Plague Journal, Addiction To Lies & Death
Sinclair Broadcast Group recently published an online interview with a conspiracy theorist who claimed that Dr. Anthony Fauci created the coronavirus using monkey cells. Sinclair — which operates almost 200 television stations — has also run segments downplaying the severity of the virus.
Fox News has repeatedly run segments promoting ideas that scientists consider false or that question the seriousness of the virus.
Breitbart published a video this week in which a group of doctors claimed that masks were unnecessary and that the drug hydroxychloroquine cured the virus. It received 14 million views in six hours on Facebook, my colleague Kevin Roose reports. (President Trump tweeted a link to it.)
Why is the U.S. enduring a far more severe virus outbreak than any other rich country?
There are multiple causes, but one of them is the size and strength of right-wing media organizations that frequently broadcast falsehoods. The result is confusion among many Americans about scientific facts that are widely accepted, across the political spectrum, in other countries.
— Excerpt The New York Times, The Morning by David Leonhardt
And
Digital networks – and the White House – shovel disinformation into people’s brains every minute of every day. Conspiracy theories run rampant. A pandemic is reshaping the social landscape, isolating people from one another and entrenching the worse unemployment crisis in nearly a century. The presidential election looms.
— Excerpt article NYT, by Seyward Darby One Woman’s Descent Into Hate
This morning in an email received from a friend, a phrase jumped out at me, like a flash of lightning, illuminating a darkened landscape:
…to take responsibility for finding our personal Nirvana,
The colorful metaphor, Nirvana, could well stand for one’s individual psychological and existential welfare, or for that matter, the survival, the continuation of an entire society. We are ultimately responsible for the kinds of material that we read, media that we ingest, the circle of individuals which we accede to spend time with. Survival, yours and mine, — hangs in the balance. Addiction to a drug or to propaganda, — what is the difference? The result is the same.
To conclude, I offer a tune which the lyricist penned dedicated to the death of a friend by drug addiction. One is a helpless observer, incapacitated to lend aid in the demise of another, or of a nation. “If I could you know I would…”
Bad
By U2
If you twist and turn away
If you tear yourself in two again
If I could, yes I would
If I could, I would
Let it go
Surrender
Dislocate
If I could throw this
Lifeless lifeline to the wind
Leave this heart of clay
See you walk, walk away
Into the night
And through the rain
Into the half-light
And through the flame
If I could through myself
Set your spirit free
I’d lead your heart away
See you break, break away
Into the light
And to the day
To let it go
And so to fade away
To let it go
And so fade away
I’m wide awake
I’m wide awake
Wide awake
I’m not sleeping
Oh, no, no, no
If you should ask then maybe they’d
Tell you what I would say
True colors fly in blue and black
Blue silken sky and burning flag
Colors crash, collide in blood shot eyes
If I could, you know I would
If I could, I would
Let it go…
This desperation
Dislocation
Separation
Condemnation
Revelation
In temptation
Isolation
Desolation
Let it go
And so fade away
To let it go
And so fade away
To let it go
And so to fade away
I’m wide awake
I’m wide awake
Wide awake
I’m not sleeping
Oh, no, no, no
6 thoughts on “Plague Journal, Addiction To Lies & Death”
Your pal, Al
I am out of bleach and wonder if I could just throw a little Comet in the cooker? Any one have a set of works?
BTW: does anyone remember the Johnny Cash TV show that ran for a couple of years in the late 60’S. His first guest was Bob Dylan. (He had an eclectic mix of guests, such as the aforementioned Mr. Dylan and Louie Armstrong). Demanding and receiving full production rights, he had on one show Neil Young, who sang ‘The Damage Done’ – also about the scourge of addiction that ran through the music industry. There is a DVD available, narrated by Kris Kristofferson, highlighting the show and all his guests. A very hip guy; ‘The Man in Black’ , especially considering that his show was produced at the old Ryman Hall in Nashville, the heart of the ‘Bible Belt’ when there were only three TV stations.
Blessings
Johnny Cash was one of a kind, a survivor and a truth-teller.
Spending many summers during my youth in Bowling Green, KY. I was one hour north of Nashville, where I went many times with an older cousin. The old Opry was quite an event (incidentally, Minnie Pearl – with the tag on her hat – was actually a very wealthy Nashville socialite that had a passion for the Opry – I think she gave them more money than she might have gotten). One of my life’s many regrets is that I never learned how to ‘Clog’.
In Woodbury KY. (about ten miles away from Morgantown, where my grandparents moved to because it was the ‘big city’, with a population of about fifteen hundred people, and had a better school and where ‘we’ are all buried) – on a granite stone in the town square is a bronze plague honoring one of my great uncles, who as a Colonel in the Confederate Army was known as ‘The Scourge of the North’ , after leading two escapes from Union prison camps. I wonder if they’ve taken a chisel to it?
Kentucky was one of three ‘neutral states’, which is why Lincoln didn’t pen the Emancipation Proclamation until long after hostilities had broken out. Had he earlier, the ‘neutral’ states would have succeeded with the rest of the Confederacy and most likely the Civil War would have had a much shorter duration and opposite outcome, as the North was not yet prepared for war.
Oh yeah ! – One of my cousins has a house across the lake from Johnny Cash’s in Hendersonville, TN. Groovy, huh?
Blessings
Al, the strangeness of life is apparent in retrospect. The South needed a quick victory because otherwise the outcome of the war had to be as it actually was. The Union had a capable leader, and of course in a prolonged struggle it is good to have plenty of men and material. Who knows what kind of country we’d have now if the South had won? I cannot imagine.
More states with different railroad track gauges? I have long thought of the Civil War as a true benchmark of the Industrial Revolution.
Hollar at y’all a Blessings
the Civil War is recognized as the first example of industrial warfare. The country with the most industry, wins….