Name:   MAJ USA RET - Subject:   Where are the Forum stalwarts Date:   5/10/2019 9:43:12 AM (updated 5/10/2019 9:45:21 AM)

Every day, I check the forum… mostly without logging on.  I do this to see if there is reasonable discourse with respect to current events as “reported” in the news.  I do this after visiting several “news” websites.  The problem is with “news” as it is presented.

In the quest for modern, the media has become trendy.  We all know the persistence of trendy.  In the attempt to capture “loyal” readers, the media bows to the contemporary… becoming normal… inability to focus.  The “normal” consumer of mainstream reporting has neither persistence or critical thinking skills.  Add to those deficiencies… today’s “normal” consumer needs to be entertained.

Hey!  It’s just business.  Thus begat 30 second sound bites…  bracketed by feminine care products and erectile dysfunction remedies.  The model is very entertaining, necessarily inflammatory, and overly simplistic blather.  ( yes… I DID mean to use the adverb “overly.”)

Opinion is easier to sell than factual reporting… and the media are not in the social charity (responsibility) business.  They sell time and fill it with mind manipulating… adjective and adverb rich… entertaining misrepresentation.  Context exists only in its original moment.

To be sure, some of you are connected to reasonable and critical thought (in the classical definition).  But, within this forum, there is excessive stridency... i.e. the signal-to-noise-ratio is declining.  It is easy to determine which of you is connected to the “string of everything” versus those of you who possess only a bag of s--- !

Please, let me quote Anais Nin:

“We see things not as they are;

We see things as WE are.”

I am a dismayed, hungry skeptic.  This is my rare post for the time being. I am here almost every day. But, “Sprecfien ist silbern, Schweigen ist golden” (Swiss inscription: Speech is silver, Silence is golden).

- LMF Curmudgeon