“Too Little, Too Late”

Tonight, two notably scandalous blueblood college basketball programs play for the national championship, their sins known but unprosecuted.  Too big to fail, I assume.  It seems difficult for the Haves to get into much trouble.  A few nights ago, we watched a movie imitating the ruthless handling of the 2008 subprime mortgage crisis on Wall Street.  Do you recall anyone on that street going to jail? Sin at that level has fancy derivatives.  When a presidential candidate fabricates an opponent’s wrongdoing – with help from the CIA and FBI -- America, we have a problem.  When ethics violations by local government officials are reported (not for prosecution, but for future political wrangling, I assume), why worry about Candor?  Getting at the truth through respectful, forthright dialectic has lost its place.  As I look over the landscape here and everywhere, polarization, one-sidedness, and obfuscation abound. 

When a tyrant fills a stadium with flag wavers and explains that he is at war because the enemy – to our minds, leaning West and led by a Jewish man – threatens Nazification of Russia, we have highlighted again how easily humans can be loyalized.  Truth, get in the back seat.  Selfish ambition has grabbed the wheel.

Recently hearing that the The Babylon Bee – spot-on jesting from the Right – got tossed off one of the monopoly social media platforms, I am left incredulous.  That publication is as cleverly benign as opining can be.  Are we going to stop conversing on hard topics?  If we are, the fight over policy that democracies encourage and manage could become unmanageable.  If we can’t war with words and memes (both correctable by facts/evidence/truth), we’ll pick up sticks and stones.  Not so far off.

I’m never been a fan of adverbs.  They so easily overstate matters.  Please, talking heads, we are utterly and absolutely disgusted by your intensifying matters beyond the facts, beyond what is reasonable, what is helpful! 

Having had genuine, avid interest in socio-economic and political discussion and problem solving since the newspaper made sense to me, I lament the size and scope of the intentional, uncorrected proffering of misinformation/disinformation we find ourselves subject to day in and day out.  We’re headed for something real ugly if we can’t read analysts and journalists resolved to tell the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth. 

Are we careening because political hatred is exhilarating and power’s access to money so intoxicating?  Likely.  I am persuaded Candor, the online journal my cousin Steve and I started two years ago, is like trying to filter the Arkansas river with a bowl and handkerchief.  Too little, too late. 

All that not to suggest we didn’t enjoy every word we wrote and read of yours.