Forgiveness for the Uninformed, Rage Against the News Machine / 2-6-12

Not forgiveness for the "Uniformed." That would be a very condescending post.

I kid, because defensive mechanism. In all honesty, I'm not sure what the point of this little essay is, yet. I'm going to start with a list, follow it with between one and a dozen observations, leading to a semblance of a point, perhaps gracing it all with a counterpoint, if you're lucky. I plan to offer a conclusiony item near the endy part.

(Not sure how it's all going to turn out. This is just how they teach you to operate in school. Begin to write, then think.)

Pre-thinking stage: engage.

a) Israel is thinking of starting a little war with Iran.

b) A riot killed 79 people in Egypt last week, and injured hundreds. The aftershock riot, a couple days later, killed 10 more.

c) Syria continues to knock off its citizens, day by day. Russia and China are vetoing any U.N. action.

d) Oh yeah, speaking of Russia, as hundreds of its citizens continue to die of cold, hundreds of thousands have taken to the streets in protest and support for apparent King Vladimir Putin.

e) The Republicans are choosing a presidential candidate, one state at a time. One guy seems to have taken charge, but it's been a pretty topsy-turvy ride so far.

f) Facebook is readying for what could be the largest IPO of all time. Hell, throw moderation out the window. This WILL be the largest one of all time.

g) Unemployment is dipping quickly.

h) Same-sex marriage is being considered/approved in three more states (WA, NJ, MN).

i) A Super Bowl was played yesterday. A good one, too. Record viewership for the game and the halftime show.

j) Outrage at the Susan B. Komen For the Cure's plan to defund Planned Parenthood caused the board to reverse its decision.

k) Citizens United is now two years old. The court case that paved the way for unlimited (unlimited!) donations from a single entity to a political campaign. It's being challenged everywhere, because most people are against bribery. (Unlimited donations! Pause for a second and think that one over.)

Those are just the top stories I can recite off the top of my head. A bit of shallow research reveals that a few other significant things are also ongoing.

l) Russian scientists are about to finish drilling through two miles of Antarctic ice and reach a pressurized underground lake that has not been explored for 100 million years. What's that again about the Mayan prophecy?

m) More European countries' debt ratings are in danger of being downgraded as they begin to deal with the consequences of unfunded spending programs. Like France and stuff. Big financial problems ahead, probably, with worldwide ramifications.

n) Fidel Castro was seen in public, touting a memoir. Remember him?

o) Hey, guess what: this little thing called "Occupy" is still happening, with peaceful protesters being mistreated by police every day, First Amendment be damned.

Thinking stage: engage.

First pointlet, then is that all that stuff listed above happened or continued to happen last week. How can a person possibly stay informed? Reading enough on each of these topics, just enough to rise above mal-informed to semi-informed, would take a person's entire trove of free time. No matter how much that person had! 168 hours might be sufficient, on a weekly basis, provided the person were a very fast reader. And possessed a time machine.

One could read headlines only. I have lots of days when that's all I can do. The experience is very unsatisfying, like a daily diet composed of fourteen snacks instead of three and a half meals.

I didn't even include any of the gossip "news" that bubbles at the surface -- Justin Bieber this, Kim Kardashian that, Brad Pitt this, MIA that. Best leave those "stories" to the professionals.

No sense in trying to stay up on the local stuff, either. Sticking strictly with national and international stories above, and just the big ones at that. Property taxes going up or serial killer strikes again in your town? You could hardly know that, unless it was your job to know so many things. So very many things.

That's why, today, pointlet two: I'm asking for and granting forgiveness to all uninformed parties everywhere. I am extending, right now, a blanket -- nay, a veritable quilt of mercy to all planetary inhabitants. You didn't know the city of Berkeley voted to pull out $300 million in assets from a large bank, so it could place the money in a more socially conscious place? Peace be with you. You didn't catch the headlines about the quake in the Philippines? Shalom anyway, Allahu Akbar and all that jazz. You holding on to something earth-shattering I didn't know about? I humbly beg your forgiveness.

There's too much information. It's too easy to disseminate. It's getting harder and harder to sort through it all, let alone keep up with a story for more than a day or two.

I'm not sure how this will turn out, still, but it appears a major point has stumbled into this post: We, as a nation, are bombarded with news. We've become are too adept at reporting stories. I submit that we have left the land of diminishing returns, news-wise, and have bravely set foot on a new patch of terra firma, where the amount of information available now places too much power in the hands of the aggregators and the opinion makers.

An amateur news-gatherer, or a semi-interested news reader, who has literally millions of informative blogs to choose from, is ironically more at the mercy now of news aggregators than ever before.

I can't stress enough how ironic the situation has become. There are hundreds of major news outlets slanted this way or that, and hundreds more trying so very hard to be unslanted. Old media and new media have merged -- you tell me how we should tell them apart. How do you find enough to make up your mind on any issue of importance? How do you find a reliable source, who will give you facts and analysis you can trust, and I don't mean based on ideology, but on sound thought processes and verifiable events?

For so very many of us, you don't. You stop by Daily Kos and the Huffington Post on your lunch hour if you're a liberal, catch some Rush Limbaugh on talk radio in the car and log on at redstate for a few minutes in the evening if you're a conservative. Why? Because you're not going to spend half your day researching a major issue or story, unless it's your job.

The junkiest of new junkies among us will always devour enough material to satisfy their appetites, and if they do it right, they'll turn that information into knowledge. The rest of us? Good freakin luck.

I don't think the current state of news presentation is healthy for our republic. But I also don't have a solution. Feel free to suggest one.

Supreme Corp. / 1-22-10

On Friday, the "Supreme" Court of the United States of America took a bold step, removing limits on how much dough corporations can donate to candidates for federal office.

You read that right. And the Court needs to swiftly find a way to undo this gross miscarriage of justice. I would call it practically an abortion of justice, but that would be tacky, so I'll leave that unsightly, inappropriate simile to some other angry blogger somewhere.

But maybe you disagree with me. Maybe you even like the ruling. Which is fine, kind of.

Perhaps you believe strongly that campaigns should be privately financed, out of fiscal responsibility. That's totally cool. Not everyone thinks public financing cuts down on corruption or the appearance of corruption, which is, after all, pretty ugly as well. Intelligent people disagree on this issue.

But surely you don't think businesses are people? I mean, they are run by people and occasionally employ people (in decent economic times), but they're entities, organizations, not humans.

Oh, you think that too? I guess I'll have to concede that debate is possible here, especially after Justice Anthony Kennedy wrote on Friday that corporations are entitled to the same definition of free speech as citizens are. His words: "By suppressing the speech of manifold corporations, both for-profit and non-profit, the government prevents their voices and viewpoints from reaching the public and advising voters on which persons or entities are hostile to their interests." Equating the "rights" of corporations to actual human citizens of the United States seems like a stretch, but Tony's not exactly a dimwit all of the time. You can take his side if it makes sense to you.

But surely you don't think certain elected officials should be bankrolled by one or two business? Surely you could envision a problem or two arising from that setup?

And surely you don't think Joe Shareholder should have to watch HIS company stuff the campaign coffers of some random candidate? Especially if he and his wife Jane S. are both virulently opposed to that candidate's agenda?

For that matter, surely you don't think taxpayer-owned GM ought to toss a $3 million check to some influential Democratic politician who can help shape policy in a way advantageous to the nationalized car company?

But surely you don't think individuals should be marginalized from the fund-raising process and made to feel powerless?

Oh. All of that is fine? OK.

But SURELY you can't be in favor of compromising national sovereignty?

Consider the Seattle Mariners. Yes, the baseball team. They're owned by Nintendo. Should the M's be allowed to pony up $2 million for a candidate who promises them a sweetheart deal of some sort? Should a bunch of Japanese businessmen, with whom I have no quarrel whatsoever, be able to practically own a lawmaker?

And that's a pretty tame example. So let's go a little farther. PDVSA is the Venezuelan oil company owned and operated by that country's government. Hugo Chavez, a name you might recognize, essentially runs that little business, which has some cash on hand from time to time... they do sell some oil here and there. How about they throw in a few million bones here or there to some guys and gals on the Senate Committee on Energy and Natural Resources. How does that sound?

OK, now I'm fine with you defending the court's decision. Especially since I've established that you hate democracy, don't mind the appearance of corruption, are against the little guy while also not respecting shareholders, and to top it off, you oppose national security. In which case, I no longer can help you.

I feel like I should rest my case or something.

But here's one more post-scriptic comment, of high importance: the decision came down 5-4. For all the flak President Obama takes from the far left flank of the population, it's worth remembering that the kind of justice he will nominate will tend to dissent with the current Roberts-led majority.

And while I wish Obama to nominate at least one more justice, that's also part of the problem. The Court is far, far, far, far too partisan. Lifetime appointments are no longer having the effect sought by the Founding Fathers. A change in how we put people on the SCOTUS is in order. But that's a different post, better executed on a day I'm not nearly so incensed.