It’s been a while since I’ve posted, I know. A lot has happened in my personal life that has kept my fingers from the keys in any form other than playing the odd video game to de-stress myself. In a creative sense, I’ve had little to no inspiration as of late, which kinda sucks considering I want eventually to be considered a writer/author. But, as with all things, real life must come first.
As far as politics and the like goes, it feels like I need a program every single day just to follow the players. One moment Trump is the devil, next he’s the savior of the country. The day after that he’s a Russian plant, and by noon on the same day he’s the reincarnation of Jesus come to save the souls of all them no-toothed rednecks in the Bible Belt.
I travel quite a bit for a living, and it’s gotten to the point that even trying to follow the news in the US is an exercise in not drinking myself to death. I used to be a hard-line listener to MSNBC when I traveled because the jabs they poked at the conservatives were funny. These days, everyone on the left seems so fucking smug and full of themselves that I wonder why I ever watched them in the first place.
This isn’t to say I’ve gone to the right though. Fox news and other right-wing personalities wrote the book on being smug, self-centered wastes of human skin. It’s only now that I realize that both sides are just as bad as each other. It’s no longer about stating the facts and figures, but more how one interprets those facts in order to push their respective narratives. Like George Carlin said: “It’s all bullshit, and it’s bad for you.”
Truer words have never been spoken.
When it comes to news, I’m more inclined to watch the local stuff than anything else. I honestly don’t trust any of the larger networks out there and their 24-hour ‘news’ coverage. As far as I’m concerned it’s all fake news, just with a different slant depending on the network. Oh, this network doesn’t agree with you? Must be fake news then. Facts? What are facts? What about alternative facts?
Yep. That’s about the size of it.
Everything’s an Op Ed these days just to sell papers, or get dem clicks, as it were. Click-bait headlines designed to draw the audience in and entice them with the forbidden fruit of ‘breaking news’ which is little more than some better-than-average blogger blasting out his opinionated screed about a tweet he ran across that made him choke on his danish. About the only relevant piece of material in an article like that is the fact that he choked on his danish.
I have to give credit to guys like Tim Poole, who’s out there to report the news the way a real journalist is supposed to: by getting out there and actually getting the information first-hand. I’ll admit that the first time I heard him say “I’m a journalist,” I was a little put off. I mean it sounded like every other ‘expert’ out there trying to spout their credentials so as to cover up their complete lack of expertise in said field. However, after watching a few of Tim’s videos, I have to say he fully backs up his title. I was wrong about him, and I now respect who he is and what he does.
We need more people like Tim out there…people who’re willing to go after the facts, find the truth of it all, and present it with no bias or opinion. We need journalists who are not tied to a paycheck that has a narrative component. There should be networks out there dedicated to the facts without the bias, and I’m pretty damned certain that such a network would thrive in today’s world. Of course it’s an uphill battle at the moment, but maybe someday, someone will stand up and say ‘no more’ to all the fake news out there, and give us the real truth.
Because believe it or not…we *can* handle it…