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'''Everybody cares''' is the recent name given to a recent socio-philosophical trend known in academic circles as '''neo-bathocism,''' or simply '''neo-bathos.''' The fundamental principle of neo-bathocism is that most, if not all people only 'superficially' do not "care" about anything; that they can and do, in fact, care deeply about certain issues; and that what they actually do care about is usually quite irrational so that their entire system of values and beliefs descends into ''bathos''; generally defined as an unintended meaning-shift from the serious to the trivial. The effect is to allow politicians and marketing executives able to identify these "trigger topics" to more easily manipulate public opinion and political discourse for their own purposes.

==Examples==

A defining moment of the trend toward neo-bathos may have been the United States Presidential Election of 2004, in which the issue of whether or not [[homosexual]]s should be allowed to marry each other became the "hot-button" topic that swung voters all over the country in favor of George W. Bush without critical analysis of Bush's record on other diplomatic, economic and environmental issues. This phenomenon essentially defined the principle of the '''reaction-to-importance ratio''' (RIR) as it applied to [[politics]].

So called [[green]] issues are proving to be a similar "flash point". Many people are focussing on the alleged "[[green]]" benefits of certain products and indeed, political candidates, due to the fact that this is an emotive subject for many. Whilst environmental concerns are of importance, the [[green]] message is potentially obscuring critical analysis of many other related and non-related issues.

[[Category:Philosophy]]
[[Category:Political Terms]]