Corona Dailies

MAY 7, 2020: Watching the news, any news, all news, just… hurts

When was the last time you watched or read a news story and felt like things were unfolding the way they should? Like justice was being served?

Even if you’re a diehard conservative, you don’t think justice is being served these days. I see it all the time, in those stupid state capital protests around the country, in the killing of unarmed black men hunted down for exercising, and in the constant echoes of the “news” organizations that put undereducated, underachieving blowhards on the air all day and night.

For the rest of us, the ones who are actually self-aware enough to understand the privilege we’ve been born with and who just believe in a sense of fair play, watching the news these days feels like watching the neighborhood bully force your hand into your face while asking, “Why do you keep hitting yourself?”.

The constant barrage of bad news seems undending:

• White nationalists playing army dress up, shouting into the faces of police officers wearing face masks. So they can get a haircut and cover it up with a stupid hat. Where’s all that “Blue Lives Matter” shit now?
  
• Talking heads saying this is like a war, calling American workers “warriors” and outright saying that people should be willing to go to work and die so people with already more money than they could ever spend can make another buck.
  
• Congressmen and Senators, who voted for the biggest redistribution of wealth in human history (i.e. the president’s massive tax cuts on business and the wealthy), saying that low to middle wage earners shouldn’t be granted any more from the U.S. Treasury than they’ve already been given.

And shortages of PPE for front line workers… shortages of ventilators… wholesale neglect of nursing homes, VA facilities, and meatpacking plants.

I’m not going to kid you. By the end of nearly every day, I’ve had at least one, sometimes two or three headaches. Watching the news just hurts these days.