New Years Resolution: Become less of a political junkie
A junkie is defined on Merriam Websters as a narcotics peddler or addict in the most absolute sense of the world. It’s so easy to consume hours and hours of the latest political news and intrigue by just turning on the radio or following virtually any news channel or politician’s social media feeds. But like a heroin addict’s untimely death, I think it has become a bit overwhelming and bad for my health and well-being.
While I’m not going to stop listening to the news on the radio or visiting NPR’s website, I am no longer going to consume news or politics on social media. I am not going to follow blow by blow every political debate or every controversy. Instead I’m going to spend more time trying to understand the world around me – nature, physics, electricity, farming and conservation.
No longer am I going to consume endless hours of media trash – that talks about the politics of climate change or mask wearing but instead try to understand how the changing climate or COVID is effecting me personally. I don’t want to be – and I’m not going to be – an agent of change so I’d rather focus more on myself and understanding the real world and not the politics around me.
Right now, Newsmax TV is trying to outfox Fox News.
No media outlet has done more to bolster President Trump over the past four years than Fox News. Yet the acknowledgment by Fox's reporters, anchors and even many opinion hosts that Democratic nominee Joe Biden won the election has provided an opening for the network's much smaller rival to peel off Trump's fans.
Veteran journalist Cokie Roberts, who joined an upstart NPR in 1978 and left an indelible imprint on the growing network with her coverage of Washington politics before later going to ABC News, has died. She was 75. Roberts died Tuesday due to complications from breast cancer, according to a family statement.
I don’t have a television at home nor do I have internet beyond what I can do on my phone. It’s just too distracting and obnoxious and I like the walk to the library.
I find myself even listening to the radio less and less as all it is about these days is pushing gun control and banning plastic straws. Hardly relevant to my life.
Maybe I’m just hiding from the pain of modern living by watching videos about farming and off-grid living but I don’t know, so much of modern life is based on what the politicians think will score them points than reality.
Maybe I’m a luddite, but I actually enjoy technology that makes life easier and better rather than the horrors that contemporary media and news brings into one’s home.
I often get tired of listening to the news and the liberal narrative that we must all be afraid of gun violence and we need more arbitrary restrictions on gun rights. I don’t need to hear such things so I just don’t listen to the news anymore. I’m glad I couldn’t hear the news while I was up in the wilderness due to valley blocking the radio signal.
Last week, I suggested we tax advertising on local news, to pay for the law enforcement and crime costs that the local news media imposes on society, via their glorification of crime and criminal justice system. Stamp taxes aren’t a popular thing, ever since the British imposed it on the American colonies, but I think it may be a necessary thing to reduce crime and rein in the abuse of the first amendment by commercial media.
It’s well documented that the news media should not cover suicide, unless it’s a particularly suicide of a public figure or happens in a public place that impacts a large number of people — like somebody blowing off their head in a community gathering. But even there the news media treads carefully. But I have to wonder if those guidelines mostly exist, because advertisers don’t get the same value out of suicide coverage that they get out of crime. Suicide isn’t particularly scary to people, as only the suicidal individual dies. Without fear, there isn’t the profits.
