Friday, March 10, 2023

News reporting and bottom feeders

I don't need a dose of daily news from any source. I can live my life fine without it. But it's impossible to escape the news. Wherever you turn, you are inundated with news from newspapers, tv, and social media, all ready and willing to keep you updated (and get you hooked). Even with the minimal amount of exposure to world news that I allow myself, I remain updated on what is going on. I'm part of the world around me after all. But I've learned to limit my intake of news; I had to, because otherwise it's overwhelmingly depressing to be inundated by it. And being depressed about the state of the world does nothing to help the problems in the world. 

I'm not even sure we can solve the problems in the world; there are too many. I think it's enough that we do our little part each day to be good people, to be kind and generous, to help others when they need help, to guide children in the best possible way, to create a future for them that is better than the present. To do unto others as we would have them do unto us. It really just comes down to that. My parents were good people who lived their lives in a simple, honest and unaffected way. They raised a family and did a good job. They were good citizens who loved their country despite its flaws. All countries have flaws. Our parents could not foresee the world we live in currently, but their good values and ethics were and are timeless, relevant in any generation. 

Those who produce and provide the news for us are like dogs with a bone. They get a hold of a news story and literally worry it to death. They hash and rehash it ad nauseam. If you hear it once, you hear it a hundred times a day if you are so inclined. I am not. The constant presentation of the same news story amounts to a kind of brainwashing in my book. I am not interested in being brainwashed. There has to be a less insane way of dealing with the world. It boggles the mind that people like Tucker Carlson are allowed to lead news programs, insisting that what they report is true when they have verbalized the opposite privately. I think of his insistence that Trump was cheated out of the presidency and his defense of Trump as the victim of election fraud when Carlson knew it was patently untrue. I hope his news channel has to pay out bigtime to Dominion Voting Systems (their $1.6 billion defamation lawsuit against Fox News). I have no use for these kinds of people. Bottom feeders. There seem to be so many bottom feeders now in the world, who have given in and given up their good values and ethics (did they ever have them). And we wonder why the world is in the mess it's in. 

The surreal world we live in

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