For nearly two years we have been flooded with vitriol, toxic rants, outright lies, innuendo, bitterness, fear mongering. My ears hurt, my eyes hurt and the thought of breathing the same air as some of these people burns my nose and throat. I know they’ve always been there…some with a chip the size of a railroad tie on their shoulders…the ones with mean faces and a mouth as puckered as a chicken’s ass. You wonder where such a reservoir of hate can build in a country as wealthy as they are…no…countries as wealthy as we are, because my country has a fair share of the same rage. But wealth isn’t the issue…the sense of powerlessness is the issue. Look here…you have a good job, built a four thousand square foot ranch house…got a car for the wife, a pickup with big wheels, a boat, a motorcycle and two snowmobiles…a riding lawn mower with shock absorbing seat and you’re paying it all off with ten hours of overtime a week…and some ass hole in a suit a thousand miles away closes the mill…and you’re done.
There is a legitimate rage…we live in a world where somebody is getting screwed constantly and the injustice of it all is a righteous boiling passion. So I’m not knocking rage. It’s the main emotion that gets some people through their day or week or a terrible illness. But there are rages that cannot be justified. They are based in ignorance and prejudice and some are the product of deliberate misinformation. These are rages and hatreds that solve nothing, that tear families, communities and nations apart. And we’re living with this now.
Like a lot of people, I spend a fair bit of time surfing the web. At my age it’s better entertainment than the T.V. ever was. There’s damn near nothing you can’t find on the net and the mass and volume of data is huge. And that’s a problem.
My father, back in the day, believed everything that was printed in the newspaper. He said it was because they were bound by law to print the truth. Even when I was twelve years old I didn’t believe that and it was one of those kid things that made me wary of believing my father. I wanted to tell him that most of the time he was probably right…but even newspapers back then could make mistakes, both inadvertently and deliberately. It wasn’t until years later that I understood that there were editorial policies in media that slanted news one way or another…and that a lot depended on who owned the paper and how much pressure advertisers could apply. It’s not all propaganda but there’s more than enough of that on important issues to make media less than trustworthy.
The same is true of the internet. With the incredible volume of material and the millions of sources of input, simple logic says that a large proportion of the stuff is bullshit or worse. And the ignorant rage of millions of people is being fed by material on the internet that they believe implicitly, because…hey…it’s the internet dude…they can’t put wrong stuff on it. That’s like saying that a note written on a bathroom wall is true because hey…who’s gonna lie with their pants down?
This past couple of years I’ve wondered more and more about the need for censorship. That some body should be responsible for truth and honesty in all of the medias including the internet…But then I realized immediately that it’s too huge…it’s too pervasive…and besides I’m opposed to censorship of any kind. I’m opposed to the censorship we already have…so having more “thought cops” whose own bias may be driven by hidden agendas…no thanks.
So in the end we have to be our own censors and screen out lies and hate…educate ourselves and know the difference…be flexible and accept that what’s true today may be overtaken by a greater truth tomorrow…stay wake.
In the mean time get a blindfold and earplugs and take a break from the haters.
Chagal4's Blog 