This post was inspired by a comment that I made on another post. It was about my opinion that our media is complicit in a larger global campaign of stealing our freedoms and futures by promoting an almost daily “crisis” and/or a new focus of outrage. You can totally disagree with my assessment and still learn from this post, so I ask you to continue reading.
Let’s start with a cute childhood riddle.
“What’s worse than discovering a worm in your apple?”
“Discovering half of a worm in your apple, of course.”
This is funny and a perfect segway to my next question:
“What’s worse than being fooled?”
“Not knowing that you’ve been fooled, of course.”
If you’ve never watched the TV series called Brain Games, I excitedly suggest it to you. It explores the human brain’s limitations and strengths. It’s science, folks!
Many of you already know how frustrated I get when I’m shutout of a conversation. Some of you expect conversations to be a competition to conclude “Who is ‘right’?” and avoid them because who has time for ‘battles’ these days?
What if conversations were a means to gain knowledge and understanding? That’s how I ‘see’ them.
We are not physically nor mentally equipped to pay attention to more than one thing at a time. That’s a fact. Multi-tasking is actually a state of busyness not a super-human mental ability. We may jump from one task to another with alacrity, but our efficiency suffers for it. Sorry for popping that bubble. 😉
So, what I am trying to point out is that no matter what YOU believe, you can be distracted and fooled by others who are able to get your attention. I certainly have been fooled and it not only ‘stinks’ it can be costly. The best attention getters are passionate or fear-based media reports. We’re wired to protect ourselves and preserve our values so, of course, we ‘drop’ everything else we could be paying attention to, in favor of self-preservation.
If we’re ‘busy’ in this fast-paced world, the available amount of our attention beyond our tasks is limited.
Do you know people who just read headlines and/or listen to media ‘warnings’ and leave that ‘ugly’ topic of “politics” to the zealots? I do. I can’t blame them. What bothers me is that they are being ‘played’ by censorship and misdirection when they do.
But, lucky for us there are retired, thoughtful, concerned, citizens who DO pay attention because it’s our “politics” that, whether we like it or not, directly affect our prosperity, freedom, and futures.
So, I ask, “May I have your attention on occasion?”
That request comes with no expectation of agreement or argument. It is a matter of “food for thought” in a busy world.
Below is a segment from Brain Games that may ‘open your eyes’ to how easily we can be fooled (and robbed) when our attention is diverted… many times it’s diverted for unseemly purposes. [In my humble opinion, our language, institutions, and futures are being ‘pick pocketed’ and twisted, while we’re being told in the media that we are each other’s adversaries by calling us racist, unkind, and uncaring, according to our political positions. We’re better than that. 😉 ]
We’re all in this together, friends!
Tag: politics
Unanswered Question: Am I supposed to be ashamed of being political?
Let’s face it. Most people are well-intentioned.
And many well-intentioned people ask themselves hard questions on a regular basis such as “Should I do or say something?” or “Am I being considerate enough of others?”.
Well, this ‘soul searching’ is good, and IMHO, we are wise to keep those things in mind. So, for me, the number of my opinion posts that ‘lean’ into politics made me ask myself, “Am I supposed to be ashamed of being political?”.
We know that people are ‘sensitive’ about political topics so perhaps I should keep that volume down a bit because there are obviously many other things to discuss, right?
Gardening, family, Nature, Pop culture, celebrities, sports, my future plans, etc. came to mind. What a surprise! Every one of those topics, and every other one that I ‘grabbed’ at, had a political thread if discussed to any level past ‘small talk’.
Don’t believe me?
Gardening and Nature get straight to Climate Change and the economy.
Family? Many (to most) of us have members with ‘gender issues’, have kids in *public education, have members with ‘drug’ and/or ‘medical’ concerns and have members who are experiencing a ‘financial’ pinch.
Pop culture? We know how quickly that goes political!
Sports? This too has been ‘tainted’ so much that a former football junkie like me hasn’t watched a game in 6 years.
Future plans? Don’t those things almost entirely depend on the political ‘management’ of our country?!
Are you seeing the same trend that I am?
It wasn’t me who did that.
I’ll leave the investigation of “Who did that?” for another thread.
Then I asked myself another question once I made that ‘everything’s political’ discovery. So, is keeping an ‘eye’ on politics a ‘bad thing’?
My answer is basically “No” (It can be overdone on a personal level.). It’s becoming abundantly clear that if a country doesn’t have a base-line cultural value system it’s in trouble. If many things actually have a thread of ‘politics’ (as I have revealed) then having healthy political systems are one of the MOST important things and the citizenry has to pursue a consensus for everyone’s sake.
Last question, “But what about everyone’s sensitive feelings about politics, shouldn’t I protect them?”
Brace yourself…
That’s a great big “Nope”. Staying silent (or being silenced) is not an option in a “free society” if you want to keep it.
I still don’t know if I’m supposed to be ashamed of “being political” according to some modern etiquette plan?
What I DO know is my own value system won’t let me even consider complying with that idea.
* Whether you agree with “woke” school policies or not, the point of this post is “everything is political”. Talking about schooling leads to “woke” policies quickly.
Unanswered Question: Why did politics have to become a game?
It’s alarming to me how many people clap like seals for all the “firsts” happening in the political realm. The first female Vice President. The first openly gay Transportation Secretary … and so on.
Our culture has become so obsessed with celebrity and its own self-satisfying ‘virtue signaling’ that we’re in BIG trouble.
Americans (in their naive arrogance) have come to vote and behave according to their own ‘tastes’ and sadly, our general population doesn’t even have a clue what “good” leadership looks like. Heck, many don’t even know how our Constitutional Republic is supposed to work.
Those people are far more dangerous to our country than the CCP.
The uninformed and/or the ‘superficial’ voter reminds me of people who like to play football pools but know nothing about the game. They choose teams because of the color of their uniforms or their mascots. Once in a while, they actually win the pool but that’s a rare occurrence. The people running the pool love those people because they add to the ‘pot’ and in throwing their money away ignorantly advantage those who are determined to increase their own odds of a bigger win.
We all know that ‘merit’ carries far less weight these days than superficial “feel good” attributes. Anybody who still remains ‘giddy’ over the first female Vice President is a fool. Sorry, foolish people are called “fools”.
Now that the primaries for President are on the horizon, I hear a lot of chatter. Many political junkies are wondering which candidate will say the ‘right’ words or have the best trending intersectionality.
Running the country is NOT a game people. Take my word for it, the World is far less impressed with us than we are with ourselves these days. (Wake up!) It’s not senior year and we’re not about to be watching candidates who are vying to be prom king and queen. Each candidate needs sober consideration.
As a final thought, I want to ask would the gender, race, sexuality or the charisma of your heart transplant surgeon carry as much consideration as the surgeon’s skill set and record? Would those former superficial things even matter?
I dearly hope our country is worth the same pragmatic merit-based consideration in voting from each citizen as he/she would use for themselves.
Meanwhile, I’ll never understand why something as important as our political leadership became a game.
Looking for Joy and Finding Good
I was having an exchange with a blogger friend this morning when my cellphone went off. The song below is my current ringtone.
The topic of our conversation boiled down to an agreement that we are much more than our ‘political’ viewpoints. Let’s face it, somehow our enjoyment of everything has been damaged by media making all topics political.
I then looked up the clip from Sister Act:2 from which this joyful rendition came because it makes me happy.
Before me was Whoopi Goldberg, someone who is viciously political in ‘real life’…I looked past that.
Then I realized how long I’ve had ‘issues’ with the Catholic Church…I looked past that.
I further wondered if some people would be put off by any ‘religious’ theme… might they look past that?
What was before me was simply a heartwarming performance of a beautiful song by kids singing their hearts out in joy!
I love this clip. The song speaks to me. I didn’t need to entertain unpleasant aspects of what I could see. My heart is happy that I didn’t. I found the “beautiful” in it and the “beautiful” is getting harder to find.
Let’s all seek joy and goodness anywhere we can find it. Check our biases, complaints, and politics at the door and LOOK for it.
There’s a time and place for those things, of course, but without experiencing a BIG picture, now and then for balance, we’ll lose our humanity.
I’m willing to bet our media wants us to stay ‘lost’.
Please enjoy this clip with me. ❤
Weekend Writing Prompt #290- Fun at the Company Christmas Party
Fun at the Company Christmas Party
She’d struggle to bring up topics that weren’t deemed ‘political’.
The weather leads to Climate Change.
Shopping leads to Inflation.
Ask about how the kids like school and CRT and Common Core are there.
Don’t dare to sneeze or you’ll get Covid glares.
Even asking if the new grandbaby is a boy or girl, is a quagmire!
Perpetual politics were the tragic “New Normal”.
Silence wasn’t her style, so she bought, and beautifully wrapped, a pocket U.S. Constitution for everyone.
Now for some fun!
84-words
https://sammiscribbles.wordpress.com/2022/12/17/weekend-writing-prompt-290-perpetual/
Sunday Poser-# 78… 5-1-22
This week my question is;
What is a cause you’re passionate about and why?
I’m a bit late on this. Yesterday offered rejuvenating time for outdoor activities. 🙂
My passion is seeking ‘truth’ in our politics. It’s annoying to some and informative to others.
I feel that my granddaughters’ futures depend on our U.S. political decisions and policies. For that reason, I have an insatiable appetite for “goings on”.
Since I’m retired, I have the time to watch events on C-Span as they transpire. I also have time to research topics from multiple points of view. Our media has failed us on matters of ‘truth’, so to stay well informed, watching events as they happen in unedited fashion is my mission.
For those family and friends, who trust my fairness and instincts, it has been valuable to them. Much of our population is just too busy to absorb news beyond headlines. We all know that headlines are often misleading and sensationalized so knowing someone, whom they can trust to report the numerous elements on topics, is essential to staying informed. I often phrase my reporting as factual developments rather than opinion but readily offer opinion when asked. Everyone should know as much as possible especially for voting purposes.
Unfortunately, hopeful news in this arena is hard to uncover but the media’s hype on a new ‘crisis’ everyday requires me to offer temperance with gathered facts as well.
It’s an exhausting and “soul sapping” task so I take time to be outdoors and relax in-between.
Consider the ‘passions’ mentioned in this thread. Are the people in Communist China allowed to pursue them? Our freedoms are what make all our humane pursuits possible.
To me, if our political system stops working on our country’s behalf (primarily in failing to defend our Constitution), ALL other things people hold dear will be at risk. It is the bedrock for our future survival.
Fandango’s Provocative Question #113- Vaccination
Have you gotten vaccinated for COVID-19 yet? If not, are you planning to? If you have, or are planning to, how do you think your life will change afterwards? If you’re not planning to get vaccinated, why not?
*************
This is a great question! It’s one I’ve thought about and researched.
No, I’m not getting the vaccine, at least, not in the near future.
I’m a strong believer in vaccines. The current ‘vaccine’ isn’t an ordinary kind, though. It uses mRNA to change the body’s cells into something artificial that (hopefully) will recognize the Covid-19 cells if they enter the body. In essence, it’s an experiment. Any medical professional who is clearly representing it, calls it ‘the experimental covid vaccine’.
So, knowing that, I researched similar vaccine testing. In all of those animal studies, yes all, the vaccine wasn’t deadly or harmful at first, but later on, those modified cells ended up killing the animals by encouraging their bodies to ignore the virus instead of attacking it.
There haven’t been long range clinical studies on our current human Covid-19 vaccines because they are brand new.
Healthy and young people just may be at a larger risk of future ‘vaccine’ unknowns than they are from a virus that has over a 98% survival rate for those people. Those aren’t terrible odds in any gamble, and life is never danger-free at any time.
On top of that, there are several available ‘early onset’ treatments that have been hugely effective. As everyone knows, AIDS does not have a vaccine. Why aren’t there increasing deaths and worries? Because, there are excellent treatments that have been developed.
Oh, and stop confusing positive tests numbers with Covid-19 deaths. Compare them. The vast majority of people who have been exposed were never hospitalized. Herd immunity is likely getting closer than reported. South Africa predicted a huge problem with few vaccines and more cases… it never happened. The most natural and predicable progression of any virus is to become more spreadable and less lethal.
In closing, another worry of mine is the politicization of the whole Covid-19 pandemic. The censorship of information and pharmaceutical boycotts have been unconscionable!
In a time of uncertainty, more questions and more information is the true scientific method, not censorship. Informed consent starts with information. The ‘political’ pressures are fully onboard with only this ‘vaccine’ SAVING THE DAY but won’t tell us how it will actually save us. By the way, the ‘vaccine’ makes a ton of money for the already suspect Big Pharma, so being suspicious of media campaigns isn’t an outlandish position for any thoughtful person. Few ‘experts’ are honest enough to just admit they aren’t sure sometimes which would make me more apt to trust their advice, also.
SO?
I’m healthy, I’m informed, and I’m waiting.
Fandango’s Provocative Question #113 – This, That, and The Other (fivedotoh.com)
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