For Those at Peril From the Sea
I don’t think I’m alone in thinking that this describes a great many people in life today. The world is upside down and backward. You don’t need me to make a list of grievances to relate. If you’re like most people, you feel numb inside. You want everything to slow down, stop, and leave you alone.
I’ve always been a bit of a curmudgeon. At age 55, I suppose my body is finally catching up to my mental disposition. I loved pointing out the obvious and not-so-obvious problems with the world. I love to do things, go on adventures, and be a trailblazer, but only if it’s my idea. If you bring adventure to me, there is a good chance I am going to turn my nose up at it.
Can’t help it. Just the way I’m built.
There is a joy in being able to put my hands up and look cross-eyed over some little transgression acted upon me with oblivious dispassion.
Recently, a friend and I were eating lunch in a vegan restaurant in Laguna Beach. When I tried to pay in cash, I was met with visual disapproval and disdain. The green-haired zoomer behind the counter mumbled under her breath that I looked like the kind of person who would try to pay in cash.
She was, in effect, actively “cash-shaming” me. In that moment, I became every angry old man I’ve ever met. I remember saying things like, “I thought cash was king,” followed by “Not anymore, I guess.”
Are we really moving to a world beyond cash money? I know we just announced the end of the penny, but paper money still plays, doesn’t it?
If you’re my age or older, you might be thinking about the legendary Howard Beale character from the film Network, who had finally reached his limit of society’s bullshit. The news, his job, his family, and friends had all become part of a vast conspiracy where every American had turned over their lives to a pilot not of their own making.
Much like Howard Beake, we feel like prisoners in our own lives, being acted upon by circumstance and bludgeoned into stupidity by mundane forces all around us. The everyday drip of autopilot desperation.
We want to believe it’s as easy as opening up a window and yelling to the world about how mad we feel. The truth is, Howard Beale went completely nuts. If he was transformed at all, it was in his sad and tragic death.
I’ll assume you want to avoid that and right the ship before you are too late to avoid the looming falls drawing you to your death.
I don’t have the answer to that dilemma, by the way, I’m just making an observation. It doesn’t matter what political party you belong to, because no matter who is in office, the echo chamber you listen to is busy making sure you remain angry, disappointed, and looking for someone to blame.
The twenty-four-hour news cycle introduced by CNN, improved upon by MSNOW (MSNBC), and mastered by Fox News is a nonstop alarm bell telling you that not only is the call coming from inside the house, the house is on fire and all the doors are locked. Every single tidbit of information is a Special Alert coming in like Conkrite, breaking into regular programming to tell you about the Kennedy Assassination. It’s not. Guaranteed it’s just another little gremlin they’d like lodged in the back of your mind.
“If it bleeds, it leads!” That is the rubric by which information is triaged; only now, we are the ones bleeding. For example, we become tribal and angry over the untimely deaths of five random people. The details of which are drummed into us so often that we think there must be an epidemic of deaths surrounding a person, place, or thing.
No one bothers to use simple logic that there are 349 million people in the United States and five murders, while tragic, represent an infinitesimal speck of the overall population. Is it a tragedy? Yes. Is it worthy of a Fox New Special Alert? Probably not.
You can’t say that out loud, though, or you’re un-American or part of the problem. It’s part of the genius of places like Fox News. They are able to craft the narrative in such a way that even trying to counter it with facts is unpalatable. It goes way beyond simple distortions like the Fox News Poll. During the Obama administration, they offered the following poll question for their viewers. “How often do you think President Obama lies?”
Not, “Do you think he lies?” or “Is he a liar?” but “How often…” They start from the most disingenuous position and go from there.
Look, I’m sure people could give me examples of the “Fake News Media” doing the same thing. I’m sure they do. I’m not defending them. The entire 24-hour news cycle is toxic.
I use Fox News as an example because they have mastered this format. It’s insidious.
Years ago, there was a new story floating around that Planned Parenthood was selling baby parts from abortions to the highest bidder. The mere idea was sickening. It really doesn’t matter which side of the abortion debate you are on. It was visceral, ugly, and abhorrent. Pro-lifers and Evangelicals wouldn’t stop talking about it, and places like Fox News amplified the story by repeating it over and over again. Not by newscasters, but by their opinion hosts.
The truth was much less salacious. No, Planned Parenthood was not selling baby parts to the highest bidder. They weren’t, no matter how many times they were accused of doing it. What they were doing, however, was offering, for free, the fetal tissue to research labs and medical facilities for work in stem cell therapies and treatments. The only caveat was that the research labs had to pay the freight or the shipping cost for the material.
Here’s the amazing part. Armed with the truth, any person who stood up and defended Planned Parenthood sounded like a crazy person. “They weren’t selling baby parts. They were giving away the baby parts, but they had to pay for the shipping. A lot of baby parts are heavy, and that’s not cheap!”
See what I mean? Brilliant. This is what passes for news.
It is so easy to tell people to just stop watching the news. If only that were the case. News is no longer a half-hour program in the evening. It’s an entire channel or channels. It’s websites, mobile alerts, Twitter postings, and everything in between. Technology is so ubiquitous that we hardly know when we are being manipulated anymore.
No wonder our children are dealing with crippling generalized anxiety disorders. They can’t even point to a single traumatic event that shaped their mental disposition like Gen X’ers or Boomers can. They have no idea. It’s an overwhelming, free-floating sense of dread. My generation likes to tell them to toughen up, but the fact of the matter is, these kids have spent their lifetimes being fed information without the ability separate real from perceived danger. They cannot parse information for nuance. It’s just a nonstop barrage of tragedy and horror. Their minds don’t know or care that a Tsunami in Japan won’t affect them in Pittsburgh, PA. As far as they are concerned, the water levels will take them, and there’s nothing anyone can do.
“Just tell them not to worry about stuff they can’t control.”
Sure, I’ll do that.
Like I said. We are all adrift, at peril from the angry sea. The crashing waves keep coming. We’re punch drunk, numb, or both.
I’d tell you to be strong and hang in therem but meanwhile, I can’t take a cookie from a tray at a party without scheming my way back to it before they are all gone. The world is a hammer, and we all look like nails.