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Somebody Sez

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To begin with, I am not a great lover of the news media. In fact, I believe that if somebody wants to have a good night’s sleep, they should not watch or listen to the news after dinner. And certainly not the eleven o’clock news just before bedtime. It’s just not healthy, because those news outlets are peddling fear or outrage as their primary product.

One example is what I call the “Somebody Sez” news story. Just to give you an example, here are a number of headlines I just gleaned from the Cable News Network (CNN) website tonight:

  • Biden could face obstacle getting on Ohio’s ballot, secretary of state’s office says
  • Retired judge says statute cited in Trump’s motion raises concerns about NY judge
  • Republican lawmaker says Russian propaganda has ‘infected a good chunk’ of GOP base
  • Retired US general predicts Israel’s withdrawal won’t prevent an invasion
  • Republican strategist says Trump has made a critical mistake in the campaign

CNN apparently relies on an army of “experts” who “say” certain things or “predict” certain outcomes. It is possible that none of these things come true, but they can certainly succeed in riling up the consumers of the news.

Let’s take a more biased news medium, the Salon.Com website. Its readership obviously does not wish Trump well. (Neither do I, for that matter.) But its page today bristles with chatty “experts”:

  • “Punk”: Don Winslow on Donald Trump
  • “This is a big deal”: Experts say Judge Cannon’s order signals “bad news” for fate of Trump case
  • “Things just got very real”: Legal experts say Jack Smith appeal threat “puts Cannon on notice”
  • “Trump is running scared”: Legal experts slam “harebrained” scheme to get NY judge to recuse
  • Profs: Trump ruling unlocks key evidence
  • Experts “very worried” at Cannon’s order

People, it’s not news until it actually happens.

It is possible for editors to avoid this type of rampant supposition. For example, I could find no examples of blabbing experts in the NBC or CBS news sites. Apparently, they are more interested in reporting the news rather than creating it.

Eclipse

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Enough Fentanyl to Kill a Regiment

Yesterday afternoon, I heard some strange animal-like sounds coming from below my living room window. I pushed back the blinds, only to see several policemen and paramedics tending to something hidden by the hedge separating my building from the neighboring building. As I continued to look, I saw the paramedics hauling a black man in a bloodied t-shirt who was still howling.

Just another day on the streets of L.A., watching as our civilization is being eclipsed. And not just for a few minutes, either, but for the long count.

I do not understand why anyone would think that recreational drugs would be an improvement on real life. Even when real life is grim, it beats madness and suicide by chemical.

What is the tipping point after which there are so many people on drugs that reality has been supplanted? For a possible picture, read Polish sci-fi author Stanislaw Lem’s The Futurological Congress.

Sanctuary

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Immigration: Becoming More of an Issue As Time Passes

When it comes to immigration, the United States has been lucky. That is mostly because most of the migrants to our country were not at odds with our civilization. I think of the problems with Pakistanis in Britain and Burmese Rohingya in Thailand, and I see the American prejudice against Mexicans and Central Americans as solvable over time. We were just plain lucky that the peoples of the North and South American continents are not substantially different from us, and that we are separated from Europe, Africa, and Asia by two large and formidable oceans.

Within historic times, there have been long periods of migration that contributed to the destruction of the Western Roman Empire. On my bookshelves is an eight-volume study by Thomas Hodgkin entitled The Barbarian Invasions of the Roman Empire. They tell a long tale of ravages wrought by the Visigoths, Ostrogoths, Huns, Vandals, Lombards, and Franks. They are not the only reason for the fall of Rome, but they certainly contributed.

We may soon be seeing hordes of migrants that dwarf anything from the past. The reasons for this are two-fold:

  • Because of the acceleration of climate change, many island, equatorial, and desert regions are becoming uninhabitable
  • More and more countries are turning into failed states, the worst being Somalia, Sudan, Myanmar, Afghanistan, Syria, Haiti, Venezuela, Honduras, Mali, Libya, Albania, and DR Congo

In the years to come, the United States will be sen more and more as a sanctuary from the world’s climatic and political ills, even though we see ourselves as having climatic and political ills aplenty. It will be like the migrants of over a century ago who thought the streets of America were paved with gold. Even when they were not.

I don’t think that building a wall along our southern border will accomplish much: the Mexican cartels have discovered that fences could be climbed over or tunneled under. They are now in charge of the coyotes guiding most migrants over the border. In the end, controlling access to the border will probably be more profitable for them than smuggling drugs ever was.

Will the oceans still protect us when the pressure to migrate grows tenfold? I think not. Even now, many migrants crossing over from Mexico are from China and Africa.

What a Coincidence!

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I’m Sure Orange Jesus Knew This

I was watching the National Geographic Channel last night when suddenly I sat bolt upright. On her show entitled “Trafficked,” Mariana van Zeller investigates a man who flew to Mozambique to claim an inheritance, only to find himself in jail for attempting to travel with heroin in his luggage—heroin disguised as candy that was given to him by a man from South Africa to give to someone in Nigeria.

Nigeria? Oh oh! Can anything legitimate have anything to do with Nigeria? Apparently, there is a term in Nigerian Pidgin describing the types who are so imprudent as to turn up in Africa for their “inheritance”: that term is maga, which means “easily fooled idiot.” On the show, Van Zeller interviews a masked Nigerian baddy (no doubt a Prince) who points out that the man imprisoned in Mozambique is nothing more than a maga for actually showing up to claim his non-existent inheritance.

Ha ha, it is to laugh!

So when all those flyover country chuckleheads show up at Trump rallies wearing their MAGA hats, is it merely a case of self-identification? “I’m an easily fooled idiot. Lie to me!”

Too Much and Not Enough

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Heavy Rain in Southern California

Is it time to turn on the news yet? And when it is, what do you expect to hear? I don’t know about you, but I have come to the conclusion that the purpose of the news is to sell advertising by making the viewers fearful, such that they will want to be “informed” on the latest developments and continue to come back for more.

I have been asked by several friends outside of California whether I have “survived” the rainstorms that have hit the state this month. Evidently, I have, as I am writing this blog.

Southern California weather news can be illustrated by the following Venn diagram:

The blue circle indicates that “there has been too much rain”; the yellow circle, that “there has not been enough rain.” And what about the pale green zone where the two circles intersect? That’s when some weather reports are saying “there has been too much rain” and some others are saying that “there has not been enough rain”—at the same time!

At the same time we have been bombarded by reports of too much rain, there have been numerous stories that now a La Nina weather pattern is being established and that soon we will not be getting enough rain.

Apparently, there is no such thing as “just the right amount of rain.” It’s always a case of too much or not enough.

My suggestion for all of you: Try not to turn on the news just before going to bed. It will play havoc with your sleep.

Cabined, Cribbed, and Confined

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The News Has Not Always Been a Major Part of Our Lives

When I was growing up, the news on television was not the major production it is today. There were Walter Cronkite, John Cameron Swayze, John Chancellor, Dan Rather, and a handful of other mostly White males who spent thirty to sixty minutes telling us what was happening around the world.

Now the news is televised 24 hours a day on several channels. We are lured in with graphics indicating Breaking News, even when it isn’t. Watch a news channel for an hour, and what you get in thin gruel with one major component: F-E-A-R.

If you watch the news shortly before going to bed, you will have a difficult time falling asleep. There will be dire suppositions and wild guesses. I am reminded of these lines from Macbeth in which the uneasy king speaks:

          I had else been perfect,
Whole as the marble, founded as the rock,
As broad and general as the casing air.
But now I am cabined, cribbed, confined, bound in
To saucy doubts and fears.

To which I reply with a quote from Calvin Coolidge, which I use frequently: “If you see ten troubles coming down the road, you can be sure that nine will run into the ditch before they reach you.” If the various news media took that to heart, they would lose most of their viewers. Instead, they are in the business of magnifying our fears and even creating new ones.

Just imagine how many stressors they have at their command: Iran, Russia, China, Israel, the Middle East, North Korea, Cuba, Venezuela, global warming, drought, floods, tsunamis, earthquakes, volcanic eruptions, tornadoes, hurricanes, typhoons, cryptocurrencies, immigration, Covid-19, Trump, Biden, tomorrow’s rain, traffic, and so on ad infinitum.

Even the newspapers will scare you with a story. What you think happened in your town actually happened in (frantically skip to page 8) Somalia.

What is the best way to cope with the news? My suggestion is never to watch the news on TV in the evening. Rather, read about it using the Internet and print media during the earlier part of the day. After all, it is a lot better to go to sleep with a smile on your face than shaking with dread.

Forever Subscriptions

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Beyond Baroque in Venice, California

Several years ago, when I was employed and making good money, I decided to join Beyond Baroque, a literary and arts center headquartered in Venice, California. When I retired on a mostly fixed income, I was appalled to discover that my membership was constantly being renewed, even though my intention was to make it a one-time event.

Since then, I have discovered that I have several “forever subscriptions,” some of which I don’t mind renewing, such as Flickr and WordPress. But what about the Entertainment Book, which no longer even produces a book but is now Internet-based?

Why is it not mandatory to request a renewal each year. Granted, many members would fall off the rolls; but I find it somewhat nasty to be charged annually, whether I want to be or not, for a service i do not used. I have even left messages for Beyond baroque, but they have never called me back. I suspect I will just have to show up in person and vent my displeasure face to face.

What I find particularly objectionable is that the credit card companies buy into this scam. I now have a new Discover card, but Discover still allows my old Discover card to be charged by Beyond Baroque.

Whacked Wednesday

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Rabid Black Friday Shoppers in Laramie, Wyoming

I guess it was inevitable. First there was Black Friday, which after the weekend was followed by Cyber Monday and Giving Tuesday. Retailers love such intense concentrations of outgoing cash flow. I see as the inevitable result a Whacked Wednesday, meaning completely exhausted and presumably short of funds.

If you are a strong believer in sales, you will inevitably spend more money than you can afford on stuff that you will not likely use. Oh, you’ll get some real bargains—but will it be for things you actually need? I rather doubt that quite as much is spent on Giving Tuesday.

As Epictetus wrote some 1,900 years ago: “Wealth consists not in having great possessions, but in having few wants.” Unfortunately, it can take a lifetime to learn this.

So it goes.

Cries in the Streets

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Tents of the L.A. Homeless

In our 21st Century city of Los Angeles, there are tens of thousands of people who are living in scattered Medieval tent cities. Even though the city has banned tents from across the street from my apartment, there are a number of bums who “sleep rough” on the sidewalk. Martine and I can hear them when they raise their voices in anger in the middle of the night, particularly if they are competing for the attentions of a homeless woman.

I am very happy that I am not a politician, because then I would have to pretend as they do they these homeless are all poor unfortunates who need to be placed in public housing. That’ll work for some of them, the roughly 50% who really just need a place to bed down and are willing to follow the rules about drink, drugs, and violence. Except a very large percentage don’t want to follow any rules whatsoever. When they are offered housing, they will get drunk or stoned and smear their feces on the wall—whereupon they find themselves in the street again.

America is full of raggedy men who do not give a tinker’s damn about THE RULES. What they want is the freedom to live as they want to, even if they are burying the city of their residence in piles of fetid garbage. They don’t particularly care if their pursuit of freedom is toxic to others.

It’s kind of like American politics as a whole, which can best be summarized by who can say EFF YOU the loudest and longest. We used to have two political parties with platforms. Now we have one party that has a platform, and the rest have EFF YOU as their platform.

The homeless who don’t want to be homeless I can understand. The ones who want to spend all night drinking, shouting, getting high and meth and Fentanyl, and whoring with female ratbags do not have my sympathies.

Mayhem on the Road

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Keep Safe: There Are a Lot of Bad Drivers Out There

Martine and I have noticed that the highways of the United States have become more wild and woolly of late. To wit:

  • Particularly on residential streets, STOP signs are frequently ignored.
  • That also goes for traffic signals where one or two drivers typically crash a light when it turns red.
  • Drivers appear to get a frisson of pleasure by violating traffic laws if it gets them where they’re going a few milliseconds faster.
  • U-turns have become more common, not only on residential streets but on main roads.
  • The cell phone has become a major distraction, whether by talking or texting.
  • Los Angeles has decriminalized jaywalking at a time when accident rates of automobiles with pedestrians, cyclists, e-scooters, skateboarders, and others continue to rise.
  • Even when pedestrians cross at crosswalks and at street corners, they run the risk of being hit.

When one brings the matter up to the police, they complain that they don’t have enough officers to enforce the traffic laws. I suspect they would say this even if the police force was increased in size by a factor of three.

To survive, one has to drive like a Buddhist monk, with 100% of one’s attention on the road, and minimal flare-ups of road rage when one is confronted with an obvious violator. And that’s not easy to do!