Time for a Media Vacation?

Time for a Media Vacation?

I’ve been on a media vacation recently and it’s a pleasant experience. You should try it. Good for your mental health.

No matter what your political stripe, you have to be tired of the hourly drumbeat of depressing information. It’s not healthy!

Every day we hear about how bad Trump is. Whatever support he has is drowned out by the sheer volume of the attacks from the Left.

Every day we hear about COVID. One side is optimistic and the other side is pessimistic. Its hard to find the truth since both sides manipulate the data to their advantage. To my knowledge this is the first time in American history that a force bringing our people together was negated by a counter force; the tribalism we are experiencing now. We were tribal before Trump, but his personality has made the situation worse. Add the fact that this is an election year and everything gets exaggerated.

The end result of our failure to unite is the truth has gone by the wayside. Who knows what to believe? Governors are partisan, majors are partisan, and the federal government is split along partisan lines. Is Dr. Fauci a Democrat who exaggerates his warnings about reopening?

I guess we’re left watching the dashboards. Are cases per day going down? Are deaths per day going down? That only works if the counts are not being manipulated, which some have admitted is happening.

No media outlet provides a context to frame the data. That keeps their depressing message intact. Here is an example of perspective. Ohio has 11.7 million people and 3,618 deaths. That’s 3 hundredths of 1% of the state population who have died. The death to case ratio is 3.7%. Ninety seven percent of the deaths are people older than 50. Fifty seven percent of those who died were nursing home patients.

If you’re under 50, without underlying conditions that make COVID worse, you’re going to be fine.

Every day we hear about riots. Portland stays in the news because riots have been going on there for 70 days. The mayor is using those riots as a political prop. When rioters attempted to set fire to a police precinct yesterday, the mayor accused them of attempted murder but also said. "Don’t think for a moment that you are if you are participating in this activity, you are not being a prop for the reelection campaign of Donald Trump — because you absolutely are." The implication is that the rioters are breaking the law, and since Trump wants to uphold the law, they are giving him power. Why doesn’t Portland’s mayor want the law upheld?

Is the world turned upside down? We now have riots as appropriate behavior and police as evil actors. Its ok to riot without social distancing, but you can’t attend a funeral with more than 10 people.

No laws = no society. Only anarchy.

That’s why media vacations are good. Too much exposure to the media will make you think reality is what you see on the small screen. It isn’t. If the media will not accurately represent reality, you have to find it for yourself in your own life.