LIVING IN THE PRESENT IDIOCY

I think I need to turn off the news. It doesn't matter which news channel I watch, though I admit to a preference, as a conservative. Many of my friends are liberals, most with an intolerance for my different point of view. I have no interest in converting them. I know their opinions are fixed and rigid even as they fervently believe themselves to be open. What amazes me is their intolerance for ANY different point of view. That's a killer for discussion. I'm slow. Took me some time to get that liberals that I know do not want discussion. They want full agreement. Because of it I have divorced several of them. I miss them very much. But it is self-degrading to remain in any relationship where  the parties are not seen as equals. No friendship can survive that.

Finding truth on the telly is very hard to discern. I look for balance, impersonal reporting...I don't frankly care to know the opinions of overpaid people with inflated self importance, telling me skewed information. I'm old enough to recall when that was closer to the norm. Wild eyed hype is the order of the day now. Look. It's the news. Stop trying to make it more. not everything should drive me to hysteria.

I make it my purpose to watch CNN, which is tolerable, and Fox Cable, but never ever MSNBC. Those MSNBC folks are not the least subtle in their pov or their lying. Ham handed, they think I'm a moron. They give me a fake conservative and a truly dumb blonde. Their commercials are more interesting than anything they offer. And when the droning isn't too bad, I watch C Span.

I like to think I have reasonable intelligence. The current Administration thinks I don't. What comes out of that crowd now is designed for newly arrived children who have no clue and no memory. That doesn't work for most people over sixty. We do have experience at living, and still retain our memory. We've actually lived. You know, wars, depressions, job losses, illness, stuff like that. We don't all play bridge all the time. My neurons still fire. But I feel that someone thinks I'm a six year old with no life experience worth recognizing, that I can't think for myself and can't find my way home. You can see I won't do well with the nanny state, nor can I tolerate being politicaly correct. Not me nor anyone else. When did i ever allow anyone to tell me what  to say  or what to think or do?

The hardest thing is to discern truth. That, I find, is elusive. In a newsworld currently seeming to be filled with liars, my best move is not to change the channel, but to unplug the TV set.