Disconnect, unplug, reset, screw it

David Sherman

What if I stop? Pull the plug. Resist the click? Press reset on my brain and stop reading, watching, laughing at the news in its myriad of formats?

Can I have breakfast or brush my teeth without first checking the Times and its daily recount of the lunatic ravings of the sick and sordid, and the staid news empire’s endless criticism and condemnation of same.

Once upon a time it offered succor. Now it’s the howling of the hopeless and vanquished into an exhausted wind of helplessness. Can I drink my coffee without the latest criminal or coverup of same in The Epstein Files, a perfect title for a Hollywood thriller, if Hollywood still made thrillers?

What if the menagerie of juncos, finches, jays, nuthatches, squirrels, hawks, jays, blue and otherwise, as well as our new neighbour, that wait in the tall pines and dormant lilac get their dose of sunflower seeds when they need them? To the amusement of the new neighbour, the owl. And to facilitate, I delete the daily inbox clutter from New Yorker, CNN, Atlantic, Newsweek, Substack and I who knows?

Top of mind is New York Review of Books, the latter increasingly invoking comparisons between Nazi Germany and USA today. I will be a better human if I concur the similarities are frightening. Even if I contemplate changing the locks on the door, installing cameras, hiding under the bed.

The Review was once a university education without the commute or the grades. Now, it is a reminder of horrors many parents and parents of parents lived through or succumbed to.

History it is. Cautionary as well. I suppose that’s the point. Lest we hadn’t figured that out yet, here’s convincing. Eloquently instructed. Artistically rendered.

I’ve pushed it aside. Most of those who decided to elect a moronic, ignorant government also pushed it aside figuratively, if not literally. Yes, the difference is they had a choice. I didn’t. Don’t. Won’t.

Millions of thoughtful words, redundant as many are, make academics and scribes and thoughtful proud. It makes me wonder what the hell can I do about it. It makes others ponder the least painful form of self-destruction -- pill bottle, rocks glass or multiple forms of numbing thought.

Can I skip the summaries of late night TV talk shows that each night use the U.S. government as a piñata?

Yes, Kristi Noem told Fox they’ve arrested illegal immigrants who were eating babies, including one who was eating his arm for dessert on the plane delivering him to Second World War-style internment camps. The same woman, adorned in a $50,000 watch and tight jeans, toured the same camps of people spirited away from their loved ones. Nothing says cruelty and indifference like extravagant fashion confronting the abused and terrified.

And it makes for a big laugh on Colbert’s show as he goes down swinging, goes down like the illusion of the U.S.

Joking of the monstrous and unimaginable is cathartic at times, but after a decade of poking the bear of a buffoon and his actions and acolytes, the tears of laughter are bitter and redundant.

Yes, there are people who see the truth and recognize the incredible and once-inconceivable and there are audiences each night to laugh and cheer for the monologue and the follow-up of someone with star power shilling a book, movie, play or, less and less, music and so what?

Whatever sells. That is America. A teetering monolith built on sales often of the sweat of the powerless.

Can I continue my day without checking out the salting of commercials on TV news networks with interviews of the outraged and helpless who assure us those behind the world’s most fearful military are without morals, and worse, logic, intelligence or humanity?

It is said by I don’t know who that a well-informed population is part of a functioning democracy. But, today, as a Niagara Falls of information, some true, some not, some “who knows?” pours across the border and ricochets around the world, gives lie to the adage. Well-informed is synonymous for sickened, frustrated and fearful.

I can feed the birds, fry an egg, shovel snow, plan dinner, maybe with friends, chat with Reisa, torture my guitar and choose to either twist in the wind over the hour’s latest outrage or start the old Subaru and fetch sand for the ice that coats the driveway. Maybe meet a friend for coffee and talk about ski conditions or does the town really need another over-priced restaurant.

Or talk the most Canadian of topics, last night’s hockey game or the game coming up.

Or call a travel agent and budget for an escape to a place where snow is an anomaly and the U.S. is part threat and part joke but not part of the chill Atlantic wind that roars in. I can watch and feel and enjoy its awesome power. And accept I can’t nor want to do anything about it. Weather is weather, neither profiteering nor exploitative. It’s blustery and powerful. Also sunshine and blue skies.

And my inability to affect weather and sea is akin to my helplessness in the face of untold tribulation tightening the globe like a noose.

But untouched is my attending to our menagerie of birds and occasional white-tailed deer.