Tags
This whole thing started because after skimming posts in my reader for two solid hours, I realized that nobody was talking about anything that I was interested in talking about. And we can’t have that can we? Mama wants a brand new topic!
So I was thinking, which, as you know, I tend to do a fair amount of. Sorry it’s like a bad and very old habit. But it keeps me from getting into trouble I figure, at least the kinds of trouble that land you in a jail cell.
Anyhoo, I look around and I see that the world is in a terrible state. I mean everyone agrees on that right? We disagree a lot on how to fix it, but there is no disagreement that hell can’t be far off from the actual state of affairs on the third rock from the sun.
And as an intelligent person would do, I begin to wonder what is causing this? For weeks I’ve been trying to figure out how 85% of my high school classmates are crazy fundamentalist right wingers. I can tell you that I have an answer, and it wasn’t in the water after all. A former classmate who is remarkably sane and someone I’d be a better person had I spent some time getting to know him while we were students, said, “Sherry, that whole neighborhood consisted of factory workers, most of whom never graduated from high school. Their kids went right into the shop too. They’ve done little in life, traveled almost not at all, and have never been exposed to other peoples, cultures, and, and so forth.” Point taken.
So, I thought, with a little grunting and squinting of my eyes, I should be able to figure out how this world got into such a stinkin’ mess. And frankly, I think I’ve got it.
Like I said, I paged through a lot of blogs this morning. Topics ranged from health care, Afghanistan, Sarah Palin, the gate crashers, Tiger Woods (boy that is one randy dude huh?), climate change and Copenhagen. That was more or less it, and there were dozens of posts on each of these. Are you starting to get it?
Ya see, people get freakin’ B O R E D of the same C H I T all the time. They get especially vamped at the idea that your retool and remix whole categories of this swill and paste it into publishing vehicles day in and day out. It gets O L D.
Now, somehow this gets translated in people being sooooooo bored with what passes as news that they are captured (when their brains are at ebb tide) by media jokes like Foxy Noise and their opportunistic buffoons, Hannity, O’Reilly, Beck et cet era. I haven’t figured out exactly how yet, but I’m sure this is how it happens.
Of course, once at the mercy of the brain killers, anything is possible and probable. Fox and it’s wannabes fill the heads of such vegetables with all manner of birther/deather/Obama hatin’/Dem despising B U L L C H I T, and as you can see, the chaos begins.
Soon, logic has been dumped in favor of creationist folklore (oh ain’t life grand when the earth is flat again?). We enter the realm of “if you can dream it up, it must be true” land. Case in point.
Since most of my classmates seemed less than eager to discuss their lives for the past 40+ years, I went to some of their pages and sought some background. Sure enough, 90% had never attended college, giving their only education as Hamady High class of 68. One in particular captured my fancy–a woman I didn’t know well, and have not yet spoken to on Facebook. Under political: she wrote conservative. Her last link on FB was to UTube (the bastion of source material) claiming that Obama had finally admitted to being Muslim. This was accompanied by plenty of footage in which he bowed to other Muslims, entered Mosques, and well you know, acted all Muslimy.
Under people or things I follow, there was: Glenn Beck and Sarah Palin. I mean, need I say more? It’s enough to make a person cry. I saw no evidence of creationism, but I’d not be at all surprised.
Speaking of which, if you want to read a really sad tale, along the lines that I preach here constantly; namely that exfundies are usually ex-believers, read this excerpt over at “Debunking Christianity” of a scholar’s fall from fundamentalism into atheism. It’s a sad story, and an unnecessary one. When you set up your universe dependent on a book being infallible and error free, you pretty much torch the entire faith system if the book ends up having a spine of clay.
As I’ve said before, this is one of my fundamental objections to this form of interpretation. It’s single handedly responsible for more atheists than any other form I’m aware of. People either avoid Christianity because of fundamentalist insanity or finally are forced to see the light, and lose all their faith. There is not middle ground most of the time.
So now we have the cause of all our ills. We just need to restructure the media and all will be well. I personally think they should draw lots from a hat for story ideas. That ought to spread the subject matter around a bit more broadly and hopefully keep those of us who have managed to remain sane in some kind of news bliss.
So how bout it media. Can you come up with something new to say?
Existential Ennui 