I don't think just listening to people, like the guy on the next bar stool, and taking what everybody says at equal value is a very good process. If you know the guys in the bar you can soon discover who takes what he says seriously and who is a big bullshitter. Myself I question what even my good friends tell me. I want to know where they heard it and why do they think it is true. A lot of people find this annoying but there it is. What good is a friend if you can't argue with him?
There is a certain hierarchy in the media. I guess the the networks and the big city newspapers are at the top, and then there is a greyer area of things like the Drudge report and Breitbart. I've gone to Breitbart a few times lately and was surprised to find it wasn't the nest of red hot lies I had expected. The extreme stuff wasn't all that extreme, and there were were some real stories in it. And beneath that I guess are talk radio and whatever the equivalent is in websites. They don't have big audiences and their audiences are eager to hear something wild and so they give it to them. Sometimes one of these wild stories gets picked up by something like Drudge or Breitbart. They are generally a bit careful with it, not claiming it to be true, but saying something like rumors are going around about such and such, then sometimes the top level of media picks it up in the form of Breitbart is reporting that there are rumors going around about such and such, and somebody picks it up and then another and maybe you see it two or three times and forget its scurrilous heritage and it becomes like unto something real. It's a problem.
And now I've nibbled on the edge of Dump's wire-tapppping thing so now I might as well go in whole hog. On the one hand it is a really scandalous charge (unlike how many attended his inauguration) to make against a former pres of the USA. But let's leave that aside for the nonce. It is also a totally baseless charge, the equivalent of wearing a red tie and telling everybody that it is blue, a slap in the face of, all together now, Objective Reality. And you know most everybody knows he is lying (because I assume that at this point even he knows it is not true), but at this point it is a charming peccadillo (How refreshing to hear a pol speaking his mind) to his fans, and if he just quietly harrumphed and said something like maybe I was a little off base there, the whole thing would blow away like the fluff of a dandelion. But he won't do it. He can't do it. You have to wonder what power he would have over good and evil if he wasn't crazy. But then if he wasn't crazy, he would never have become president.
I remember years ago, idling by the frozen foods in the supermarket and there was a sign that said rabbits, but it wasn't Bugs or some Easter critter in the bin, it was some ugly pink three lobed thing. Shocking. I look back at my kitties as I write this, such a fate will never befall you I assure them, though if I were to bring home a frozen rabbit and thaw it I am sure they would have no qualms about partaking of it.
So how did that work with the rabbits and the hounds (and foxes I guess)? I assume they brought it back alive or else you wouldn't need Old Betsy. Did they just corner it and then as it cowered amid snarling slavering beasts you ambled over and Elmer Fudded it? Did the dogs have to be trained not to tear the prey limb from limb before you could shoot it? Did you teach the dogs that, or did you get them already trained? I assume after this you ate the unfortunate bunny.
Why did the population plummet? Hunting or destroyed habitat or something else?
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