had the right to vote, have representatives, call Senators, ect, because our founding fathers wanted the people to have a say in the government. Are we just now realizing we have a voice and deciding to use it? In history class right now we're studying the rise of Lenin, Stalin, and Hitler. Maybe it's an overreaction, but the idea of all of us uniting and having one voice and standing up to the government freaks me out more than a little.
Those are my thoughts. They're not perfect, they're not flawless. But there they are. I'm not against Invisible Children or the campaign to stop Kony, but I think it's important to think this stuff through before jumping on the bandwagon. I can't decide if I'm on this bandwagon or not. Endangering and victimizing children makes me more angry than anything else in the world. However, I'm still uneasy. These are my initial thoughts, not my conclusions. I'm still glad God is in control over all of this.
