The Not Fake News Update, 13 April 2023

Today marks the birthday of Guy Fawkes, executed for having tried to blow up Parliament. Had he lived, he would be 453 years old.

A lot of other interesting things have happened recently, many while you were distracted by other things, some involving Donald Trump and other truly unimportant issues. Why you pay attention to trivia like that is beyond me. Then again, some people juggle geese; who am I to judge?

So without further ado, I present to you a list, not comprehensive, of a few things you may have missed since our most recent Update:

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Oh No Not Again

Happy Indictment Day!

Only not.

Sure, “Teflon Don” got marched into court, had to get fingerprinted, and is facing full public disclosure of his hush money payments. It’s embarrassing. On the other hand, nothing he’s accused of has ever garnered more than a fine, not in any case I’ve ever seen. (NOTE: I’m not a lawyer.) The action itself — paying hush money — wasn’t illegal, or even immoral, and every campaign after Eisenhower has had a damage control unit.

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The Not Fake News Update, 15 March 2023

Beware the Ides of March, and also the Nones and Kalends while you’re at it. Mind you, technically speaking, the Ides of March would have referred to the first full moon of spring, which is due on the 6th of April, but that’s hardly important.

Speaking of unimportant things, your headlines have been full of them as usual. While you’ve been distracted, here are a few items of importance you might have missed:

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Fireside Chat

My friends, I want to talk for a few minutes with the people of the United States about banking — to talk with the comparatively few who understand the mechanics of banking, but more particularly with the overwhelming majority of you…

Franklin Delano Roosevelt, President. 12 March, 1933

It’s been ninety years, and we still haven’t learned the lesson.

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Censorship: I’ve Lost Track

It’s finally happened; I’ve lost track of who’s censoring what.

Everyone’s up in arms about the Florida school library mess, and from the outside that seems perfectly reasonable. We can’t be banning books just because we don’t like them, right? I mean, banning Harry Potter just because he’s a wizard is so 1980s.

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The Not Fake News Update, 02 March 2023

Hello, good evening, and welcome to another exciting edition of the Update, coming to you every couple of weeks whether anything newsworthy has happened or not!

Looking back, we’re seeing the top headlines include Harry and Meghan, a war in which the battle lines haven’t shifted in months, Donald Trump for no good reason whatsoever, and apparently Disney is remaking the remake of a movie that was based on a ride that went away thirty years ago. Evidently, nothing newsworthy actually has happened.

But we’ll look anyway; maybe we can find something. Stay tuned!

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Conspirasissy

An awful lot of voices are raised in alarm these days, and that makes sense to me. There are wars, earthquakes, plagues, famine, and economic tough times, and they’re all stacking up a price that society will need to pay sooner rather than later. Our debt to our future keeps growing, and when it finally comes due, the day of reckoning will be painful indeed.

But that’s not people are alarmed about, curiously enough.

Judging by news coverage and the comments, there are two primary schools of thought about the recent train derailment in Ohio: first, that the government is concealing an orchestrated campaign of sabotage against our national infrastructure, and second, that the Powers That Be are using disasters and balloon alerts in order to distract us from the fact that we’re deploying combat troops in Somalia and hundreds of “military advisors” in Ukraine. Apparently, either we’re under attack from a powerful enemy or we’re about to invade somewhere in order to swing the next election.

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The Not Fake News Update, 20 February 2023

There was a massive earthquake on the Turkey-Syria Border, a huge rail spill in Ohio, and Russia is still invading Ukraine (or vice-versa, to hear Russia tell it). It’s a busy time in the news, and as is usual, if we pay too much attention to the top headlines we’re naturally going to miss a lot that’s going on outside of the immediate spotlight.

Enter the Update: Your source for news every couple of weeks, whether there’s anything to talk about or not!

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The Answer Is “Never”

Every time we have one of these highly-publicized mass-shooting events, or Heaven forfend another rampage killing, there’s always a sententious opinion piece on every news outlet asking “When will it end?”

And yes, the answer is “Never”. In Australia, a single event was enough to inspire the whole country to turn in their guns; New Zealand was similar. In the United States, we’ve had a dozen major shooting rampages, including in elementary schools, and public opinion is fiercely divided. It’s not too much of a stretch to conclude from this that the inevitable continued shootings will convince only scattered individuals while inspiring others to resist what they would term “government overreach”.

So let’s stop asking that particular question and move on to something a bit more proactive.

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