Working Through The Confusion

I was talking to my husband yesterday about how confusing life has become and realized that working through the confusion dominates many of my thoughts. I was listening to another report about Facebook and Cambridge Analytica and it occurred to me that inherently trusting news reports is a thing of the past. I remember watching Walter Cronkite when I was a child delivering the important news of the day and it would have never occurred to anyone watching to worry about the veracity of his reporting. It’s not that there couldn’t be a mistake, but when that happened, a retraction was issued immediately. Now, it’s safest to trust no one and nothing without fully checking it out. But how do we do that when even reputable outlets can be as hoodwinked as the rest of us? When we cannot trust the evening news or reports in newspapers and magazines and when some news outlets are willing to outright lie, where does that leave us?

The count is now up to 87 million Facebook users who were compromised by Cambridge Analytica. I have to say, however, that irrespective of Cambridge Analytica’s use of our data, Facebook is the compromising entity as far as I’m concerned. They had the keys. They gave them away. So while Cambridge Analytica will no doubt suffer in this, Facebook needs to suffer as well.

Social media used to be fun. Now we have to decide if it’s even worth it to use it.

A conservative media corporation is evidently buying up local outlets and telling them what to say on air. One news station refused, to their credit, viewing their journalistic integrity to be more important than their parent company’s desires. They own a handful of stations in Oregon where I live but none in my area. Apparently, the media corporation supports our current president and the concern is, and rightly so, that their news stories will reflect the same fair and balanced structure of the other national conservative television outlet. In other words, more potential fake news.

It’s like when a rumor starts. Sometimes rumors prove to be accurate, but more often they’re just lies that someone starts to hurt someone else. I remember David Letterman said years ago that you always see the lie on the front page, but the retraction is somewhere in the back where no one will ever see it. It’s not a direct quote, but he’s right. I have no idea if the terrible things said about Hillary Clinton are correct or not, but until I see irrefutable evidence, I don’t believe them. But other people do. And that’s the point. If it’s all by design, how does she become whole after all of the lies? Who does she even begin to sue?

There’s a lie out there for every narrative, every agenda. It’s gotten to the point that I take nothing for granted anymore. And maybe that’s the point of all of this nonsense, to make us pay more attention. Maybe we’ve become complacent. And now that we have a fool at the helm we’re being given a front row seat to everything we don’t want. Farmers voted for this guy and now that his trade war with China is in full swing, they will be hit hard. His press secretary said there might be a little initial pain. How nice of her. Most of us, farmers included, have had enough of pain. Was that part of the deal during the campaign? That they’d have some major losses but it’s just a little pain. Nothing to see here. Let it go. Crooked Hillary. Cheatin’ Obama. Look over there. And whatever you do, ignore the man with the ridiculous hair behind the curtain.

Something tells me that the Thank You Mr. Trump sign in full view of the highway in the neighboring farming community will be coming down soon.

I’ve been lied to periodically my entire life and some of it was pretty significant. But those lies only affected me for the most part. Now we have a president who lies so much that the entire country can’t afford to believe anything he says. He tells his supporters anything they want to hear and then leaves them hanging. Many will be rethinking their choice to vote for such a disturbed man. But just as many will hang on to their guy for dear life in complete denial over what’s happening to them. As long as they get that wall. As long as he echoes their racist beliefs. One female supporter nearly came out and said that as long as they get the wall, they don’t care how he fleeces the American people. She muddled the comment a bit, but that’s how I heard it and it explains everything.

They sold our nation for a wall. A senseless, needless, racist wall.

And now he’s ordering the National Guard to patrol the US/Mexico border until his senseless, needless, racist wall is built, seemingly in response to a humanitarian caravan traveling from Central America through Mexico toward the border. Typically these caravans are filled with families seeking a safer life in our country. It’s doubtful that they’re armed militia attempting to overthrow our country.

Maybe he thinks they’re carrying sharks. I heard someone say he doesn’t like sharks. Even made her sit with him and watch a show about them. Rumor has it he found it riveting and possibly terrifying.

But now we’ll have armed National Guard members protecting us from caravans. Let that sink in a bit. You know, if we could only live in truth I have a feeling much of the confusion we live with will go away. We wouldn’t need a wall and we wouldn’t have that shark-fearing nutjob sending the National Guard to our southern border.

So how will I deal with my confusion in the days ahead? Gardening. And listening to my husband gripe about yesterday’s compost delivery because he’s not happy and that will continue as long as the pile is there. I say delivery because the compost itself is wonderful. What wasn’t wonderful was the way it was delivered. It was a huge, heavy truck. They didn’t raise the back end up completely so only some of it came out. As we watched in horror, they backed up at least a dozen times onto the compost, packing it down solid. The rest, they pushed up onto a topsoil pile, backing up over the compost in the process. It looks like a lava flow.

I finally got tired of watching, found my voice, and asked if the back end could go up any higher. The other guy directing the driver shouted at him to raise it up higher, which he did. Magickally, the remainder of the compost fell out of the truck. Just like that. But if you look at the right half of it, you can still see the large tire tracks on the surface.

My husband has already reached the area where the compaction is so great that he’ll need a pick to get through it. At a delivery cost of $85, next time I’ll buy my compost in bags when I need to add a bunch to the garden. We used our compost piles last season and the new ones aren’t ready yet so hence the need for the delivery. The picture is below.

Blessings!