Then be an example for them. That is where you will have an effect. The world has always been chaos. Learning how to find paths through it is an invaluable skill.
As i smoke my pipe
- Thread starter Rossi320
- Start date
SmokingPipes.com Updates
Watch for Updates Twice a Week
PipesMagazine Approved Sponsor
Site Sponsors
PipesMagazine Approved Sponsor
PipesMagazine Approved Sponsor
PipesMagazine Approved Sponsor
PipesMagazine Approved Sponsor
- Status
Uncensored crap is still crap, only more so.
I beg to differ. Newspapers have always been simply mouthpieces for the owners. One only needs to read the papers of 1700 and 1800's. Granted opinions were "mostly" relegated to the "Op-Ed" pages but, slanted journalism is part and parcel of the media. Cronkite in England and Vietnam reporting come to mind. Morrow using his broadcasts to urge the US into war on the side of Britain. Time magazine, hardly the paragon of objective reports has gone from supporting Nationalist Chine to being, more or less, a mouth piece for the Chi-Coms. Lincoln sent an opposition editor off to Canada. Who was the US President who envied Stalin's control over the "opposition"? Roosevelt I believe.
No, the rot set in with the publication of the first political "circular." My wife, rest her soul, has her name on Pulitzer and a Loeb Award. She had to work damned hard to restrain her personal opinion and beliefs. She strove to maintain objectivity. Which is a lot harder than simply reeling off the streams consciousness we are so often exposed to in the media.
Insure your kids can think critically and provide a solid foundation for them on which to base decisions and actions. That's about all you can do. Too soon they will have to trust themselves.
Worrying about the world's leadership will do nothing to change it. The forces at play go back millennia. Democracy and capitalism are crap, but the alternatives are generally worse.
My parents survived the Great Depression and weren't spared its challenges, and nothing that I've lived through comes close to what they went through. But I learned from them, both good and bad, and that has helped me navigate what life throws at me.
It's almost exactly the one year anniversary to the day when I was told that I could die at any second following an angiogram. Came out of nowhere as I was asymptomatic. I can say that I wasn't thinking of the sad state of world politics at that moment. Strangely enough, I wasn't scared or worried. That would have changed nothing. I followed the regimen that my hematologist gave me while waiting to see if I would survive. THAT, I could do something about.
That's one more thing you have no control over and tomorrow's not guaranteed to anyone. You can spend time worrying or you can teach your kids how to live in the world and spend your time enjoying the time you do have.
Uncensored news, from people who are independent of the corporate news cabal is essential for a functioning democracy. In addition, the X platform provides "Community Notes" -- a brilliantly successful 'fact checking' system by which additional perspective/correction is provided ONLY if agreed to by multiple parties who usually disagree with each other. Once freedom of expression is experienced, there is not going back to corporate talking heads.
All news is biased because all people are biased. Therefore, the bias should be understood upfront and not hidden.
The biggest censorship is limiting what gets reported. On platforms such as X, everything is reported, and YOU get to make up your own mind -- not a huge corporation, not one political party, not the "elites", not the crazies on either side.
TV and Radio were subject to regulation that newspapers were not, and as a "public service" they weren't obligated to make money for their network, but to work in the public's interest.
That all blew up when Roone Arledge pushed to have the news redefined as a profit center, just like sports, at ABC. The other networks followed suit and the entire culture of TV news changed. Opinion got merged into news and sometimes became news.
The Yellow Press certainly existed since before the invention of the printing press. I've seen The Front Page.
I submit most people have never looked up the definition of politic or political and developed an erroneous and very narrow definition for themselves. In deed, most every thing discussed is political.
Indeed.
I would never ruin a perfectly good pipe session with the news.
Just wait till AI really gets up to speed. It's going to get very tough telling what's real and what's not. 
Always watch the morning National news Especially when fake or biased, helps makes the pipe taste great to relax later.
- Status