I’ve been on the road. Driving is a good time to think.
Driving is also a golden opportunity to observe America. I’m not seeing the mess projected by the hysterical flapping fruit-loops in the media. Actual Americans in actual America actually going about their daily business seem remarkably sane; so long as they’re not in contact with the fruit-loop contagion. Outside of politics, Americans in general are almost universally happier than the media portrays.
Airheads in the political/media complex have completely lost touch with the nation as a whole. That’s not a particularly deep observation but it’s true. The more they lose touch, the easier it is for them to go full retard. Once they go full retard they never come back.
There so many reasons for the press’ insanity I could write a book about squirrels trying to avoid the topic. But treading lightly on the thin ice of politics and painting with a broad brush I’ll pick a big driver that is not actually political at all.
Here’s a Curmudgeonly Gem of Insight:
“Politicians and the press think with the time frame of a gnat and they often have no more real world experience than a child.”
Over and over I read or hear some braying ass claim this thing is “unprecedented”, that thing is “impossible”, and this other thing is “the worst event in the history of everything”. Nothing could be further from the truth.
Many “impossible” things I’ve personally seen. If I’ve seen it, it’s not impossible. Things ebb and flow. We’ve all seen the tide of this or that dumbshit thing rise and fall (often more than once). It’s not rocket surgery.
There’s only one group that hasn’t seen the ebb and flow; the press. Sometimes it’s because they’re young and breathtakingly unaware and sometimes it’s because they’re merely stupid. Invariably, it’s worsened because they choose not to think things through. Humans in general are excellent at ignoring important things they don’t want to see while getting hysteric about smaller things that press their buttons; the media has raised it to an art form.
I don’t want to get into one party versus the other but I want to give a very simple example. In 2015 Trump announced his candidacy and started yammering about a border wall. I was giving a person (whom I sincerely respect) a ride. I was forced to hear an hour-long harangue about how it was “impossible” to build a wall. I’m willing to entertain arguments that it’s a dumb idea, or expensive, or silly, but impossible? Of course not.
The people that dug the Panama Canal, laid steel train track coast to coast, paved 50,000 miles of interstate, flew to the moon, and convinced people to voluntarily eat a thing called a Big Mac sure as hell have the skill and resources to build any damn thing they want. I mentioned, as kindly as possible, that humans have been building walls for a very long time. Chinese peasants with picks and shovels fortified against Mongolia a couple centuries before Christ. Romans built a wall across Britannia in 122 to keep out the Picts. I keep the pigs out of my garden with… a wall. How is this very simple technology even remotely “impossible”?
Here’s a photograph that has nothing to do with Trump:
This has nothing to do with whether the Russian Puppet / Orange Menace or Felonious McPantsuit won an election a few years ago in one of 150 odd countries. It’s just the way things tend to be most places and most times. (There are exceptions, but they are brief and fleeting.)
This brings me to my most recent “hobby”; history lectures. I’ve been traveling a lot and that means a lot of time in my Dodge. I have a choice. I can marinate in a mass media that’s increasingly toxic, listen to shitty music, or load up with MP3s. I’ve chosen the latter and have been wading through dozens of Great Courses Lectures.
I specifically chose to listen to lectures about the history of nations and times far removed from today’s hyperventilation. It was my best defense against NPR (America’s State Sponsored Pravda Analogue). At first it’s all boring names and dates; King Whatsiname defeated Sir Robin the Not-Quite-So-Brave-As-Sir-Lancelot at the Battle of Froederic’s Mudpit in 1179. Whatever. But over time you start seeing patterns. It looks like this:
Once you see the pattern, you can’t unsee it. Politicians and the media hate that. They’d have us stampede to and fro about nothing. Today it’s the children of undocumented aliens illegal immigration, whether some restaurant owner acted like a jackass, or “Russia, Russia, Russia, this time we’ve got him for sure”. Don’t take it too seriously. We shouldn’t let them use us as toys. We know everything in the newspaper today (assuming they still print newspapers) will be forgotten in a month so it’s clearly not something to panic over. For example, America’s Orange Menace and North Korea’s Psychotic Dictator For Life met in Singapore on June 12th. Presumably it was a big fat hairy deal. It’s now June 29th. Is it in the papers today? Heck no! The possibility of ending a 68 year old war between nuclear equipped powers couldn’t hold attention for 22 days? The press couldn’t stay focused long enough. They’re off their meds and they smelled an emotional dopamine rush elsewhere. They in a lather about a new “very important” situation which will vanish the millisecond when they flake out about something else.
Think long term and it breaks the cycle. Good luck y’all.