With the advent of the Internet and a much blunter/candid society, pretty much every and any topic is picked apart under the Sun - is there anything that still truly represents an “elephant in the room” that society will not talk about? (Has to be fairly important; if it’s too minuscule then it’s more about being ignored than willfully overlooked)
Since it has to be said: There’s a (Republican) elephant in the (Oval Office) room and nobody seems to know how it got there.
The deficit, and how to solve it.
Both sides are perfectly happy to blame the other side for it. Both sides are perfectly well aware that doing what needs to be done to address it will get them kicked out of office.
Fixing the deficit will require raising taxes on the middle class and cutting spending on the middle class. Republicans want to cut taxes and increase spending, Democrats want to talk about raising taxes (on people who don’t vote Democratic) and increase spending even more.
Regards,
Shodan
Defense spending appears to be the true third rail of American politics. There may or may not be an elephant riding on it, I dunno.
Probably dozens of them. By definition we’re not tuned into them, or at least we in general aren’t (sometimes some individuals may be, often to the detriment of how they are perceived by other people as obsessed about something no one else can understand).
Certain aspects are incredibly wasteful. Lost of projects should be cut back, scaled down or cut entirely. But it looks bad to do that.
Look what happened to Carter in 1980. He wanted to kill the B-1 bomber (but keep the still secret B-2 stealth bomber). Reagan raked him over the coals on that. (Despite Reagan getting the security briefings telling him that the USAF wanted just the B-1.) So Reagan gets elected and he was stuck supported both programs. Worse, the B-2 turned out to be “less than suitable” for regular use.
Medicare is also ignored all too much. The projected rise in costs there are mind boggling. No one wants to address what to do now to pay for all that later. As bad as Social Security funding is, Medicare beats that by a mile.
Elephant in the room issues have to be stuff NOBODY talks about. So military spending doesn’t count since every John Oliver or Seth McFarlane has constantly brought it up.
The biggest elephant in the room in my book is the media’s obsession with race related crimes but only very specifically only when there’s an African-American involved. We can name pretty much every unarmed black man shot by the police but when’s the last time you heard of an unarmed Hispanic person being shot by the police despite the fact it happens at similar rates? Bet you can name the black child with the BB gun who got shot by the police but you can’t name the Hispanic child shot by the police for holding a BB gun earlier that same year.
Seeing as how there’s a sizable segment of the American population who are convinced that racism ended a long time ago, race is still the elephant in the room to a good portion of America.
Plus, that segment gets really, really bothered when someone says, “Hey! There’s an elephant over there!”
As I understand it, the “Elephant in the Room” is the thing that nobody talks about but everybody sees is there, rather than a hidden issue or something flying under the radar. That’s why it’s an elephant, because it is something so big it has to be willfully ignored…
As to the OP, I think the internet has made it possible for people to find just about any “room” where you can talk about whatever “elephant” you desire (although sometimes only with due care to preserve anonymity or detection.)
I’ll say mental health. When we do spend money on improving human life, medical health is the focus. I believe mental health is nearly as important in many ways. Consider how mental issues contribute to violence, addictions, loss of growth both personal and national, shorter life spans, suicide, incarceration, and more.
Everyone will say we should do something about mental health, but no one wants to pay for it. I don’t really see much movement in the subject, but perhaps it is under reported.
There are plenty of stigma problems with mental health, along with privacy issues.
Yeah, and I’ll go one further- IMO, the elephant in the room that nobody will discuss is that a lot of the problems faced by the black community in the US are ones that can’t be fixed from without. They’re in many ways cultural problems and behaviors that external agencies can’t remedy. That’s not to say that these things are necessarily the fault of the black community, or that they’re not the legacy of slavery and Jim Crow, but that they’re things that (IMO) will have to be solved through cultural changes within the community, and can’t be imposed from without, nor can they be paid off as it were.
Lack of free will.
At the moment people are all to willing to talk about how biology, environment and upbringing has dramatic and predictable effects on behavior within certain scopes, but are absolutely unwilling to use the same lens when it conflicts with their own sense of personal free will, or with their belief that failure to make “good” choices is a personal problem and not a social problem.
What CAH66 said - some issues are neglected, not because people can’t bring themselves to address the topic, but rather because they’re just too small. They are the mouse in the room, not the elephant.
Errrr…Trump, and how or why Trump was elected, has got to be ***the ***most discussed topic of the past 2 years.
“Society” doesn’t talk about anything. To say that “society says _____” or “society won’t _______” is meaningless babble. There are over 330 million people in the United States. Name any topic and there are at least a few people who will talk about it. There are certainly some big topics that mainstream newspapers, TV, etc… mention very rarely.
[ul]
[li]differing crimes rates among different racial groups.[/li][li]Physical and mental health, educational success, and other measures of well-being for children raised by two parents vs. those raised by single parents.[/li][li]The fact that the CIA staged anti-democracy coups and backed murderous dictatorships in numerous countries during the Cold War.[/li][li]The fact that the world has enough nuclear weapons to incinerate every square inch of land on earth.[/li][li]Impending insolvency of Medicare, Social Security, and countless pension systems.[/li][/ul]
This would be my nomination, as well. Since it’s often “invisible,” many people don’t seem to want to acknowledge mental or emotional illnesses as real things.
I think it’s also frightening to many people, which is part of why there’s such a social stigma attached to it.
Yes, but I’m not going to bring them up here.
I think the idea that it’s illegal for some people to be here minding their own business, depending on where they were born, is an under discussed elephant. Seriously, you’re messing with me because of where my mother birthed me, and you have guns and planes and all sorts of other nastiness to back that up?
And yet I’m not ready to throw open all the borders immediately because I fear chaos would ensue. But I think some day in the future, people will look back and not get how we could abide that.
In fairness, how could they stop being “unwilling” to do that?
I’ll just be over here clutching my pearls, you barbarian!