Old military saying, meaning generally that things are the same now as ever was.
Today's headlines are old news. Yawn. 20 plus killed in shooting in Texas, an open carry state that prides it'self on being armed against things like this. 5 year old shot, pregnant women shot, on and on. Old news, probably not to many steps until the orange in chief proclaims them as 'fake news', when it doesn't fit his agenda.
My two readers, old newspaper man, should advise me if this kind of thing is going to be 'below the fold' in a year or so. 58 in Las Vegas, 26 in Texas, and more, many more, to come. And we still hear the same old lines.
It's a problem of mental health, mental disease our 'president' proclaims from abroad. Ok, let's assume that's true.
Why then did the 'president' and current gop cut from the budget vast amounts for the treatment of mental disease? Is there a logic there?
It's old fucking news, and it'll happen again, and we'll all start to accept it. And gun sales will go up, each time one of these incidents happen the gun used becomes the most popular gun sold, and dealers run out of the model. Isn't this a bit disturbing? "Oh look, Johnny! Let's go get a couple of those, must be good guns!" "Ok, dad, great!"
I wonder what's the point anymore. The democratic party is in shambles. In any other decade we'd have a democratic house, senate and presidency. Instead, it's a circular firing squad, to quote NPR describing the demo leadership.
We're fucked, ladies and gentleman. I doubt I'll see the 2020 election, and I'm actually happy about that.
307 mass shootings so far in 2017. 1/day. How does anybody get out of bed? Our Cassian eyes to the north of you are bugging out of our heads.
ReplyDeleteThere's no end to the carnage or the gun sales or the homegrown terrorists who are inevitably wife and child abusers.
XO
WWW
Close your borders, WWW. Start requiring visas from people from the US. Scrutinize them carefully. Ask about voting patterns. Pretend you are the US (gag) and the US is a middle east country.
DeleteHm. On the risk you consider it too long, here's what a countryman of yours wrote a couple of moons ago:
ReplyDeleteHardly a man takes a half-hour's nap after dinner, but when he wakes he holds up his head and asks, 'What's the news?' as if the rest of mankind had stood his sentinels. Some give directions to be waked every half-hour, doubtless for no other purpose; and then to pay for it, they tell what they have dreamed. After a night's sleep the news is as indispensable as the breakfast. 'Pray, tell me anything new that has happened to a man anywhere on this globe' - and he reads it over his coffee and rolls, that a man has had his eyes gouged out this morning on the Wachito River; never dreaming the while that he lives in the dark unfathomed mammoth cave of this world, and has but the rudiment of an eye himself.
And I am sure that I never read any memorable news in a newspaper. If we read of one man robbed, or murdered, or killed by accident, or one house burned, or one vessel wrecked, or one steam-boat blown up, or one cow ran over the Western Railroad, or one mad dog killed, or one lot of grasshoppers in the winter - we never need read of another. One is enough. If you are acquainted with the principle, what do you care for a myriad instances and applications. To a philosopher all news, as it is called, is gossip, and they who edit and read it are old women over their tea. Yet not a few are greedy after this gossip. There was such a rush, as I hear, the other day at one of the offices to learn the foreign news by the last arrival, that several large squares of plate glass belonging to the establishment were broken by the pressure - news which I seriously think a ready wit might write a twelvemonth or twelve years beforehand with sufficient accuracy.
Henry David Thoreau (July 12th, 1817 – May 6th, 1862)
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As for your last sentence: I do not know why you wrote it; my good thoughts are with you, anyway. And not only because I'd like to know what you are going to tell in 2021...
I'm not sure old Henry had in mind the mass shootings of the country he wrote about in the little pond of Walden. He didn't envision men with machine guns blasting away at crowds and churches. Just as the writers of the constitution and amendments didn't visualize guns that could fire 10 rounds a second, via 'bump stocks'.
DeleteI don't see the quote as apt, sir. It's relevant to our world and situation.
The last sentence has to do with my health, and is of no concern of yours.
Ah, by no means I intended to annoy you. And it would take too long to explain how this very quote influenced my journalistic work.
DeleteYou are, of course, right. Who could have imagined such an evolution of mankind, 150 years ago.
Interesting you are letting me know your health is no concern of mine. Why did you write that sentence then?
Ah,apparently my English is not good enough.
Again, I did/do not want to annoy you.
Uff! To cut it short: Probably you're right, seeing the quote as unept.
The peace of the night.
You interest me strangely. You're english is no doubt better than my version of your native tongue. What do you do, work wise? Are you of some interest to someone like me, old, less than wise, or is this some kind of bot? (learned that from the kids).
DeleteI wrote the sentence for my own reasons and the few out there who know me, I know you are not one of them. That's fine.
Uff. Not sure you realised that now and then I am dropping by via Susan (@ phantsythat), and despite being very lazy when it comes to commenting sometimes do leave a com(pli)ment.
DeleteAs for your questions:
I am journalist/author.
I am not a bot, and, still, I do not know whether comments of mine are 'of interest to someone like you'.
Your posts are of interest for me, though. Not necessarily I do have always to agree. That's not the point. But I do (almost) always enjoy visiting your site.
Anyway, time to fall into the feathers and put my head on my pillow. The peace of the night.
Hi Mike, It all sucks. Don't give up.
ReplyDeleteShip sailed, chicken. How you doin'?
DeleteIt is the new normal. But, moron (according to Tillerson) Trump says it isn't about guns. It's about mental illness. He ought to know, being a mental case himself.
ReplyDeleteHe doesn't change a word but the delivery is brilliant. Sassy has been instumental in helping us deal with the whole thing.
ReplyDeleteThe news should revile us. There is much that should revile us, but it does not because it (information) has lost the value of its currency. We are a culture trapped in the artifice of pretense and consumerism. We've traded real value for manipulated emotionalism. Way too many people prefer to be entertained than informed. We elected an idiot who is a reality television star and that is only midpoint of the spiral. I'm working on a post now that jumps into the consequence of a social media world. Or at least looking for some significance in it.
ReplyDeleteHang in there. We old goats may still have value.
I shake my head at the state of things.
ReplyDelete