A Brief Note on the Current News

We've seen essentially no effects here from the recent events in London. We are subjected to several hours of Fox News each day, though, especially in the chow hall, so I know what's been going on, and I know that, back home, all it has produced is the impotent ramblings of the shouting class (remember when political pundits and talk show hosts used to be called "the chattering class?" What an inappropriate term for what they do now).

I don't like listening to these people shout about whether one political party or the other is better at defeating terrorism. I'll be honest with you, though. I don't think the people in power are doing a great job at much of anything. But I also think the people out of power tend to say stupid things most of the time. What are we to do?

I don't know about you, but as for me, I only pay attention to the television in the gym, where they have the sports channel on instead of the news channel. People shouting on cable news aren't solving anything, and are actually making matters worse. There's no way to get real information out of that format and I'm sick of it. Regardless of what happens, in Lebanon, in Israel, in Iraq, in London, or in the sky, these people are going to sit in an air-conditioned studio with their pancake makeup and fancy clothes and scream at each other like toddlers on a playground. They accomplish nothing. They solve nothing. They help nothing. They serve only to galvanize the support of people without time to think around positions that are ill-formed and offer no real hope of results. So my advice to you is to turn the damn television off and ignore it. Or, watch sports. It's not burying your head in the sand. It's censoring the one portion of American media that actually needs to be censored.

We will survive this. And we'll do it better if we can convince these assholes to just shut up and get back to work.