From AS: “The news seeps into my house via internet and streaming. It leaves me in fear.”
“For quite a while, I have been avoiding the news and watching sports. Now I’m sick of sports because it seems to be more about business, contracts, and reports on injured athletes. There are extensive detailed reports of injuries incurred by athletes. It’s like watching that old hospital show ER.
“Sports also follows stories that should be in the Metro section of the news. An athlete punches his girlfriend in the jaw and knocks her out or is caught driving 110 miles an hour with an ounce of cocaine and an automatic weapon under the seat. He gets suspended from his team for two games, four games, or maybe more. If he worked for IBM or Google, he would no longer have a job.
“The news seeps into my house via internet and streaming. It leaves me in fear.
“Illegal aliens who run amok in the streets of America are going to rob and kill me.
“I won’t swim in the ocean ever again, because either sharks or riptides will kill me.
“Every night, before I fall asleep, my last thought is, ‘I hope my house doesn’t explode!’
“I also worry about masked marauders storming my house and taking my wife away because she speaks fluent Spanish. Maybe not, because I have yet to see a single illegal alien being arrested who has blonde hair and blue eyes.
“Every time it rains, I envision my house floating down a torrent river that appeared in a few short moments.
“When the stock market falls to record lows, I immediately see myself sitting on a cold sidewalk in the city with a sign that says, ‘Money for the poor.’ Then I remember that I, along with 48% of Americans, don’t own any stocks. And the stock market is not directly related to the economy anyway.
“Trees, beautiful, majestic trees are killing people. They wipe out countless numbers because of winds blowing them down on top of cars and homes.
“Can’t go to Target or Walmart because a mass shooter lurks in the shadows waiting to kill me and maybe 11 more people before he turns the gun on himself. I wonder, does each shooter decide how many people they are going to kill before they kill themselves? Why don’t they just shoot themselves and avoid driving to the store and circling the lot several times before finding a good parking space?
“Going to school is like being deployed to a combat zone.
“I can’t open emails because I’ll end up selling all my Crypto Currency and sending the money via the US Mail in the form of gift cards. I don’t own any Crypto Currency.
“I have children and I may get an email from one of them telling me to send money because they have been mugged in Barcelona and need a passport and an airline ticket to return home.
“My texts are often job offers where I can earn $200 to $300 a day. No age limit, it’s easy, and I can work from home. All I must do is send them a few thousand dollars for the equipment I’ll need to get started.
“I get texts from unidentified numbers which simply say things like, ‘Hi, haven’t heard from you in a while,’ or ‘I changed my phone number, here’s my new number.’
“Long ago, I responded to one of those. I wrote, ‘You must have the wrong number.’ Moments later, a picture of a sexy, scantily clad 21-year-old woman appeared with the caption, ‘I’m sorry, but do you have time to chat anyway?’
“I thought, ‘What a great idea to start a relationship with picture of a girl 55 years younger than me. I can’t wait to tell my wife and kids about my new friend! Should I send her a picture of me in a Speedo?’
“Much of our food contains broken glass or other foreign objects. Produce has E. coli and meat has salmonella. Water has plastic in it and our cars are being recalled in droves.
“Earthquakes, tornados, hurricanes, forest fires, tsunamis, mudslides are heading our way daily. Hikers are getting raped and killed or just not returning from their hikes. The ones who don’t return probably died from Lyme disease.
“If you are flying somewhere and are lucky enough to board the plane the same day your tickets say, it’s almost a sure thing a drunken unruly passenger will beat up a flight attendant and you will have an unscheduled emergency landing in a town you never heard of and possibly be stranded there long enough to establish residency.
“No unruly passenger? Don’t worry, a door could blow off or an engine might catch fire, and you may land in that same small town you never heard of. Wheels are falling off planes, too.
“It seems like once a week a family is killed in a house fire. If that’s not enough, the on-the-scene reporter always asks the surviving family member, ‘Your entire family was killed in that house fire. How does that make you feel?’
“Who writes those questions for the reporters?
“Edwin Starr sang, ‘War, what is it good for? Absolutely nothing, say it again.’ There are 56 wars going on in the world now. That’s the most since WWII. Thirty-five of them are in Africa. Can you name even one of those wars? I doubt it, because western news doesn’t report on Africa.
“In the wars our news does cover, you can watch homes, hospitals, and apartment buildings being blown up every day. In the following weeks, stories are told of injured and dead children and families who lost everything, including loved ones. The reporters are there, on the spot, to ask survivors, ‘How does that make you feel?’
“Here is a hypothetical question. Let’s say a fictitious country, we will call it Ukraine, is invaded by another country, we’ll call it Russia. The president of the United States, we’ll call him Trump, is trying to negotiate peace. Russia wants the president of Ukraine to relinquish the land Russia is occupying now, but not for a peace treaty. Simply for a ceasefire. Trump and most of the rest of the world is against giving up land to the invader. After meeting with the leader of Russia, Trump is now in favor of Ukraine giving up that land, and only for a ceasefire, not peace.
“The question is, if Russia invaded the US and was occupying New Jersey and Pennsylvania, would Trump give those lands to Russia for nothing more than a ceasefire?
“Every summer, reports of children left in hot cars often lead the news. It breaks my heart. I always think, ‘If they went to the grocery store and bought ice cream, there is no way they would leave that in a hot car.’
“Almost every week, a young woman goes missing. It’s incredible! Thank goodness I didn’t have a daughter. They get stalked, battered, raped, and murdered. Often by a man they had a restraining order against. Do those even help? It doesn’t seem so.
“I was with an attractive woman I knew a long time ago on her 35th birthday. I asked her how she felt about being 35.
“She said, ‘I feel like I’m getting old and I haven’t accomplished some of the things I set out to do. The bright side is, I think I have aged out of the getting abducted, raped, and murdered phase.’ Sad.
“I wonder how many open cases of missing women and girls there are in our country. I’m too lazy to look it up, but you can. I’ll bet you will be astounded!
“Men can’t imagine the fear women feel merely walking to the store. They must be constantly aware because the fear is real.
“Husbands killing wives and wives killing husbands. Just get a divorce!
“The war on crime, the war against drugs, the war on educating youth, now it seems like we are attacking common sense. ‘The war against common sense,’ seems like the only one of those wars we will win.
“Nonsensical decisions are being made unilaterally by one individual in a government which used to be a democracy. Even when the decision is warranted, its application is horrendous.
“Not a day goes by when something so petty and ridiculous is presented by those in power who vow to make it law. This minutia comes at us in droves. The plan is to wear us down, make us numb, and eventually not see it as an absurd notion. People go into an uproar, but then the next insane idea is put forth and we forget about the last thing we were so angry about.
“A man lost his wallet 11 years ago. He worked in Michigan on an assembly line building cars. He is retired now. Yesterday, he received a call from the man who found his wallet. This man was a mechanic and was working on a car with 150,000 miles on it. He couldn’t quite get one part to fit properly. He moved it around and a wallet fell out. The wallet contained the driver’s license and work ID card.
“The news showed the man, retired now, who got his wallet back, smiling ear to ear.
“I want to start a news channel that only reports ‘Happy News.’
“Would anyone want to watch it? We are all so jaded now, I doubt it.”
