In Troubled Times: Annoyed? Irate!
Following the 2016 election, I wrote a series called In Troubled Times. It seems appropriate to post these again now
As the days post-election melt into weeks, I observe myselfmoving from disbelief to despair to relative calm . . . and now to feeling justplain annoyed. I am tired of the news being dominated by one horribleannouncement after another, and even more tired of how much attention is paidto the continuous verbal effluvia flowing from the president-elect. I am tiredof being jerked around emotionally by a bloviating buffoon whose chief delightseems to be keeping everyone else off-balance. I’m tired of every conversationabout the news beginning with “Guess what outrageous thing president-elect/hisnewest appointee/some member of Congress just said?”
It’s one thing to be appalled and frightened by thestatements of politicians now in power. There’s a time to focus on politics anda time for other parts of my life. It’s quite another to have my thoughts anddays hijacked by irresponsible sensationalism. Not to mention counterfactual(aka “lies”) distortions. Remember the meme of the person who can’t sleepbecause somewhere on the internet, someone is wrong? When my brain gets takenover by provocative statements, that’s where I am, duped into a cycle ofresearch and refutation. It’s a gazillion times worse if I give in to a lapsein judgment and actually reply to one of those folks-who-are-wrong. That neverends well, no matter how many times I persuade myself into believing otherwise.Social media do not, by and large, promote genuine discourse, but I get suckedinto trying. Of course, the responses only get me more wound up. That’s my responsibility,because I know better. But I really would like to be able to glance at the newsor visit a social media site now and again without having to fend off the lureof the outrageous.
Why is the fruitcake(and surrogates) dominating the news? I swear, every time he twitches a finger(especially in proximity to his cellphone), it makes headlines everywhere. Onhis part, the tactic of controlling the dialog by throwing out pompouslyoutrageous lies is nothing new. That’s how he dominated the primary debates. Hegot billions of dollars worth of free air time during the general campaign bypoking one hornets’ nest after another. Now he’s doing it on an internationalscale. And the news media buy into it every time, battling the hydra that growsa hundred heads for every one they whack off with facts. We’ve gone fromsucking all the oxygen out of the room to sucking all the oxygen out of thenews sphere and now the world.
I draw the line at sucking all the oxygen out of my head.Okay, I’m not hopeful that the media will take my suggestion to just ignore anysentence that includes “Trump” and “Tweet,” nor am I a good enough nerd toreprogram my computer to do that for me. Nor do I want to shut myself away fromnews of any sort. For one thing, I know myself well enough to admit that wouldbe too anxiety-provoking. I will likely do better when I become better at notresponding to trollishness.
But right now, mostly I’m annoyed to the point of beingdownright pissed. I recognize that anger can be friend or enemy. It’senergizing, which can be exhausting if I spend too much time wound up, orfocusing if I master it. If I give in, I run the risk of descending into petty insultsand ad hominen fallacies. Or I canuse it to point the way to improvements in my own attitudes and behavior. What’sgetting to me, and why? My anger can show me the line between things bestshrugged off and those that call for action.
This, however, is how I feel today:
Artemisia Gentileschi, Judith and Holofernes
As the days post-election melt into weeks, I observe myselfmoving from disbelief to despair to relative calm . . . and now to feeling justplain annoyed. I am tired of the news being dominated by one horribleannouncement after another, and even more tired of how much attention is paidto the continuous verbal effluvia flowing from the president-elect. I am tiredof being jerked around emotionally by a bloviating buffoon whose chief delightseems to be keeping everyone else off-balance. I’m tired of every conversationabout the news beginning with “Guess what outrageous thing president-elect/hisnewest appointee/some member of Congress just said?”
It’s one thing to be appalled and frightened by thestatements of politicians now in power. There’s a time to focus on politics anda time for other parts of my life. It’s quite another to have my thoughts anddays hijacked by irresponsible sensationalism. Not to mention counterfactual(aka “lies”) distortions. Remember the meme of the person who can’t sleepbecause somewhere on the internet, someone is wrong? When my brain gets takenover by provocative statements, that’s where I am, duped into a cycle ofresearch and refutation. It’s a gazillion times worse if I give in to a lapsein judgment and actually reply to one of those folks-who-are-wrong. That neverends well, no matter how many times I persuade myself into believing otherwise.Social media do not, by and large, promote genuine discourse, but I get suckedinto trying. Of course, the responses only get me more wound up. That’s my responsibility,because I know better. But I really would like to be able to glance at the newsor visit a social media site now and again without having to fend off the lureof the outrageous.
Why is the fruitcake(and surrogates) dominating the news? I swear, every time he twitches a finger(especially in proximity to his cellphone), it makes headlines everywhere. Onhis part, the tactic of controlling the dialog by throwing out pompouslyoutrageous lies is nothing new. That’s how he dominated the primary debates. Hegot billions of dollars worth of free air time during the general campaign bypoking one hornets’ nest after another. Now he’s doing it on an internationalscale. And the news media buy into it every time, battling the hydra that growsa hundred heads for every one they whack off with facts. We’ve gone fromsucking all the oxygen out of the room to sucking all the oxygen out of thenews sphere and now the world.
I draw the line at sucking all the oxygen out of my head.Okay, I’m not hopeful that the media will take my suggestion to just ignore anysentence that includes “Trump” and “Tweet,” nor am I a good enough nerd toreprogram my computer to do that for me. Nor do I want to shut myself away fromnews of any sort. For one thing, I know myself well enough to admit that wouldbe too anxiety-provoking. I will likely do better when I become better at notresponding to trollishness.
But right now, mostly I’m annoyed to the point of beingdownright pissed. I recognize that anger can be friend or enemy. It’senergizing, which can be exhausting if I spend too much time wound up, orfocusing if I master it. If I give in, I run the risk of descending into petty insultsand ad hominen fallacies. Or I canuse it to point the way to improvements in my own attitudes and behavior. What’sgetting to me, and why? My anger can show me the line between things bestshrugged off and those that call for action.
This, however, is how I feel today:
Artemisia Gentileschi, Judith and Holofernes
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