Strange Brew
It feels so strange, sitting here with the world on fire and everything seeming mostly so normal, except for the masks and businesses closed. I drive around the countryside with my dogs and it all seems so normal. Except for the masks. And the closed businesses. It’s a lot like the story in my book where people are carrying on with their lives, the triumphs and the challenges, while they are being stalked by someone intent on revenge way in the background. They never see it coming until it’s almost too late.
I put up a bird feeder and the birds are flocking to it. Unfortunately, my always hungry dog keeps pushing it over and eating the bird seed that falls out on the ground even though it causes her pain all night long and the seeds never get digested. Meanwhile, the birds go hungry. She reminds me of the billionaires who never stop their accumulation of wealth even though they could never spend it all and all this wealth chasing causes so much pain and misery to the rest of the earth. To solve my dog’s eating problem, I moved the bird feeder to the front yard where the seeds will be out of reach. I wish it were so easy to reign in the billionaires.
I don’t think most of us realize the amount of propaganda that is coming at us through the media. When I talk of media, I’m not just spotlighting the news. It’s the shows, the commercials, and the news that is being given to us in a distorted way. It works on us both consciously and unconsciously. Word choice has a lot to do with it and outright lies also, but the most damaging part is that which seeps in through the subconscious influencing us without our being aware. This is what happens when one group of people belonging to the same class owns 90% of all the media being put out in this country. The commodification of the media is also a problem. The way it is set up, if a story is getting traction, other media jump in to get their share of views and likes without doing their own research, because it is time consuming and the other guy got it right anyway. This is another of the causes of the spread of false information.
You see, the narrative is all important. If you control the narrative, you can leave out what you want, use the descriptions that serve your narrative (for instance use riot instead of protest) and even put out lies that will later be retracted but no one will notice the correction. An example of this is the Jeffrey Epstein case. They hauled a ton of videos and other evidence out of his mansion and according to witnesses there were leaders and captains of industry caught on them raping children. But where did they go? Who was on those tapes? And, of course, Jeffrey met a (cough) suicidal end. If this is all that is released, then we must make up the rest so we get a story of most of our leaders having raped children, killing them when they were through so they could drink their blood. OK. That’s horrible and we don’t really know this is going on but as long as the real story is covered up, we will have this one circulating around under the wire. Conflict between those who believe the story and those who don’t will arise on social media and elsewhere. Perhaps that is the desired end because when we are all riled up against each other we miss what is happening elsewhere.
I am old enough and my time is short enough that I could just coast to the end and block out all the bull that is happening in the rest of the world. My place is safe, I have my garden to produce food, my dogs for company and I am not far from most of my kids. It would be so much easier just to lay back and watch everything without involvement. I cannot do that, however, as I care about the world my grandkids will live in. I care about their future and prospects. So I tend my garden and when the mood strikes, I write about what I see. Perhaps the future will see me a another protest on top of the hundreds I have already participated in. We will see. Meanwhile, I need to pull some weeds. Some of them are medicinal and I might make tea, a strange brew of weeds to help cure what ails me.