Is there a cure for outrage overload?
Symptoms: A numbness of the brain, an inability to respond to one outrage because another has already taken its place in one’s consciousness.
For more than two years, outrages have been piling up. But there is one that rules them all. That is the role journalists, news outlets and government agencies have played in keeping news from the public, making it increasingly difficult to make intelligent voting decisions.
This results in a country kept in the dark about: medical discussions on COVID; the heartbreaking Afghanistan withdrawal sacrificing 13 servicemen while leaving behind 1,000 U.S. citizens and friends, $85 billion of military equipment, a strategically located Air Force base, and continuing foreign aid for the Taliban; 91 charges against a former president; bank records of our president and his son selling influence to companies in hostile countries; hoaxes that cost the taxpayers tens of millions of dollars pursuing unwarranted investigations; the draining of our Strategic Petroleum Reserve; raiding citizens homes and locking them up without bail or trial for parading and speech crimes; the destruction of attorney client privilege.
When our justice system and intelligence services become political, we need serious investigative reporters to do an honest job.
Oh, let’s not forget the greatest immigration disaster of our country: thousands of children lost to human trafficking, 6 million people with nowhere to go and a couple million more who know just where to go.
Then there is homelessness; fentanyl deaths; a huge crime wave inspired by the riots against police and the refusal to prosecute real crimes; parents kept in the dark about their children’s education and medical decisions; the declining mental ability of the president; the hidden environmental cost of proposed green solutions (think increased mining, harm to whales, birds, etc.); the dangers and inflationary cost of outsourcing our energy needs to communist and monarchical countries again; retracting leases for cleaner U.S. oil production; our declining buying power; and bad deals with Iran - unfreezing another $6 billion in addition to a prisoner exchange.
Possibly, these issues are unknown to half the country.
While politicians talk about the death of democracy, keeping the public in the dark is the short cut there.
A possible cure for this outrage? Remove barriers to free speech and find sources that try sincerely to keep the public factually informed no matter where the political chips fall.
Luann Byrne
Byram