Sides?

 

An old friend of mine recently invoked the concept of “sides.” We were talking about international relations, and he wanted to make sure he was cautious in his consideration of news content, an understanding motivation. This gave me the thought for this blog post.

I have heard it I don’t know how many times. A person suggests there are sides and the truth must be somewhere in the middle. I know this to be common, and would like to speak to it here.

THERE ARE NO SIDES. Americans have divided everything political into the designations liberal and conservative. There’s CNN and Fox. There are Democrats and Republicans. And so, to be judicious, we should aim toward the center.

The center of what? The center between crap news and crap news is … you guessed it: crap news. CNN and Fox are both abysmal. I tell students to read their news instead and turn the television off. Read a top-tier newspaper instead. They might not be perfect—and they’re not—but they’re much better than televised news. The New York Times, the Guardian, the Washington Post, the Wall Street Journal. Pick one. Or two.

As I’ve written about before, liberal is the center. Americans agree to the tune of two-thirds on just about everything. The nation is not divided. There is no “left.” Both major parties are to the right of the center. Obama, the Clintons, Biden, Harris: they are all right-of-center 1970s Republicans. Bernie is right of center. Not by much, but he is. There are no leftist lawmakers on Capitol Hill. Zero. The center is quite likely you.

So, the center between wrong and wrong is wrong. The red team and the blue team do not represent the American people—not by a long shot.

Does the truth lie between the Israelis and the Palestinians? No. Israel occupies Palestine, illegally and brutally. They are in the wrong. Don’t like terrorism? Israeli intelligence has an answer for why Israel has security concerns: the occupation. It continues, therefore terrorism continues. And this is from Israel’s Shabak intelligence service. Are they imbeciles? Are they self-hating Jews? Probably not.

If you find yourself dividing reality into sides, you’re likely headed down a blind alley. And if you seek the center between those sides that do not exist, likewise.

Episode 20: Addendum

  

 I had more to say. Unlike me, right?

Events

Episode 20

Some meandering, unedited thoughts on religion.

Bourdain Biopic

I’m not sure how I feel about this trailer. It might be okay. The film, that is.

I enjoyed the Road Runner documentary, which I feel did a nice job of giving the viewer a sense of who he was—warts and all.

The end of that film is tough for a fan to watch. He tragically became romantically involved with actress Asia Argento. My sense is she manipulated him quite badly. She knew very well the feelings he had for her and was quite negligent—sadistic?—about how she behaved. I’ll keep my opinions and impressions of her to myself. They are not positive.

She also had an effect on his behavior. He began making decisions on his show that he would never have made. It was a mess.

And then the suicide. Many people responded how folks respond when a suicide occurs: one brainless, self-congratulatory, insulting thing after another. I have written about suicide on this blog a couple times. As a culture, we do not understand suicide. And future generations will absolutely be repulsed by how we discuss suicide. Because it’s repulsive.

I did not know Anthony Bourdain. But I did love his shows and his books. He was as flawed as they come, and I am confident he was not always pleasant. But in some weird way, I’m protective of him, and want any cinematic treatment of him to stand up. I feel his memory deserves that.

Episode 19: Islam

Well, cripes, that took a while. I recorded this months ago! The Inquiry got put on the back burner for a minute. But we’re back.

This episode turned out pretty well. After I recorded it, I feared it was rubbish. But it turned out, as the idiom goes, not half bad.

A lot of editing. Thanks, Logan.

https://youtu.be/EsxcoUgiFrA?si=_haR25vuiOZKIBNW&t=1

Kamala Harris

I know polls do not predict the future, especially this far out. And I also know that Kamala Harris is not this country’s dream come true. She is a 1970s Republican—like Biden, the Clintons, and Obama—and that is all she will ever be. However, we could do a lot worse. Actually, we have already done precisely worse.

So, maybe start giving this some thought.

She smiles. Her politics aren’t the worst I’ve seen. She’s only worth a handful of millions, which by recent standards is quaint. And seeing as though I would be happy with a sock puppet as president at this point, I think Harris could do the job.

After eight years of Harris, let’s party and put AOC on Pennsylvania Ave. What do you say, ladies? There’s nothing 74.3 million of you and I can’t do.

https://www.newsweek.com/kamala-harris-surges-in-new-2028-poll-1188940