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I know, I know, I know: I’ve left you hanging on the edge of your train seat, as it were, waiting for the next installment of Bess and Lane’s Fabulous Vacation. And I swear to you that I’ll have it finished up in the next day or so, as I have been working on ways to make sure I have time and more importantly, energy, to write regularly.
I was going to save what I’m about to say for when I was finished with the vacation business, but it’s one of those things that, once I had the original thought, is pestering my brain so I can’t do anything else until I say this. So here goes.
My ex-husband used to laugh at me because I had a science fiction reference for every possible situation. I can’t recall every reference I ever threw at him, but he’s right: after a lifetime of avidly consuming science fiction in all its forms, I have trouble looking at anything without relating it to some crazy story I’ve read in the last forty years. Just this last week, I drew a direct line between iPhones and Siri all the way back to a book called Age of the Pussyfoot. (Laugh all you want: read the story and tell me that Pohl didn’t predict ’em.)
I was folding laundry today and reflecting on an article I read on Slate today. You can read it here. I liked it because a) I had noticed the same things the author had and b) it used one of my favorite words: schadenfreude. While I was folding all the tighty whiteys I considered linking to it on Facebook, and was rapidly arguing myself into a state of ‘meh.’ I could predict with stunning accuracy how the conversation, if any, would play out, and I’m just so tired of it. From everyone, liberals and conservatives alike. The link-storm of atrocities from both sides would emerge, links to everyone’s favorite news sources like Fox, and National Review, and Daily Kos, and The Nation, and Rush Limbaugh, and Ann Coulter and Bill Maher….
The mere thought of it made me tired. Made me nauseous. Worst of all, it made me bored, because like hamsters on a wheel, we repeatedly cover the same ground. It’s the ‘folding laundry’ of the conversational landscape: we do it over and over, with no end in sight.
And then, right in the middle of the metaphorical Underoos, I was hit with another science fiction reference: Day of the Dove, a really, really bad Star Trek episode. (To anyone tempted to ask if there were any good Star Trek episodes, please note that, while I don’t de-friend much over politics, I can and will de-friend over insulting Star Trek. I have standards.)
If you’re link-phobic, or just tired of clicking, please know that Day of the Dove crammed Star Fleet officers and Klingons, who at the time were mortal enemies, together on the Enterprise and they couldn’t quit fighting. Even when they wanted to. Eventually they realized that there was another entity on board that was getting them all angried up and inciting them to riot and mayhem with each other, because the entity fed off the anger.
Sound familiar? It should.
Conservative and liberal media WANT us to be polarized. They WANT us to be all angried up and fighting and linking to their websites. If we didn’t, they wouldn’t make any money. Heck, half of their content wouldn’t even exist if we weren’t tuning in to get our pots stirred. They feed off our anger. They want us pissed off. All of them, all of us, all the time.
I wouldn’t even be surprised if they all get together to plot out the conflict, just like pro wrestling.
I don’t think there’s a chance that any of us are going to unsubscribe from our news sources. For one thing, depending on whom you ask, every single news agency is biasedbiasedBIASED, so there’s no neutral party out there to read or listen to.
But as you read or listen, I do urge you to remember that no matter what the political stripe, every broadcast or publication you engage with WANTS YOU TO BE PISSED OFF. They’re manipulating you, to one degree or another, in order to make money.
And while there’s nothing wrong with wanting to make money (I am, after all, a capitalist), there’s something wrong with being unwittingly manipulated.
Don’t let it happen to you.
© E. Stocking Evans 2012
Mom, Interrupted 
Wow. Good point. I wish there weren’t so many people buying into the hype. You’re right. It’s just infotainment.
Day of the Dove was a GREAT episode! Consider if you will all the action; and given the low budget late 60s production standards with barbaric special effects, this bottle episode was shear genius! Lots of live action, stunt men bouncing off each other, and no phasers!
Fine I get the part where you’re tired of the shear bloody-minded ness of it all; but maybe that’s what we need. Maybe that’s who we are. Look what happens when we all just try to get along, we end up with compromise. We end up with the U.N. an institution so mismanaged and corrupt that we give human rights to such stalwarts as Cuba and Libya. Sometimes you just have to stand up for something even if it means getting plastered in the process.
My stripes aren’t changing; and neither are they on the other side. Compromise has repeatedly been demonstrated to mean surrender and surrender means we loose opportunity and liberty. Opportunity means productivity, jobs, and real wealth. Liberty means the right to live your life your way: to be who you are; not what others would make of you. It should be a struggle. It should mean enough to us that we’ll fight for it.
There are a few fictional references you might consider by the likes of George Orwell, Issac Asimov, and Ayn Rand. There are even a few Star Trek references if you like: Return of the Archons, The Apple, Space Seed, and many others I can’t remember the names of.
Life is messy and societies are living things: they grow, they thrive, they fester, they die. However, we do agree there comes a time when you have to throw down your sword, bear you chest to your enemy and dare him to either continue the madness or laugh at the absurdity of an episode that had run its 45 minutes.
You realize, of course, that I am not saying anyone needs to be getting along here. I’m just saying that the pundits don’t WANT us to get along, and that we should be aware of that.
Either they don’t want us to get along; or realizing we never will (since we never have), they’ve figured out a way to capitalize on it.