Fence-Straddling Through the News Cycle

What's the balance between civic awareness and personal wellbeing during a HGT?

There's a viral social media post/catchy earworm going around by TikTok creator, AgiftfromTodd.

If you haven't seen it yet, here it is on Instagram.

The first two lines are:

We're in the middle of a hostile government takeover
I want to talk about it, but I'll be late for work

There's so much happening that could have such long-lasting repercussions that we could spend all our hours talking about it. Possibly, if we care about our country as a democracy, we should be doing just that, in forums both public and private.

At the same time, if one enjoys living indoors, sleeping in a bed, watching viral memes via fast internet, one cannot afford to be late for work—also a succinct stand-in for the many aspects of our daily lives that could be disrupted by obsessing over the “HGT.”

The question I’m asking myself, and you might be asking too, is, should my concerns be interfering with my daily life in this case? How different is the situation now from situations we’ve seen before? Following the 2016 election, many of us lived on a roller coaster of outrage, yet survived to be thrust into the news cycles of the pandemic, which we also survived. The Biden administration, though comparatively a tonic, still contained hypocrisy and questionable decisions enough to shock and appall but again the American way of life survived.

The repeated lesson from these episodes is that there’s always a furor an individual, can jump into and invest time and emotion, but in the end, things turn out pretty much the same regardless.

So it makes sense that following the 2024 election, there were a number of reports (like this one and and this one) about people opting out of news media to protect their well-being and sanity. I’ve had several friends tell me they’ve not yet come back to the news, which is understandable. Why plunge down a topical rabbit hole where one risks being sucked into a wonderland of grotesqueries from which one might never emerge? Why sacrifice life's simple joys to the ugly maelstrom only to—judging from the last decade—fail to effect any change in terms of events or minds, especially when you can not do that and life will go on not so differently from before?

Unless... now is it different?

Is now different? Is now not just another cry-wolf inflection point in the time line, but a real inflection point—a point where one’s attention might actually make a difference and thus be the very worst time for head-in-sand behavior?

Fuuuuuuck. I don't know. I was just going to tell you what I’ve been reading lately.

Yes, my original intent for this letter was to talk about what I'm reading. Everything up to this point was merely to say that, per usual, I've adopting my normal moderate position of fence-straddler, thus I am injecting a considered amount of (maybe necessary) poison/medicine into my veins by reading some news—and that, as an antidote/spoonful of sugar I am reading some fiction.

But, dear correspondent, my long-winded preamble has taken up the entire page and rather than tread on your good graces I will stop here. Plan to hear from me soon, with a benign list of reading materials that I am consuming.

With all good wishes for your health and happiness,

B