Anxiety over political issues? (syndrome, responsibility, adult, thoughts)
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No, I'm staying with my children and grandchildren. I will leave (earth) when God decides it is my time. Meanwhile, I will continue to despise and mourn how far America has fallen. And I will post in threads like this one.
Now matter which flock the sheep fall into, they get shorn just the same.
Politics is the new "Opiate of the Masses"; we've internalized our own, personal "shiny thing".
Now matter which flock the sheep fall into, they get shorn just the same.
Politics is the new "Opiate of the Masses"; we've internalized our own, personal "shiny thing".
There is much truth in this view. For many, politics is indeed the new religion. Left, right, whatever: we have simply traded religious dogma for political cant, complete with corresponding messiahs, orthodoxies, and heresies.
I held onto my cable TV sole for the news. I watched it everyday without fail. Then something happened, every single news station I used to watch turned into a bad episode of Entertainment Tonight. There was no news anymore just bickering between news organizations or when there was actually something to discuss it was presented in a redundant redundant redundant manner on EVERY single show.
I gave up watching the news. Actually I tell myself I was strong armed in giving it up. You can't force people too watch this junk AND make them pay for it.
I now read a book at 10pm and watch maybe the first 15 minutes of my local news.
There is probably some academic term in psychology for all this. What is it? Anybody know? Media overload?
"Community Standards."
It's not an academic nor psychiatric term; it's an actual media self-censorship agreement that swung into play about 4 weeks ago.
You are a vegan, correct? A musician & empath? You are simply more finely tuned than most & you are also part of two targeted populations. You are feeling the effects of one-sided oversaturation & deleting news feeds from your social media was probably the best thing you could have done for yourself.
You are lucky you don't subscribe to conservative politics as well; you would be questioning your own sanity if you were.
In order to save us from ourselves; Google, FB & YT have all collaborated to mitigate the networking of voices that do not follow their like-minded views. Traditional values & conservative politics is one targeted voice.
Another one is "woo":
Between June 3rd & June 20th; 81 pages /sites that offer information on topics of nature, health, natural medicine, organic food/living & others; have been deleted from FB with more to come. These are not exactly "fringe" voices with a small impact.
Among the deleted were: Diabetes Health Page with 180K followers, deleted 6/13. Healthy Living with 1.8M followers deleted 6/05. Photography World with 1.4M followers deleted on 6/20, etc ...
Google has targeted 146 conservative news web pages; obscuring them via a keyword-search-result algorithm.
They have also targeted online forums that do not censor thoughts & allow for free discourse. Yes; CD is one of them. Have you ever seen a currently active thread on CD pop up on page 1 on Google? Used to happen all the time; I've seen my own posts on page 1 before. You won't now.
Most web pages for religious topics from all religions are in the line of fire, with a little more leeway allowed for the Jewish & Muslim faiths. The room allowed for the Jewish is likely temporary, out of embarrassment over the last algorithm change that favored the Holocaust Denier crowd.
Keyword searches containing search terms of "organic", "vegan", "holistic", "naturopathy"; are being shuffled out. YouTube has either banned or censored (de-monetized) 74 channels already.
So, my guess is that you sensed the oppression of free speech & exchange of thoughts & ideas & that it became overwhelming for you. I'm glad your first instinct was to turn it off, rather than to succumb.
I love politics mostly from watching those on each side overreact to every little situation. At the end of the day, I gauge the results on my portfolio, the unemployment rate, consumer confidence and other indicators. The rest is just entertainment for me.
This is a prime example of what I despise about politics. People who take pleasure in observing other’s emotional angst about political issues. It is rampant on both sides and speaks to an angry and malicious enjoyment in others suffering. There used to be a respect for different values and beliefs, even if we disagreed. These days people get perverse pleasure in hearing other people voice strong opinion or dissent. This has a malignant impact on our culture and only serves to make the individual smug in their imagined superiority. All the while dividing us as a nation. The Left or Right is not the enemy. They simply see things differently.
I too have been depressed since the 2016 election. Even the year going into the election was a horrible year with Trump on TV constantly. When Obama was President, he was not in my face tweeting stupid crap EVER. Trump has cut ties with all our allies and insulted everyone except for the Dictators that he identifies with. I think they have him fooled -- I think those nations will all turn on us before his first term is up. He's the worst person ever to sit in the Oval Office. He is a rank criminal and a thug who even steals children from their parents and locks people up who are fleeing from violence. He makes me feel completely sick and he makes me hope the end comes quickly.
Isn't this the Psychology forum? There's plenty of people bashing Trump over in the Politics/Controversies forum; why don't you go join them there?
I saw a headline the other day that 70% of Americans are tired of the news. Probably some journalist/blogger just made up a number, but there could be some truth to it.
I've been a news junky for years, but lately I (and several like-minded friends) have been tuning it out. I've marked as private all my political rants on Facebook, and have stopped posting such things. I've un-subscribed from the Wall Street Journal and no longer post in their reader forums which are very political.
We haven't had cable, ever, and only watch Youtube and Amazon Prime movies/TV on the computer. Still too much media, maybe, but it's not like having Fox or CNN blasting on the boob tube all day either. The wife does listen to NPR all day; that's OK, I suppose, some interesting programming.
I enjoy coming over to city-data to read about real estate and cars and employment, and occasionally jump in to talk about social or political topics. But you can always walk away, too.
I'm old enough to know that the news has always been depressing. Name a year in U.S. history and I'll give you the bad news! OK, maybe 1946 or 1947 in America -- a time of jubilant victory and enthusiasm. But the economy also crashed after the wartime factories closed. Black guys coming back from fighting for America overseas were treated like garbage. Anti-semitism was alive and well, too.
The mid-1950s was a time of great prosperity. Aerospace was huge; the transistor had been invented and electronics and computers were becoming big. American domination of the world was complete. Yet, the Russkis had developed the atomic bomb and everyone assumed we were about to nuke each other into oblivion. Black people were still badly treated, and the civil rights movement was picking up steam. Politics was still dirty. Nothing ever really changes.
You have to look on the positive side of things. Medical advances, miraculous new electronics (we can now communicate with anyone on the globe, in real time, using a hand-held gadget -- how cool is that???). We're about to have self-driving taxis or Ubers that show up at your door, and take you wherever you want to go for a few dollars. I can't wait, personally. Love to drive, but hate to drive in traffic. Let the computer or central traffic control worry about it and I can just read a book.
Life is about survival, and you can't survive if you don't focus on positives. Humans are designed to focus on positives; it's how we have always gotten through the day. Just imagine 500,000 years ago, a Homo Erectus thinking about going out to get the day's food and water and these giant lions and other predators out there picking you off like cats eating mice. You can't think about that; you have to just live and savor every good moment.
There's so much great stuff. Ignore the politics, try going for a walk, try meditating. If you have a lot of time on your hands, become a volunteer at the library or other local institution (church, men's/women's club, help clean up the public parks, become a guide/docent for tourists, etc.). There are many ways to channel one's energy other than hyper-focusing on "politics" which is nothing but an energy absorber. It's good to stay informed on the issues, and to vote in every election, but don't follow Twitter or you'll go nuts! Speaking from experience.
Why did you misspell "the" and "government"? Trying to figure out what you're attempting to convey through your spelling choices.
We sarcastically misspell these words to convey contempt for the subject: "gubmint" for example, is also how some dialects pronounce "government".
I also choose not to listen to the news. DH does all day long, but with headphones, thankfully. If there's anything of import, he'll summarize it to me. But I've limited him to 5 or 10 minute rants; that's my limit! I hope someday he "grows out of" this obsession. And we don't even live in the U.S. anymore, LOL.
I view the political circus as a soap opera, created to keep us watching while government fulfils its primary mandate to keep the wealthy in power. I've always been a progressive and still am, but there are very few progressives in any position of power. The Dems and Republicans only care about their own party and political careers, not the people who elect them. Politics has become a national team sport, like a pro wrestling match where everything presented is just theater designed to hype the crowd. None of it is real. At the end of the match the wrestlers collect their paychecks from the same promoter. The talking heads on TV act like there is something real happening, but it's just show business. A national soap opera.
Personally I don't see a significant difference between Bush, Kerry, Gore, Obama, Trump and Hillary. Sure, a different style, a different rhetoric, but underneath they are all servants of the political establishment that calls the shots that matter.
I saw Michael Moore having a meltdown on Bill Maher last night, saying that democracy was dying and fascism was on its way. I thought Moore was smarter than that. We've been a fascist run country since the end of WWII when we brought in all those Nazi scientists to run NASA and hired all the Nazi intelligence agents to fight communism. Who does he think started two senseless 14 year wars in Vietnam and Iraq? Who does he think kept segregation alive in the north and the south? Who does he think killed the Kennedys and MLK and supported fascist dictators all over the world for the last 70 years?
Last edited by bobspez; 06-30-2018 at 12:48 PM..
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Trying to figure out what you're attempting to convey through your spelling choices. 
