Goodbye (and good riddance!) to a flawed year!

On this Winter Solstice Eve, a seasonal moment when we honor the memory of all the wonderful Siberian Huskies that have shared our lives over the past 30 years, I am quite naturally drawn to a greater reflection on the state of the society around us, here in America.

It has certainly been a terrible year, from start to finish…we all need no reminder of that fact, I’m sure…but as I think about America and the quality of life that has been irreducibly forced upon all of us in the United States, there’s no escaping, try as I might, an acute awareness of the fact that we exist within the shreds of a terribly flawed and highly polarised nation.

Still one of those self-deluded, Pollyannaish souls who praise God and give thanks for his blessings? Still think that there’s some greater, higher logic to this mess we’ve descended into? Sorry, folks. It’s time to face the raw truth that America, the formerly singularly unique and admirable land of equal opportunity for all, has irretrievably become a perverse snake-pit of twisted logic, skewed reasoning, distorted partisan ignorance and severely myopic awareness…collectively becoming a population of what one of my friends calls ‘Sheeples’, or individuals who have allowed themselves to be pressure-molded into naïve, unreflective consumers of mass-quantities (thanks, creators of the ‘Cone-heads’) by a national commercial economic machine gone stark, raving mad (and considerably helped along the way by the massively influential system of force-fed, formular ignorance that constitutes so-called ‘social media’).

During this awful year, we have (in part) been wisely advised to ‘socially isolate’ ourselves from others due to the need to curtail the spread of the SARS-CoV-2 (COVID-19) contagion. This has forced all of us, at least those of us who still retain a teeny, tiny smidgen of reflective intelligence, that is (and there don’t seem to be many who fall into that category!), to fall back upon our inner most resources to stay amused, entertained, optimistic and psychologically protected against the less obvious, but just as impactful psychological effects that withdrawing from all social contact induces (hello vaccines!).

Of course, far too many people (typically those who fall into several distinct categories such as the ‘young’ and those who are victims of extreme right-or-left-of-center social-political propaganda) have chosen to disregard all of the basic pandemic preventive measures (e.g. social-distancing, handwashing and mask-wearing around others) by massing together to party, congregate at churches, participate in moronic social ‘protests’ (more like excellent demonstrations of misguided collective ignorance in motion), and/or travel substantial distances to be with family during the holidays (against ALL admonishments not to!). All of these actions have so exacerbated the spread of the COVID contagion that we are now suffering the absolute worst wave of infections seen yet during the pandemic! Americans are now dying like flies, thanks to casual disregard for the most basic common sense health & hygiene rules.

As one witnesses all these examples of mass-applied, collective ignorance, one cannot help but wonder what sort of sh*t-for-brains all these innocent naïfs have packed away, up there in their cranial cavities?! Certainly not rational gray matter! Clearly, the supreme irony of the fact that these innocent souls are aiding and abetting the processes of natural selection (by helping cull the herd) in violating the most basic safety recommendations during the pandemic is totally lost on them. For my part, I say “Great! Knock yourselves out, folks! Get viralised and die out so that humanity can benefit from NOT having people with your genes around to contaminate the human gene pool!” But that would be cruel and inhumane, wouldn’t it?…boo-hoo, sniff, sniff!

At any rate, my associates, who benefit from having been professionally involved with chemical and biological medical defense institutions in previous decades, have all practiced the strictest sort of social isolation feasible and don’t think that hasn’t been difficult or demanding! For most of us, that translates to conscientiously staying at home when not taking care of absolutely essential ‘outside’ affairs (such as shopping for food, walking the dogs, etc.). This in turn has forced many of us to watch substantially more television, and here I refer to standard, commercial broadcast media, since my own family refuses to subscribe to cable/satellite services and you can only watch so much internet streaming before you start to go stark, raving ape-sh*t.

As an inherently analytical person who refuses to watch anything mindlessly (with brain firmly parked in neutral gear), watching current commercial media broadcasting fare has provided a profound lesson in understanding the quality (or better yet, the ‘absence of quality’) that characterises American life these days. Since I’ve traveled widely throughout the world over the past 70 years, I am quite familiar with comparable television programming found in other nations (notably in German/Austria/France, China and the Middle East) and trust me, folks, compared to those national media services, American television media is best likened to a festering septic, cesspool of fragrantly pungent, unadulterated CRAP.

Typical American commercial media broadcasting is fueled completely and utterly by commercial advertising, of course, and the quality of those incessant advertisements that constantly interrupt programs is so abysmal that you soon begin to comprehend exactly how little basic regard commercial advertisers have for the intelligence of the average American their ‘messages’ are aimed at!

Although television promised to provide a whole new age of awareness and enlightenment for viewers when it sprang nascently into existence back in the 50s and 60s, it rather quickly became so utterly ‘dumbed-down’ that watching more than a half hour of what passes for contemporary television programming raises the nausea index to a critically toxic level. And why, exactly, is this so? Because the ‘average television viewer’ has all the cranial capacity of a sea urchin. Why try to challenge the intellect when the viewers are all knee-jerk, unreflective consumers of needless, stupid material stuff and have been socialized to consume unquestionably?

Let’s take, for example, the companies that advertise most on most national commercial broadcast media commercials. You can quickly separate the advertisers (at least on the West Coast of the US) into the following categories (in order of their frequency and relentlessness): 1) the pharmaceuticals (or ‘phamas’), 2) the legal establishment (read: lawyers in both private and ‘class action’ tort practice), and 3) automobile makers and salespeople. There certainly are other ‘local’ small fry businessmen who use expensive television to reach potential customers, but they seem equally as banal and inane as the ‘big guys’.

From this analytical breakdown, you may safely conclude a number of things: 1) that commercial advertising thinks that their audience of viewers largely consists of elderly geezers and those with sick, old people with severe personal health issues, such as cardiac disease and diabetes (and it probably does), 2) that consumers absolutely need to buy a huge, hyper-steroid fueled monster of an automobile at least every other year (amusingly, most cannot afford to buy them outright now due to their outrageous cost, but must settle for a lease arrangement) and 3) that the average TV viewer has slightly less than 20 spare brain cells in their cerebrum with which to think intelligently and make wise life decisions.

Probably correct on all accounts, of course, since most younger individuals don’t watch television, by and large; they get most of their entertainment and news from online streaming sources and only those people who are older (and relics of a past when television was a bit more ‘creative’ than it is now) still expect a basic modicum of intelligence in media programming.

As for the news media, we all know that in today’s American mass market, mass-media corporations (and make no mistake, they are all in it strictly for profit and have little, if any, regard for the intelligence of their viewers…unless a mistep threatens to set off alarm bells in their legal departments, of course) have absolutely skewed and highly partisan (read: ‘left-of-center’) socio-political philosophies. Since all the smaller media stations (both radio & television) are now also wholly owned subsidiaries of the 4 or 5 major national commercial networks, so-called ‘local news’ is merely a smaller, more condensed repetition of the national evening news content (with a few local murders and homicides tossed into the mix to keep people comfortably tsk-tsking)…and woe be it to the station that deviates from this formular mandate!

I really have to laugh when I watch the national (& affiliated local) news broadcasts, since the latest gimmick employed to ‘protect individual sensitivities' is ‘blurring’ of faces. This PC-inspired tactic has reached such ludicrous extremes that all visual media reporting now typically ‘blurs’ the faces of children and adults that the camera has caught peripherally in its frame. This started as a ‘politically correct’ means of ostensibly protecting infants and children from unwelcome public exposure (read: privacy concerns), but it has since extended to patients in hospital settings, law enforcement officials and now even views of people being injected with a needle (Gracious! The sight of a mean old nasty needle being injected into someone’s arm might cause some tender soul to become offended! Heavens to murgatroid!) As I pause here to reflect a bit on this, the extremely apt term ‘snowflake’ (a dog-whistle word the extreme right is particularly fond of) springs into my mind!

Each day I see this nuance of skillfully applied political correctness become more and more pronounced (especially on news media broadcasts) and it absolutely amazes me to think that media feel that people need to be somehow ‘protected’ from the sight of anything that might offend the most delicate among them in the slightest (“Caution: this program contains images that some may find disturbing!”) Where does this laughably ridiculous trend end?! Even our local sci-fi channel now blurs androgenous figures that are part of the opening program credits on the 80s-era program, ‘The Outer Limits’. Fer Crissakes, folks! We’re not ALL Presbyterian fundamentalists out here!

Of course, all this is merely a reflection of the presently popular, politically correct ‘PC identity socialism’ that is taking over our lives, thanks largely to Millennials and those who are still so young and inexperienced (in the REAL ways of the world and ignorant of even very recent history), who have been given far too much credit for being able to make wise and broadly sagacious adult discernments about life and how it should be conducted.

The major, underlying motivation for the promotion of such massive social ignorance and demographic delusion comes, naturally from our rampant social media milieu…a medium wherein too many young, functionally ignorant and wildly misinformed young people turn to each other for peer-counseling and basic guidance on what life is all about (and how to grow-up to be wise, mature and self-actualised individuals), rather than to older, wiser and more ‘worldly’ sources of counsel and wisdom. [Yeah, I know that far too many ‘older & wiser’ people have failed utterly in that responsibility, but is that sufficient reason to rely instead solely on the half-baked, callow awareness of one’s youthful peers? I certainly hope not!]

Thinking back on my days spent living in Europe (remember Europe?...that awful, evil formative crucible of ‘colonial white people culture’ that ‘people of color’ and their supporters so greatly enjoy dissing), I recall that German television advertisements typically reflected a strong sense of intelligent wit and thoughtful creativity in their making; ditto for French ‘ads’. By contrast in America, we have to settle for watching puerile, ‘cutesy’ ads featuring little pink cartoon bears who coyly skirt the issue of using ‘delightfully soft’ Charmin Toilet Tissue to wipe the sh*t off their darling little furry butts…or other totally moronic, insultingly simplistic cartoon scenarios advertising a product…or that favorite of all advertisement schticks, the ‘wise neighborhood woman’ (note: Paid actor, compensated for his/her testimony) who sets her brain-dead, cuckolded fall-guy of a hubby straight on an issue (such as what cellular service he should subscribe to, etc.).

Another wonderfully funny symptom of all this current commercial PC mania is the stampede by advertisers to feature black actors in their ads. Whereas there used to be a rare black person in your typical commercial, now almost every ad features blacks prominently…so blatantly, in fact, that you could get the notion from watching them that the majority of the American population consists of blacks (or black men ‘relating’ to white women, or now even LGTBQ ‘couples’). You could literally be forgiven for thinking you were watching South African television! You’d have to either be totally brain-dead or far to the left of the political center to fail to notice this VERY obvious commercial advertising practice of preferential ethnicity promotion (but then, so many ARE brain-dead, I fear).

As I recently remarked, commercial advertisers are now so eager to squeeze ‘obligatory’ blacks into the world of commercial advertising that I’d bet they are all continually wetting their pants in their haste to do so. In fact, most commercial advertisers now very likely walk around in permanently damp shorts as a result, LoL!

I should take heart in this trend to some extent, I suppose, since now instead of all the idiot white ‘hubbies’ depicted in ads being squared away by their wives, a far greater number of them are now being portrayed as ‘people of color’, judging from the ads themselves. Equal (commercial exploitation) opportunity! Yes! Now we’re seeing blacks and ‘people of color’ also being depicted as patsies and cuckolds, instead of just white males. Surely that must be progress of a sort, eh?

With regard to what passes for commercial media ‘entertainment’ in America these days on the major ‘free’ broadcasting channels, you have little choice of what to watch if you don’t enjoy crime serials, movies featuring violent criminals (or law enforcement serials), sappy ‘reality TV court dramas’ (such as ‘Judge Judy’ or now even ‘Judge Jerry…Springer), or…thankfully…a few channels that show sci-fi and/or western serials and movies (even with all the gratuitous censoring of completely innocuous female images that goes on there).

I personally find some relief in the old western ‘horse operas’, since back in those frontier days the typical portrayal of the ‘Old West’ that these old movies perpetuate allowed problems to be solved simply and directly. The fact that that particular stereotype is as flawed and false as any other (personal gunfights were actually an extreme rarity in the ‘Old West’ and hardly anyone regularly toted a sidearm back then, as one might think from watching the standard ‘cowboys-'n-injins’ shoot-em-up film) is somehow lost in the shuffle. Rifles were also seldom carried on horses and the standard, stock ‘gunslinger holster rig’ was never a fast-draw type (a modern style that is a total Hollywood fabrication!). And yes, the plots are hoaky and the stereotypes plentiful, but still...There’s something vastly relaxing about watching such simple portrayals of clear-cut good-guys and bad-guys mixing it up, uncomplicated morals (however false) and all, since it all happened in the past, whether there’s a vestige of reality implicit or not.

In concurrent contrast, the preponderance of crime and law enforcement reality TV shows and serialized dramas on commercial television these days all concern themselves with grossly stereotyped, heroic policemen and equally stereotyped bad guys (usually always involved in some sort of drug-dealing…the formular setting rarely changes much). Although most adults all too well understand the line between ‘permissible reality’ and ‘utterly impermissible fantasy’, most younger people do not and eat this sort of cinematic garbage up!

Of course, the most critical thing that all of us MUST realise and I suspect never really do (at least with regard to younger people) is that all this stuff is pure and absolutely fantastic Hollywood bullsh*t of the highest order. Naturally, in order to understand this, one must fully understand on a conscious level that such scenarios are just that…total BS…but that crucial distinction appears utterly to fail to register on the dim awarenesses of far too many younger individuals who see it and subconsciously register the message that gun violence, hard-core drug-abuse and gang activity are all perfectly normal and totally kool, Dude!

It goes without saying that Hollywood carefully eschews any responsibility for fostering or encouraging any juvenile emulation of TV violence, since such tactics sell stuff and make millions of dollars for the film industry. The same rule applies to auto manufacturers, who instead of touting the practical, utilitarian features of their products, prefer to show them slashing wildly and recklessly down roads and through quiet, sylvan settings (I am reminded of that ubiquitously brilliant and delightfiully comedic character of Steve Urkel, with his “Did I do THAT?!” routine). And thus, Americans TV viewers must settle for a non-stop image of itself portrayed as consisting of only two distinct classes of people: gun-grabbing, quick-drawing, violence-promoting, ultra-cool thugs, and super-stereotyped, heroic law enforcement officers. Ugh.

In summary, then, America truly seems to be going rapidly to Hell in a hand-basket…and from all appearances, that basket is on fire! Toss into the mix the clear ‘feminisation’ socialization process (ever sit back and note how all communications media now seems to have been taken over by female news anchors, journalists and what have you…not to mention social media drivers?) that we are all being subjected to via broadcast media, printed literature, journalism and what have you, and you have a most repugnant situation that I certainly hope others find not just objectionable, but grounds to seriously consider relocating to ‘higher ground’ where such bizarre things do not exist or are actively resisted.

I’ll end this on a further note of appalling discouragement (since I'm a card-carrying Arthur Schopenhauer-grade pessimist): the fact that not only has the UK ‘discovered’ a totally new and even more highly spreadable strain of COVID-19, WHO and CDC seem to think that due to so-called ‘symptomless’ carriers, it is now actively present in the United States, as well!

Isn’t that just ducky? From my vantage and prior experience with the mechanics of pandemic epidemiology, it would appear that the sh*t will still continue to hit the fan at least until the Fall of next year (2021); so, in all likelihood, we are in for a further 10 months of similar social deprivation and constraint. Basically, a further rehash of all that has transpired since January of 2020! As bad as that state of affairs may portend, we really have no choice but to comply!

Thanks a heap, People’s Republic of China! It goes without saying that wifie (who’s Chinese) and I WON’T be celebrating Lunar New Year with friends this coming February 12th! [新年快乐!? I don’t think so!]

Be well, stay safe and fer Crissakes, let’s all hope that more people start using that large frontal-lobe that God supposedly blessed us humming beans with as the New Year of 2021 works up enough courage to open the door and give Old Man 2020 a big kick in the pants on his way out!

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POSTSCRIPT: I'll leave you with this sober added (bad) news...the progressive left has now officially embraced RACISM (yes, that big, bad 'R' word!) as an integral part of its approach to solving the problem of 'inequality' in our society. Find it hard to believe that those, who have been making the BIGGEST hullabaloo about how 'racist' those right-of-center people supposedly are, have now co-opted that term and made it official POLICY? Read this rather unsettling commentary by David Marcus ('The American Left has now fully embraced racism'), New York correspondent for The Federalist. 

Oh joy!...just as we enter the era of a new presidential administration that appears bound & determined to continue to reinterpret reality as never before (or intended)...