First, we all face up to depression without exception.
The only difference is in how we deal with it, and there are only three ways.
The most popular way is through elevated levels of cynicism, skepticism, and disdain. That approach gives us a temporary sense of superiority and allows us to feel a little better about ourselves.
For some, drugs are effective as long as they remember to keep taking them.
The third way to deal with depression is to put in your earbuds, dial up a happy tune, and dance the night away.
I prefer the latter.
The brain and its extension, the media is a broken information system. Four billion years of brutal evolution have produced depression and all those secondary phenotypes such as love, war, climate change, The Simpsons, cool cars (which Ralph Nader called psychosexualmobiles, gotta love the guy!), and all things artificial, including me and I am here to help fix it.
Out with the bad and in with the good, starting with the media: just what were those bigwigs thinking in 1791? Anarchy! Responsible public service in partnership with Artificial Intelligence must reform the information environment. No more offensive information.
Soon brain implants will be available and improved to replace media devices. Also, implants will regulate and control internal physiology, including feelings, and a calm new world. Our public health system, along with AI, will use gene editing technology to achieve social, economic, environmental, ethnic, and many more justices imagined.
The dominant news media has long depressed the loyal opposition (those who wish to conserve liberty, personal responsibility, strong national defense, and attempt to restore limited government). Here are a few of too many lowlights:
In 1964 Barry Goldwater and his supporters were slandered as racists and war mongers. The 1994 Republican sweep of both houses of Congress was smeared as angry white males. Slowing the growth of social subsidies means starving children and poisoning the air. Opposition to President Obama’s government expansion policies was maligned as racist. Democrat presidential nominee Hilary Clinton in 2016 libeled, and the current aligned media repeat, that state governments properly maintaining voter rolls means denying people of color the right to vote. President Biden defiled Georgia’s election improvements as Jim Crow 2.0. Racial socialism has metastasized into massive white supremacy and systemic racism believed by many as witchcraft was centuries ago. Losing is depressing.
Tens of millions of citizens respond by divorcing the legacy media and choosing other, perhaps less depressing, information service providers. The First Amendment is a well-named social therapy. Mr. Stossel has some thoughtful comments, as always.
https://www.johnstossel.com/skewed-news-media-bias/
Richard: Thanks for the thought-provoking analysis. Allow me to agree with most of your words and push back on a few.
In para one you have championed the cause of the “loyal opposition (those who wish to conserve liberty, personal responsibility, strong national defense, and attempt to restore limited government).” No one in their right mind could possibly disagree with that. In fact, I don’t think anyone does! You seem to cast the news media as somehow the agents of disagreement and obstruction. Granted the news media (both sides of the aisle) does go immediately and hyperbolically with any and all prevailing winds, but I do not see most media outlets as anti-liberty or personal responsibility. Do you?
Your main para is a very interesting interpretation of recent history, so thanks again. And here again, I tend to agree with you up to a point. The political rhetoric (on both sides of the aisle) is always inflammatory and uncalled for. I will, however, push back again, slightly. You seem, in my opinion, to take some of this crap a bit too seriously. The uncalled for back and forth between Democrats and Republicans is my main theme in all these writings, but I see no reason to take the rhetoric from one side personally without also condemning the other.
For instance, in your third para, you praise the First Amendment rights of your brand of Bloviation, while seeming to dismiss the other.
Mr. Stossel does indeed have many thoughtful comments, but I do not always agree with him.
In my opinion, the so-called “dominant news media” is the straw man. Somewhere in the thoughts and opinions taken judiciously from both sides lies the best course of action.
Capitalist exploitation causes depression.
And Capitalist Success is the cure!