What Evil Lurks?

 I had a good idea about what to write this morning. . . then I read the news.  I'm pretty sure that reading the news is bad for cognitive functioning.  It's like sugar and red dye number two for kids.  I'm not kidding.  It's like an active form of ADHD.  You are yanked from one pole to the other, emotions wild, mind a-flailing.  There are hormonal dumps involved, I'm feeling pretty certain.  In the end, your brain must try to put all of that together into some sort of narrative.  We only know the world through stories.  We live by myths.  

That was the "great breakthrough" in postmodern theory.  Then we got the tools to attack the myths we didn't like.  Or even the ones we did.  It began as theoretical discourse, but like all things, it trickled down to the dinner table.  By the time it made Instagram and TikTok, it had gotten granular.  What was once a keen academic trick became a party tool for everyone.  Find the assumption and attack its origins.  You needn't be schooled in hermeneutics or semiotics.  You needn't have read Derrida (because hardly anyone has), and you certainly didn't have to challenge your own assumptions once you had overturned the hierarchy.  

And so. . . I don't know exactly where I am going. . . but somewhere along the way I was thinking of the Propaganda Machine that is active now.  Russians, I mean.  And Chinese.  I'm thinking about the election.  

"A single dose of LSD provides immediate and lasting relief from anxiety, study says."

That was a headline in the Times this morning.  The entire country is going to need that leading up to November.  But, you know. . . it's not a fact, just a finding.  And we love findings.  Especially by the proper authorities.  And if one is good, more must be better.  

I need to go on a strict regimen of Wegovy and LSD.  

You see?  You see?  I had a good idea this morning and then I read the news.  I should have just written.  

You know that story about the origins of the universe that dumb people are so skeptical of?  The Big Bang?  Well. . . that theory just got an update.  A newly discovered dead galaxy has given astronomers pause and now they are attempting to revise their understanding of the early universe.  The story changes.

See?  

All of this favors a second Trump presidency.  Fact free.  Intuition and common sense.  I'll bet that one day we'll learn that the sun does revolve around the earth after all.  That WAS once the wisdom and heretics were burned for saying otherwise.  

"Oh, come on, man. . . you're being melodramatic." 

"O.K." 

I think the impetus for my lost morning's revery was the attack on an AI company that used AI generated images of a nude 16 year old Jenna Ortega to promote its product.  The ads ran on Facebook, Instagram, and others.  One wonders, "How is that a selling point?"  Huh.  There can only be like ten of fifteen people in the entire country who would want to do such things.  But wait!

We're all sailing on the Pequod, friends, and Ahab's at the helm.  We'll find that Great White Heart of Evil and we will vanquish it from the earth.  We will kill Moby Dick!  

"Are ye with me, men?"

"Ay!"

We are awakened.  We Woke when we were given the appropriate tools.  Given.  They were like gifts, really as we had no part in their production.  But. . . they make us feel wise.  

No. . . maybe it was the song I heard while taking a hot Epsom's soak last night, sort of a hierarchical overturning of Disney's "Song of the South."  Or maybe this is Disney's version now.  

"It ain't necessarily so, what you are liable to read in the Bible."  

How'd this one ever get past the censors?