Act 3 Begins...

This was back in August, 2024.
It's time I heed these words.

I wrote today's post around 11 am today, after my weekly grocery run, and wrapped it by 1 pm, just in time for lunch. Since then, I read a hundred pages of a book, drew a bunch of sketches, watched YouTube videos about biblical scholarship, smoked a pork shoulder, and enjoyed forty minutes of direct sun. If, before bed, I manage to spend at least thirty minutes doing one other thing on my daily goals' to-do list, then I will feel profoundly productive.

And that possibility alone has inspired me to set another goal: for the next six days, by the time I go to bed, I will post something on my blog. It may be a bunch of links with explanations, a quick book review (since the new year, I have read several works, one of them actual fiction), perhaps an observation with reflections, or just some old-fashioned middle-aged complaining. If I follow through, then I will have two-hundred-and-fifty blog posts. Whatever it is, it will be something more than what I have been doing. 

So, check back often. 

I am seven posts away from two-hundred-and-fifty. When I started this blog, I could have reached this milestone in about half a month--at the time, I was posting three times a week. Now, I would be lucky if it took me two months. We live in an age of hyperbole. Either everything is great, awesome, the best ever, thanks to those currently in power. Or, it is all going to shit, and the only thing to do is revolt, or surrender. Details and data be damned. Under both mindsets, the enemy is just around the corner, with empty labels that sound scary.

For someone like me who likes to know how things work, and who understands that reality is complex, and defies six-word memes and ten-second TikTok videos, hyperbole is a barrier to valid information, and effective, viable solutions. It has always existed. However, the internet, especially social media, has incentivized it to the exclusion of facts and critical thinking, and amplified it across the globe. In fact, Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, TikTok, and all the others, have waged a war against careful, considerate, and deliberate thought. There is too much money in it.

 

Currently, my country is run by a President and political party who has fully embraced hyperbole over facts as a weapon. They have unleashed a shock and awe campaign. It's goal is to keep their supporters distracted with fears of an enemy within, on the one hand, and empty slogans of success and achievement, without any data to support it, on the other. As for the opposition, this barrage of outrageous words and actions is meant to silence the most vocal, suppress investigation and dissent, and wear down resistance.

Fortunately, shock and awe never has the lasting effects its perpetrators intend. So much energy and resources are spent on the initial waves. People do not change overnight. Hyperbole, being empty, cannot provide solutions. Eventually, President Trump and the Republicans will face an electorate that does not accept their propaganda. Unfortunately, it will take a lot of pain and suffering to wake people up. And no one can predict what the long-term effects of all this hyperbole will have on the future of this country. 

And so, I am drowning in a sea of information, misinformation, and disinformation. The willfully ignorant are in power, and they are relishing every moment. The opposition is fragmented. Some cling to a political party that is out of touch, and falling apart. Others, seek their own revolutions, remaking society into some ideal. A few too many are clinging on for dear life, as their actual existence is being threatened. The majority want this broken rollercoaster to stop, but have no idea how to fix it.

I want to do my part to make the world a better place, but I do not know how. Well, I have a general idea, but then I wonder if it will be effective in the face of hyperbole, social media, and the algorithm. I am middled-aged, and while I do my best to understand the present, much of my knowledge and experience is rooted in the past. Yet, as a former President of the United States, one who could be counted among our greatest--if that still means anything--,who could write, speak, and think, far beyond what our current President is capable of doing, said:

“The dogmas of the quiet past are inadequate to the stormy present. The occasion is piled high with difficulty and we must rise with the occasion. As our case is new, we must think anew and act anew. We must disenthrall ourselves, and then we shall save our country.” 

So, that is where I am at right now. Trying to figure out how to react to and resist current trends. Of course, I am using an ancient tool, the blog, as a means of expressing myself, which is further proof of my age. But, you have to start with what you know. Eventually, you have towards what you don't. 

At the very least, this blog will be a testament, an eyewitness account, for future generations to mull over, as they try and make sense of this age, and possibly their own. My words could end up indicting me for treason, or acquitting me of complicity. However, I refuse to end up like those Germans, who after the war put their heads down, and quietly ignored what had passed in order to focus on the future. Or, worse, like those who pretended they played no part in the horrors of the decade before.