Light/Breezes

Light/Breezes
SUNRISE AT DEATH VALLEY-Photo by Tom Cochrun

Sunday, April 19, 2015

A NEW WAY TO THINK

PERSPECTIVE
    My brother John was apparently an effective psychotherapist. Even psychiatrists, with the capacity to order medical intervention, hired him to work with extraordinarily troubled patients.
    I was fascinated by an experimental technique he employed where in he had schizophrenic patients draw maps of their brains, including neural circuits. He would,  step by step, navigate them through a thought or reaction beginning with the sensory cues. The therapy was to "reroute the traffic," to find a new way of thinking, responding and reacting.
    As the 2016 Presidential circus launches don't we all need  a similar "intervention" as regards the mix of information and its delivery and how we feel or reason? Coverage is obsessively about the horse race and is more silly, shallow and of dubious focus and proportionality than during Obama-Romney. Much of it is ideologically or politically skewed and overly generous with pundits and hot air. It is long on entertainment and presentation value and short on thoughtful, non pack, intellectually independent journalism and inquiry.
   Electoral politics also populates the prismatic effulgence of the Internet. Almost no view is left unstated. And we've all got one, at least, so there is a law of diminishing returns at work. 
     It is a renegade American Idol. We'll see the parade of GOP hopefuls in a traveling fight and we'll wait for Hillary to stumble or crumble. Independents and Democrats either like her or they don't. Those who are Republicans must come to accord with one of their multiple choice field. But can there be many undecided or non-committed between D's and R's. Is there enough to compose a "significant difference" in the interim? 
    Before the media and campaign gillies roll, minds are set, but the carnival will go on for a reason certain. Money. Politics, especially presidential politics, is an industry and commerce is good. Billions are churned and much of it gets spread around the media that has no interest in shortening the season, silly or otherwise. They're in it for ad dollars. 
    Plan on plenty of silly, inane, irrelevant, hyperbolic, partisan, mean and self important. Analytical numbers, polls, probabilities and indexes, will be creatively displayed. At the game's end, numbers win.  
     Sadly much of this will play without benefit of Jon Stewart or The Colbert Report. David Letterman is riding off into the sunset too. Yikes! We're being left without our media "neural circuit" traffic cops. What is our protection? 
     Cheers to the inventor of the off switch!
WESTERN DIVERSIONS



    See you down the trail.

6 comments:

  1. Indeed, one Fox commentator said Hillary's lunch at Chipotle was a blatant example of "Hispanic Outreach." (I had no idea Chipotle was an ethnic restaurant.) If that's the case, If she has a dish of Ben and Jerry's ice cream she'd be pandering to Jews?

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  2. Wait a minute. "prismatic effulgence" . . . "gillies" . . . "neural circuit" ????? Please do your commentaries in English!

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  3. The political clown car is about to get pretty crowded.

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  4. As a bracer, not unlike a shot with your coffee at 7am, may I suggest the book "Fear and Loathing on the Campaign Trail", about the '72 campaign for president. HST will set us up nicely for the next couple years.

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  5. A fine assessment. And yes, I too rue the departing (and departed --HST) stabilizers as we go yet again into the breach. Hold your noses, here we go again.

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  6. "Constant Intractable Madness" ensues.

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