Bad News

[mishalak]

I've decided that I'm going to stop paying attention to the news. Being informed hasn't helped me and it seems to hurt quite a bit. Getting disturbed by things that aren't really affecting me and that I cannot do anything to change. So I'm not going to read anything but the style section in the newspaper and I'm going to switch off NPR. The world can go to hell I don't care anymore.

Comments

[supergee.livejournal.com]

If you feel your resolution weakening, read (or reread) Sturgeon's "And Now the News."

[mishalak.livejournal.com]

Sounds like a good suggestion. I'll have to see if I can get it from the library.

[armoire-man.livejournal.com]

A *little* news once in a while is good. Vaccinate yourself against your own nightmares, because if you avoid news altogether, your fears will overtake you.

My aunt emails me and my brothers snippets of bad news every day. She's a political news junkie, and I can't figure out why, since all it does is make her angry and miserable. I think she's one of those people who whom suffering under the yoke of bad news is holy penance. Otherwise, I can't figure out why she does it.

I finally asked her if she needed a vacation and I haven't heard anything from her since.

[trinker.livejournal.com]

Going to vote? If you're going to vote, figured out how you're going to be an informed voter? Or is this a temporary news fast?

[mishalak.livejournal.com]

I'm would not presume to say what my future selves will decide to do, but I'm thinking this will be permanent.

As for voting, I'll keep doing it but I have concluded that paying attention to the news gives a person the delusion of being well informed. The news is Fahrenheit 451, filling people up with trivia until they have the illusion that they know something important. When in reality news is just entertainment of a more highbrow nature. Talking heads going on about their opinions, polls presented as real news, groupthink judgments of candidates masquerading as balanced assessments, and shocking events out of their context intended to make us afraid.

Given that people getting their "facts" from Fox News will swamp any informed vote I make I could get away with rolling dice. But being the hopeless person that I am when election time rolls around I'll go on the internet and download what politicians say their positions are and read the Blue Book (Colorado voter's guide) and decide how to vote based on that. And even if I went in cold I would probably be better informed than anyone who accepts the lies of network news would.

Oh that's marvelously cynical. I wonder if I should post it on the main page as well.

[trinker.livejournal.com]

The only way your voice will be swamped is if more people agree with your "it's pointless to vote" concept and stay away from the polls.

It's probably not a bad idea if you're going to make this a permanent news fast to consider finding a few trusted sources for political information so that you can have something other than just the politicians' official statements to go on.

[mishalak.livejournal.com]

No, the majority of people are idiots who will vote whichever way the winds of the major networks blow them. Voting is random, it is a fractal walk down Wall Street, voting does not matter. And that's assuming that our votes count, it seems that votes counted by Diebold machines come out whichever way their Republican makers want. Voting is pointless, something I do because I'm fatalistic. If I wanted real change I would vote for the worst idiot of the pack, because America will not waken from its sleep until a real disaster befalls us.

[trinker.livejournal.com]

You don't think that this march toward losing more and more civil liberties is something worth fighting against?

Why are you allying yourself with the sheep? Why are you allowing the sheep to determine your course?

[mishalak.livejournal.com]

Choose One (1) answer, you can assume it is mine:

A) Are we losing civil liberties? Sure certain parts of the news media is histerical over it, but if we were to go by the news I would expect we would be living in a dictatorship now. The news overreacts.

B) No, it is useless to fight for civil liberties until people are dying. For whatever reason people are blind and won't do anything unless there is a shock to the system. Bide your time and wait until the the government starts killing people Americans will care about. Like little girls going to church.

C) It is an illusion to think that people of intelligence have or ever will be in charge of anything. It is just sometimes there is the coincidence that the mob wants to go the way we do, it's useless.

D) I don't care. I'd rather live a happy life and have to take to my heels than to burn myself fighting for the rights of the ungrateful masses. Let them have their dictatorship, I'll simply leave if the time is ripe.

E) We are not in control of our own lives, we never have been. Not sheep, not thinkers, not anyone, we are all guided by luck.