This Ain’t No CNN.

I am generally avoiding news and posts and social media updates around political discourse during this Presidential election season. It’s not because I’m indifferent to the subject. I am very much aware of what can happen if Trump is elected to office again. No, I’m avoiding the subject online to maintain my personal sanity. My head is not in the sand; my mind is very much made up.

For those not aware, ultra conservative groups (I hesitate to call them “think tanks” and the like) have banded together to formulate a Day One plan should Trump be elected to the White House again. This plan is called “Project 2025” and it is horrifyingly alarming. Some high points:

• Reclassify thousands of government jobs as political appointees, instead of designating them as a civil service positions. If they’re political appointees, Trump would insist they be loyal to him
• Dismantling key governmental agencies, for example, NOAA (National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration), because they’re “pushing the climate change agenda”
• Other agencies on the dismantled list would include the Department of Education

I’m not a huge fan of John Oliver, but his recent coverage of “Project 2025” is enlightening. Take a few moments to watch this clip. I hope I don’t have to tell you that another Trump presidential administration would be a very bad idea.

I didn’t watch the State of the Union speech last night. For years these speeches have tended to not be about the state of the union but rather a drawn out, overhyped political speech full of all sorts of rhetoric and the like. Since there is little decorum in just about anything these days, the hooting and carrying on from those in attendance really rubs me the wrong way. Perhaps State of the Union is an apt description after all. We are just one page turn away from “Idiocracy”, anyway. Like humans will survive on a burning planet that long.

I’m digressing.

After the State of the Union address the other party (in this instance, the Republicans), select a representative to give their rebuttal to the points outlined during the hoopla of the SOTU speech. These responses are written well in advance of the actual speech and assumedly the person giving the response works with a coach to present themselves in an articulate, sane manner.

Apparently last night the selected winner was Senator Katie Britt from Alabama. Until last night, I’d never heard of her.

Today on social media, it’s all I’m hearing about.

I was only able to get through about two minutes of Senator Britt’s response before I shut the lid on my laptop and found something more productive to do. In those two minutes I observed the following:

1. A string of 10 words would be accompanied by three to four emotions… choking back tears, whispering, a seed-of-chucky like hiss, and fake fire in the eys
2. It appears Senator Britt is auditioning for a rendition of “The Sound of Music” taking place in the back of a barn. It’s easy to see she’s auditioning for the role of Reverend Mother. “What is it you can’t face?”
3. So, even Republican Senators that happen to be a woman are suppose to be in the kitchen?
4. Why isn’t she wearing the red and white cloak thing from “The Handmaid’s Tale?”
5. Do women that vote for Republican really weep and moan in their kitchen over the existence of TikTok?

I don’t know what the Republicans are trying to accomplish with this train wreck but whatever it is, it can’t be good. I can’t believe anyone with the IQ higher than the tax on a Big Mac would think this was a genuine attempt at reaching out to voters. If suburban moms are falling for this shtick, we are so further screwed as a country.

I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again. This has to be the most bleak presidential election in recent history. It’s certainly the bleakest cluster I’ve seen in my lifetime, and I’ve seen the likes of Dukakis, Kerry, and Dole.

So as not to begin two paragraphs in a row with the same phrase, I’ll simply say, I’m grateful to be on the back half of my life.

The Doomsday Clock is once again at 90 seconds to midnight. This is the second year in a row the clock has been at this position; it is still at the closest point to “doomsday” in the history of the clock. Prior to 2023, the clock was at 100 seconds to midnight. Near the end of the Trump presidency, the clock was moved from two minutes (120 seconds) to 100 seconds to midnight. I find it somewhat interesting that the clock has moved closer to midnight and remained there during the Biden administration.

As a Gen-Xer that was constantly reminded of the threat of armageddon during the Reagan years, it still makes me quite nervous to see the Doomsday Clock so close to midnight, and things not getting better.

It’s an extreme clock setting in extreme times.

I know I’m not alone of really being tired of the constant chaos in the world. Wars, grandstanding, childish social media posts, focus on anything other than what’s important, greed, and a looming U.S. Presidential Election that will probably boil down to the “vote for the least worse of the two very old guys”.

I really want the chaos to calm down. I want to live to see the Doomsday Clock ramped to a less volatile territory.

But most importantly, I want the world to get better, not “less bad”.

So yesterday I wrote a brief blog entry around the discovery of the OceanGate submersible “debris field”. The shorter version of my blog entry is this, “Stupid decisions sometimes lead to stupid results”. The whole thing is so unfortunate.

I’ve been watching the coverage of this tragedy all week and there’s a part of me that finds it a little coincidental that they found a debris field just as the figurative “countdown clock” of remaining in the air in the craft came to zero. I feel like the news media was stringing this along for ratings and I know that sounds very cynical of me. I own the cynicism.

I will say that no one “deserves to die”. I’ve read comments online around the drama; “well it’s just a bunch of billionaires” or “they knew better” or “they got what they deserve”. That’s harsh. People with money in those digit ranges can do what they want, just like someone that makes minimum wage can blow their hand off with fireworks in a couple of weeks. It’s all about personal responsibility.

Since the sub imploded I really hope they never knew what happened and they just quickly passed onto the next thing. I wouldn’t want anyone to suffer.

But I do hope OceanGate is as a company is a thing of the past.

When we read or hear or see the news, the bad stuff always happens elsewhere, right? We hear of a tragedy, feel pangs of sadness, have a spiritual moment or two, and then we rationalize that while quite sad, it happened THERE not HERE. And we go on with life.

This is a picture of me in 2013 when I was working for Frontier Communications. I had gathered with others from the company for a training seminar at the Allen, Texas office.

Of course, as of this writing the latest horrific mass shooting just happened in at Allen Premium Outlets in Allen, Texas.

I’ve been to Allen Premium Outlets. It’s 3.4 miles from the spot where I’m standing in that photo. 99.9% of the time, despite the vivid imagery shown on too many TV screens and computer monitors, I can’t picture the location of these senseless tragedies. It’s easy for me to picture this one.

We need to do something to stop these senseless tragedies. Screaming at each other is accomplishing nothing. Civil listening and discussion might get us somewhere.

We need to get somewhere else.

NPR’s David Folkenflik reports “NPR quits Twitter after being falsely labeled as ‘state-affiliated media'”.

NPR will no longer post fresh content to its 52 official Twitter feeds, becoming the first major news organization to go silent on the social media platform. In explaining its decision, NPR cited Twitter’s decision to first label the network “state-affiliated media,” the same term it uses for propaganda outlets in Russia, China and other autocratic countries.

https://www.npr.org/2023/04/12/1169269161/npr-leaves-twitter-government-funded-media-label

Follow the link in the first paragraph for all the details. This is just another stone kicked out from the crumbling foundation of what’s left of Twitter.