I haven’t been here much lately, and tonight I will explain my absence. My last diary here was posted December 14, and my last comment of any kind was on January 30.
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TONIGHT’S FEATURE PRESENTATION: THE SITUATION
The situation can be broken down into three parts. No one thing is responsible for my feelings lately. It’s a combination of these factors, and more.
Personal Health
Some of you will know that I have had long-term ongoing problems with sleep, and that the problems have been getting progressively worse. There are two forces involved: insomnia that prevents me from getting to sleep in the first place, and then apnea that frequently interrupts sleep when it finally arrives. Apnea, a fairly common malady, can bring you out of REM or deep sleep so often that you get almost none. Your body brings you up to a state where you gasp for air to start breathing again, but not awake enough to realize it is happening. All you know is that in the morning when you have to start doing stuff, you feel like shit.
The prescription for apnea is often, as in my case, a CPAP machine. This consists of a mask worn over the nose (for some people it is over the nose and mouth) connected to a bedside machine that continuously pumps air at a sufficient pressure to keep the airways open. I now have one of these, and if I can ever get used to the presence of the mask, life will apparently be happy ever after. Every night, for the rest of my life. My diagnosis of severe apnea had doctors rushing to treat me as an urgent case. I was told I am a prime candidate for a stroke. Or worse.
I’m still in the first couple of weeks of trying to get used to this damn thing. The mask aggravates the insomnia, as I lay there in bed wide awake contemplating trying to sleep with this foreign object attached to my face. It is what it is; many people are in far worse situations than I am, and I just have to tough it out during the breaking in period (which I suspect could also last the rest of my life). I could have worn this contraption to the set of Mad Max: Fury Road, and fit right into the movie without further costuming required.
Needless to say, with the lack of productive sleep in recent times, I have found myself dragging my ass around during the daytime hours too tired, and too unmotivated, to get much useful activity done.
Anyway.
The Fuck is Wrong With People?
All in all, my home life is pretty good. I have come to grips with being retired, and my partner himself is only a couple of years from reaching the same status. We have good times together, and particularly enjoy planning various trips to places near and far. We have the good fortune to be able to afford to live reasonably comfortably in retirement, and we look forward to travelling with increasing frequency.
But perhaps we need to get to our travels quickly. The world is turning to shit.
I think about climate change. I think about getting older and the body parts gradually wearing down. I think about terrorists expanding their reach such that if you are in the wrong place at the wrong time … well, you know. And for all that, I’m not a worrier.
If I worry about anything, it’s about the United States of America. The America that I came to know and love at an early age is unrecognizable. America seems to be broken. Or infected. It doesn’t seem to be curable within my lifetime.
The level of bitterness, nastiness, and outright vitriol has infected your country. I use that word “your”, because I am Canadian, currently living in Canada. But, my partner and I spent a few years living in the United States, in the deep south. In what was then said to be one of the reddest counties in the country, on the outskirts of Atlanta. Don’t get me wrong. From being a youngster, I always wanted to live in the U.S., and I jumped at the chance in adulthood to do so. But I’m glad that period is behind me now, and my partner and I have returned “home”.
I wanted to leave politics out of this piece, but it seems like politics is such a big part of the infection that it can’t be ignored. And current American politics has people worked up into a frenzy. A frenzy that can’t be easily put back into whatever bottle it leaked out from. I place the blame squarely on the shoulders of the right, in particular the religious right. Their so-called leaders are using the population in a never-ending circle of lies, cheats, and racial slurs. They get away with it, so they keep doing it. And one of these days, when their followers don’t get their way on everything, something even more ugly is bound to happen.
Jeff Ross must be lamenting right now that the business of hosting a TV roast isn’t what it used to be. So-called reality has gone way past what he could accomplish by comedic poking in the ribs.
The media is in shambles. Virtually none of them do their jobs properly. MSNBC in particular has become unwatchable. Though it is arguable how much actual news has been presented on that network in recent years, now it is clear that they have abandoned any pretense of being in the news business. There is no news on MSNBC. There is only the election. Primaries and caucuses for now, the general to come. 24/7/365. Nothing else is allowed to intervene.
Melissa Harris-Perry saw this coming, too. In a nutshell, she was forced off the air for wanting to talk about something, anything, other than the election. That she burned her bridges with some ill-advised language is unfortunate. And she was far from a perfect host. (I actually preferred her many appearances as an informed guest, before she got her own show). But I get it. Trying to discuss issues of substance, or anything at all other than that fucking election, is implicitly forbidden at the network. Maybe explicitly. Look, I’m an admitted politics junkie. Isn’t that why many of us are here? But enough is goddamn enough already.
[Late update: José Díaz-Balart appears to be in the same boat as MHP. He is said to be unhappy that his name has been removed from his time slot and other MSNBC heads are filling his space. More heads are being parachuted into his home turf of Miami, while he remains shut out without apparent explanation from the third floor (executive suites) at 30 Rock.]
And the latest “thing” at MSNBC is to put one of their talking heads in a car filled with satellite equipment and show that head riding (being driven) along on a highway from somewhere to somewhere, the somewheres seemingly unimportant. Remote cameras show the smiling happy talking head riding along in the passenger seat of the car, and occasionally a view through the front window. With the satellite transmission dropping out to zero every time the car rolls under an overpass. The fuck? You want to report something, pull over, stop the car, point at the satellite, and talk. This is reporting, this smiling happy face rolling down the highway getting cut off every 30 seconds? Look at me, I’m in a car! And it’s moving! And I’m talking while it’s moving! Wheeeeeee!
The fuck? THE FUCK?
And the superlatives. Jimmy Fallon regularly lampoons superlatives on The Tonight Show every week. But the network news election operations are dead serious when they label every goddamn thing “First in the Nation, “First in the South”, “Super Tuesday”, on and on. Everything has to have an Important Label attached to it. And people eat it up. Screw it.
Bill Maher had it right recently when he said “Apology accepted” to those naysayers who had put down his declaration that the American people are stupid. Sorry folks, but the current status of Donald Trump illustrates that stupidity perfectly. Sure it’s not everybody, but it’s too many. Perhaps enough to cause serious damage. And when/if he is finally finished, all that anger that he has been taking advantage of, and whipping up, has to go … somewhere. Danger, Will Robinson!
Even Food Network isn’t what it used to be. Yeah, OK, things change, tastes change, network programming changes too. But Food Network is now a wasteland of seemingly endless marathons of Guy’s Grocery Games and Guy’s Diners or whatever the fuck that shit is called. There used to be actual cooking of actual food on Food Network. Now it’s just mindless crap with no usable content. As inedible as it is unwatchable.
(And Finally) Daily Kos
I used to enjoy coming to this site on a regular basis. I was quite happy when, a couple of years ago, I was invited to join the Top Comments editorial family.
Now, just as MSNBC is unwatchable, Daily Kos is unreadable. The bickering, the name-calling, the fighting, makes me think back to the ancient pie wars as civilized by comparison. I lurk here and there, but in a steady less-and-less progression. Although Top Comments is normally a safe place away from that, the site as a whole is hostile to what I like to spend my time doing.
Mostly, I’ve just grown weary of this site, and pretty much lost interest in coming here. Daily Kos has become a reflection of America. Or the other way around. Take your pick. The site is toxic, at a time when I have no room for toxic in my life.
And so, I will take a self-imposed break away from here. This isn’t goodbye, or heaven forbid GBCW. It’s more like see you later, though I can’t predict when later will get here.
When I read this essay back to myself, I find the need to apologize to you all for inserting this into Top Comments. But I feel it is necessary to explain my situation. Tomorrow night, someone else will post a better diary.
Thanks for listening. Enjoy what you can.
TOP COMMENTS FOR MONDAY February 29, 2016
Some comment ‘highlights’ for tonight!
Highlighted by biancardi, this comment from SottoVoce does indeed come in a 'primary' diary, but the comment seems very objective and non-partisan, and touts the value of real dialogue. Worth the read, and doesn’t take sides.
Highlighted by mogolori, this comment by Its the Supreme Court Stupid draws a connection between Justice Thomas asking his first question in 10 years on a Leap Day, in Laura Clawson's fine diary about that event.
TOP MOJO FOR SUNDAy february 28, 2016
TOP PHOTOS FOR SUNDAY february 28, 2016