No wait, which one was the hurricane? The memories of media headlines in my brain have melded into one big amalgamation of interchangeable names and places. Never mind, details are not important. What's really important is the sense of fear and urgency behind the name.
Get a Clue
Terrorism. Mass shootings. Natural disasters. The world seems like a scary place when you look at the news. But whose idea was it that we have to hear about every bad thing that happens in the world anyway? Are we going to do anything productive with that information? No. Its only purpose is emotional manipulation. The media arouses certain emotions in us, in this case fear, and can redirect and build upon that emotion through the constant bombardment of rehashed stories with different characters. All the stories turn into one big game of Clue. Was it Elliott Rodger with the AR-15 at Santa Monica College, or was it Dylan Klebold with the pipe bomb at the Batman movie premiere? It doesn't matter, but someone better step in and save us from whoever it was with whatever weapon at that one place.
Who Will Save Us?
A scared population with no time to think leads to the support of proposed solutions that don't even make sense. The news tells us that we have a big problem and it needs to be solved NOW. Are people going to realize that taking guns away from every law abiding citizen to prevent mass shootings is the equivalent of chopping off every law abiding man's penis to prevent rape? No, it would take them like an hour to think of that and this issue is way too important to waste that much time on. People are going to look to the government and be like, "Save me now!" They're going to want new laws and regulations to protect them. They're going to want increased security and more FEMA camps. They will gladly give up a little privacy to keep the bad guys away.
Government Is not the Answer
Increasing the government's power leads to more problems than it solves. Is any private company or organization more well-known for its inefficiency and incompetence? And where does the money to create all these new departments and hire all this new security come from? The government does not make its own money. It will have to increase taxes or drive us more into debt and everyone will be even poorer than they are now. And do you think the government really cares about you? If anything happened to you, the lives of those government officials would not be affected in any way. There's just not sufficient motivation to do a flawless job on this most important task of guarding your life. Think they'd want to preserve your life because your taxes are important? This country's $19 trillion in debt and climbing. The government has made it clear that it can spend money on whatever it wants with or without your measly taxes.
The Takeaway
Don't read the news or watch it on TV if you don't want to be brainwashed. Some people think it's important to know what's going on in the world but just like how you don't know every tragic detail of the guy that lives down the street's life, you don't need to know all that other stuff either. And to answer the title question, it's important because it beats the alternative, which is giving up your freedom just so you can wait around for a stranger who has no vested interest in you to come and save you.