MAMEWorld Forums - The Loony Bin

Oh. My. Mudkips!

I know this guy who runs a recovery club for drunks in Penn Hills, PA. He usually arrives sometime in the afternoon to open up the club from the afternoon-to-evening. From approximately 14:00 to 17:30 he watched the Faux News Channel. And he's usually alone until around 16:00.

What an impotently angry person he is: He spends that time yelling at the idiot screen as if the folks on the other side care. And he's been doing that for YEARS!

What pains me is if I know of this one person and can see how such isolation to the outside world causes such long-term mental deterioration I wonder if this isn't just an isolated incident? I wonder how many thousands, if not millions, do the same to the point of actually ruining themselves in the process.

I know that I used to be that person until I woke up and saw what a waste all of that is: To be that ideologically bigoted and not see things from the other side. To me it would be utterly disastrous to lose that shred of human empathy.

But that's the way it is: The debilitating ruse of "Us" vs. "Them". And, in the end, not seeing it for the zero-sum game that it is and becoming just another pawn.

I see him and see the danger of seething in one-sided crap. And the blind belief that to abandon it would be the end of life itself. It's just like any drug addiction where the pain to give it all up for the uncertainty of life without keeps people coming back to it One Day At A Time.

I do without that nonsense. It was worth a week's worth of pain. I laugh about all that now and see what a fool I was back when I was a political activist. It's as if a weight was taken off my own shoulders once I found that freedom in seeing it all for what it is rather than just from only one side: A freedom found in not conforming to others' nonsense.

It's either that or being that other guy.

So I can understand why people watch Faux News, listen to Limbaugh, or some other propagandist in general that keeps things politically correct in general. It feels good to belong to something no matter what little effort is involved, such as just sitting in that room with no one but that idiot screen.

And just as dehumanizing that is so are the "Us" vs. "Them" arguments that are based in stereotypes with no human insight involved.

--Bekki

Combating functional illiteracy with latex-clad drama since the '80s, because old video games rule!