Ken LaCorte sends e-mails about his articles to my inbox. He is a former Fox News big shot and he has a lot of insightful stuff. But in the article linked below he considers whether there is more harm than good in all the outrage that he (and I) traffic in:
https://kenlacorte.substack.com/p/too-many-trees-not-enough-forest
“We’re inundated with stories and social media posts algorithmically chosen because they provoke reactions from people. Computers are quite literally targeting us not with the most intelligent news of the day, but those designed to evoke an emotional response to encourage likes and sharing.
Every morning I do my best to think up something of value for you. While I’m confident that I’m providing you with solid and, hopefully, insightful thoughts, I sometimes wonder: am I part of the problem? Does focusing on the daily political drama and unsettling politics-related behavior help us stay diligent? Or depressed?”
He’s right that at a certain point we’re not making our lives better when we spend all our time reading about this crap. I guess we each have to decide what that balance is.
But stop by here once in a while anyway, for the witty banter and gnomic wisdom.
The further away the reporting, the more bullshine in the story. This was in West Germany. I was there between 1978-81 on that tour with the Army. When our tanks went out on exercises of any size, at least 25% had to be fully combat loaded in case the Warsaw Pact and the Rooskies decided to make a surprise attack, hoping to catch us with empty guns. The 25% could hold the line/ delay the attack while we uploaded the rest. This was a large scale exercise and the tanks were loading up on trains to be taken to the… Read more »
Perhaps it’s partially our own fault that we ever believed these people were honestly relaying the facts. It’ll be interesting to see if the recent experience (COVID, Russia-gate, Hunter’s laptop, etc.) of just how dishonest the media is will change our news viewing habits to the extent that better choices become dominant.