Following the 2016 election, I wrote a series called In Troubled Times. It seems appropriate to post these again now
As the days post-election melt into weeks, I observe myself
moving from disbelief to despair to relative calm . . . and now to feeling just
plain annoyed. I am tired of the news being dominated by one horrible
announcement after another, and even more tired of how much attention is paid
to the continuous verbal effluvia flowing from the president-elect. I am tired
of being jerked around emotionally by a bloviating buffoon whose chief delight
seems to be keeping everyone else off-balance. I’m tired of every conversation
about the news beginning with “Guess what outrageous thing president-elect/his
newest appointee/some member of Congress just said?”
It’s one thing to be appalled and frightened by the
statements of politicians now in power. There’s a time to focus on politics and
a time for other parts of my life. It’s quite another to have my thoughts and
days hijacked by irresponsible sensationalism. Not to mention counterfactual
(aka “lies”) distortions. Remember the meme of the person who can’t sleep
because somewhere on the internet, someone is wrong? When my brain gets taken
over by provocative statements, that’s where I am, duped into a cycle of
research and refutation. It’s a gazillion times worse if I give in to a lapse
in judgment and actually reply to one of those folks-who-are-wrong. That never
ends well, no matter how many times I persuade myself into believing otherwise.
Social media do not, by and large, promote genuine discourse, but I get sucked
into trying. Of course, the responses only get me more wound up. That’s my responsibility,
because I know better. But I really would like to be able to glance at the news
or visit a social media site now and again without having to fend off the lure
of the outrageous.
Why is the fruitcake
(and surrogates) dominating the news? I swear, every time he twitches a finger
(especially in proximity to his cellphone), it makes headlines everywhere. On
his part, the tactic of controlling the dialog by throwing out pompously
outrageous lies is nothing new. That’s how he dominated the primary debates. He
got billions of dollars worth of free air time during the general campaign by
poking one hornets’ nest after another. Now he’s doing it on an international
scale. And the news media buy into it every time, battling the hydra that grows
a hundred heads for every one they whack off with facts. We’ve gone from
sucking all the oxygen out of the room to sucking all the oxygen out of the
news sphere and now the world.
I draw the line at sucking all the oxygen out of my head.
Okay, I’m not hopeful that the media will take my suggestion to just ignore any
sentence that includes “Trump” and “Tweet,” nor am I a good enough nerd to
reprogram my computer to do that for me. Nor do I want to shut myself away from
news of any sort. For one thing, I know myself well enough to admit that would
be too anxiety-provoking. I will likely do better when I become better at not
responding to trollishness.
But right now, mostly I’m annoyed to the point of being
downright pissed. I recognize that anger can be friend or enemy. It’s
energizing, which can be exhausting if I spend too much time wound up, or
focusing if I master it. If I give in, I run the risk of descending into petty insults
and ad hominen fallacies. Or I can
use it to point the way to improvements in my own attitudes and behavior. What’s
getting to me, and why? My anger can show me the line between things best
shrugged off and those that call for action.
This, however, is how I feel today:
Artemisia Gentileschi, Judith and Holofernes |
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