The News

24 hour news sources streaming their perspectives into our minds.
What is the news?
What are the ramifications of watching the news and absorbing its content?
Could the news ever, even in its most idealized form, tell the entire truth?
If that’s not possible, what is the news saying?
Ten years ago I was getting a coffee and the barista told me something that shocked her. While studying for her masters degree in sociology, she was shocked to learn, contrary to popular belief, that the incidences of child abductions have actually decreased in the modern era.
I don’t think it’s necessary to draw out the implications of this, is it?
Where do children play today?
Every moment planned; security a paramount goal.
At what cost?
Earlier and more structured programs pushing specialization and idealization. Camps and programs that optimize the greatest opportunities we as parents can imagine. Scouts quietly lurking around the corner pushing the limits we as society have set for them. All the while, pretending we aren’t selling our youth. We cover our mouths and feign surprise, yet double down in hope that it’s our child they see.
The importance of egoic ideation paramount.
Subtle, yet hysterical and unrecognized oppression.
Creativity quelled.
Where is the mystery and the imagination? Where are the days that a child wakes up early, on their own, to run out the door to embrace creativity and unknown adventure? Where are the moments to feel loneliness and boredom? Where are the moments that we aren’t providing an unrealistic, unsustainable reality for our children?
Gone, erased by the urgency to make role-call in the gilded halls of extraordinary ideations.
This lack of space, lack of trust, due to the belief that our kids are not safe growing up the way we did.
This perspective, built brick by brick.
Fear your neighbor.
Your children will be harmed.
Today we have dismantled so much of what our grandfathers fought for because of terrorism.
We relent to this new world vision and fear based ideology. We allow our phones to be tapped and our emails to be read. We strip ourselves down and submit to full body scans to travel, throwing away our liquids and lotions. We condone search and seizure, torture, and imprisonment without due process.
For what?
Security?
Some of us know this isn’t right; others justify it.
Ultimately, our fear and desire for security pacifies us. So, we stay quiet.
Security from what?
An illusion.
The probability that a terrorist is going to kill you is astonishingly low.
You are 187 times more likely to starve to death in America than be killed by terrorism. Do you hear that? Starve to death, in the United States? 187 times more likely! That’s atrocious!
Yet, we so willingly shed our rights and demand our leaders keep us safe from terrorism.
Terrorists aren’t going to kill you.
Heart disease is going to kill you.
Cancer is going to kill you.
The contradictions perpetuated by the news regarding our greatest dangers are ridiculous.
Yet the news continues to repeat, terrorism, Islam, Jihad, terrorism, Islam, Jihad… over and over. Attaching every atrocity to terrorism… the bull horn of the 24 hour news agencies touting the murderous, war mongering middle eastern muslim who hates our freedom.
Terrorism, Islam, Jihad, terrorism, Islam, Jihad!!!
Reactionary alarmism.
What you don’t hear is you’re more likely to be killed by an elevator, a falling TV, or a christmas tree that has caught on fire!
Ridiculous, isn’t it?
Heart disease kills 610,000 people per year which accounts for 23.53% of all deaths in just United States! Cancer accounts for 22.52% and kills 580,000! That’s nearly 50% of all deaths.
Where is the outrage for those who oppress our health?
Why do our supermarkets continue to peddle such dangerous contraband?
Our televisions actively promoting the killers’ agendas…
Yet, no one seems to care.
No state run security agencies to quell the proliferation of processed foods.
No global intelligence network attempting to quash the nefarious sugar cabal.
This sounds ridiculous, right?
Yet, we fail to see the ridiculousness of what we do to protect ourselves from a risk manufactured by fallacious illusions.
The news is the tool developing this unsubstantiated, irrational, sense of foreboding.
Bolstering fear and inciting the need for retaliation.
Supporting the perception of our security or lack there of.
Do you see the irony?
The news is lying to you.
The news is a tool to tell you what to think about, when to think about it, and how to think about it. The news is a tool to tell what the oppositional positions are and how to criticize them. The news is a tool that confines the argument into specific arenas. The news is a tool by which intellectual discourse is limited. The news supports and hides certain agendas.
The news is propaganda.
The news has an agenda… to support capitalism/big money/big power.
I’d argue it’s a sales vehicle.
Selling Cheetos, mouthwash, guns, government, ships, pills, planes, resources, and rockets.
Let go of all of your fear; turn off the news. It’s all a sham.
Think critically
Choose love
Be love
Live love