As much as I try to, I can’t avoid politics here as uh as I’d like to. It’s become endemic in our lives, hasn’t it? The the advent of cable news over the past 40 years or so (CNN premiered June 1, 1980), it doesn’t seem we are able to avoid what passes for news today. In fact, what we regularly receive is not news in the classical sense, but infotainment, you know, something with just enough of what might be referred to as news, wrapped up t be fun and engaging. At the end of the day, are we any better informed than we were? I don’t think so.In fact, we can look at hundreds of examples, daily, and see how those that present as news attempt to manipulate their audience into believing something that is clearly, on second (maybe third) look, is blatant propaganda, pressing forward an ideology, whether it be political or cultural, instead of just informing.

Recently, we’ve been being warned up to another pandemic-like story. This one has to do with the Hantavirus. This virus has been around it seems like forever with around thirty cases per year reported in the United States. there have been warnings about it before, but the virus is most common in western states 9New Mexico, Colorado, Arizona) and as far as I can determine has never made the trip to the eastern shores of our country. Yes, it’s dangerous, mostly to those in their late 30’s to early 40’s, and the version that attacks the lungs kill approximately 35%. Oh, and it’s more common in men.

But just wait (here come the politics), someone is going to decide that this year, the virus is going to grow legs and infect the entire country (it is an election year – a very important one) so some states (can you guess?) will want to make sure that one party or the other will be advantaged an implant voting to ensure their party’s ascension. Then we’ll go through all the nonsense like we did 6 years ago with COVID.

We’ll be inundated with stories of the heroic first responders in the hospitals as we were before who sacrificed everything for your safety. Remember the photos of medical staff with signs saying they were working so pleas stay home? How about the lovely flash mb dances they filmed for our entertainment? About those: Think about it for a minute. Does anyone believe that those were generated instantaneously? The coordination, the choreography – had to take a few hours, don’t you think? Yep, they were working hard, weren’t they? I admit I fell for it at first until it hit me that these little entertainments for the public probably took a while to produce. I’m not blaming doctors and nurses directly. They had to be there because the government said there was an emergency of apocalyptic proportions. what else are you going to do in the middle of a not very busy 16 hour shift?

I don’t want to see anymore stories of lone surfers in the water in California being arrested just for being outdoors – alone. Or couples walking down the street holding hands being harassed by police for being too close together (that happened a lot!). How about the silliness of seeing people, alone in the vehicles, windows rolled up masked? I personally saw dozens of examples t\of that. What else can you do but laugh?

But the main thing is the government got a taste for absolute control of the population and, by golly, they liked it. why not do it again? We have short memories, don’t we? And they have the cable networks to push any and all propaganda out making sure that we understand the drama being produced just for us is really serious and the actors, reading the teleprompters, are there just for us.