4 a.m. Thoughts While Rage Reading the Internet

Transcribed from the original stinky Sharpie on the yellow legal pad I scribbled on while doing this. Might as well get something out of this wake-up-at-2:30-a.m. insomnia.

“Heh. Where’d ya read that, Vox? Buzzfeed? “Yeah, well, I bet you get your opinions from Breitbart. HAW!” And the beat goes on.

• I have to continually remind myself that this is nothing more than a very limited, very enclosed sandbox. The stuff that angers and arouses us here is not simply foreign, it’s extra-terrestrial-class alien to the “normies” (normal people) just going about their jobs, relationships, lives, etc.
  
• If you rage-read stories on the Internet for entertainment, lurking in the comments sections for the best snarking banter, fine—but you’re not normal. And you’re not necessarily the good kind of not-normal, either. You’re not getting anything done. You might as well be following one of the big money pro-wrestling stars and yelling about how they were cheated (or maybe even exalted) in their scripted conflicts.
  
• Given how many times over the decades that the New York Times and the Washington Post have been caught fabricating stories to push various narratives, it astounds me that anyone takes any of these newspapers seriously at all. These should not be respected institutions, but recognized for the mendacious mouthpieces they are, only slightly more sophisticated than the broadsides peddled in the dirt streets of the 18th and 19th century. That people on either side of the political spectrum will reflexively use either one as a reference to prove their points speaks volumes for the moral and intellectual rot of 21st century civilization. Try explaining this to a normie—”Hey, I don’t read that crap anyway. Who does?”—let alone an educated partisan parrot. The latter will likely agree with my sentiment, and most vociferously until it comes times to make a point about something. “The New York Times cited a study by a big-name professional quack....”
  
• Hey, remember “quacks”? The term described a credentialed expert, most frequently a medical doctor, who promoted sketchy diets, cleanses, snake-oil cures, etc. It could also be applied to the social “sciences” as taught in the universities today, which is probably why we don’t see that word anymore. The censorship is even crazier than it was when the evangelical Christian Moral Majority were the holy terrors 40 years ago.
  
• It’s more than censorship, though. There’s a minor moral panic going on out there. I was touched by it last year when I learned that someone I’ve known for over 30 years considers me a Nazi. Yes, a swastika-sporting, seig-heiling Nazi, because I had the temerity to mention some things I saw on Forbidden Websites by Badthinking Unpersons. “These guys don’t reflexively worship the police or the troops like the right-wingers I’ve known all my life until now,” I said, and boom! Guilt by association. It probably didn’t help that I declared these developments “interesting” as opposed to screeching denouncements of it all for simply existing. The blustering old bully had the temerity to demand what I was doing reading this stuff. This chest-thumping ape is telling people who and what they should read and I’m the Nazi?

Obvious punchline is obvious. 

Then there was this other guy...anyway, these stories were going to make up Part 2 of “How I Lost Weight Over of the Holidays,” which I’m still debating writing because, let’s face it, ghosting out on people you’ve known for so many years is flat-out sad, and nothing to be celebrated. You do what you have to do, though. Most of you reading this know what I’m talking about.

If there is anything to celebrate it’s getting all this out of the way so I can get going on that narrative bridging scene in my novel that’s been holding me up for a week already. The sun is just coming up over the Sangre de Cristos as I post this. It’s a lovely, colorful sign o’ the times.