Sane? Me? To quote Chico, “you can’t fool me, there ain’t no sanity clause!” 
Getting serious: obviously it’s not everyone’s thing, but the continuing presence of the Lord in my life is what keeps me sane and centered. And it’s what impels me to do what I can in response to the madness of our times.
“It must be late in the day that pygmies cast such long shadows.” --Gian Carlo Rota, Italian American mathematician.
As far as climate change goes it is getting to be very late in the day. And the orange menace is certainly a mental pygmy. The Australian has even smaller mental stature, which I didn’t think possible.
I won’t live to see the worst, but I have children and grandchildren.
I’ve become fatalistic but hold out hope that the younger generations (Millennials and Gen Z) will as Phil Collins said ‘put it right’. but I’m guessing it’ll be the 2030s before we really see meaningful shifts in our culture and government due to it.
I feel like a meaningful percentage of the older generation are so attached to white supremacy that they’ve lost all contact with morality and reality. Obviously they aren’t all like that, but I’m hoping there is a generational shift.
I don’t think the world will end, but I think we’re facing pretty large issues on a domestic and global scale that aren’t being dealt with properly. Climate change, resource depletion, lack of sustainability in our lifestyle and economy, rise of neofascism, health care, long term debt, etc.
I just remember Reinhold Niebuhr’s “Serenity Prayer”:
God, grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change, courage to change the things I can, and wisdom to know the difference.
Leaving out the “God” part, of course.
I’d like to believe that, but I don’t know. I feel like we’re at a point where no matter how corrupt, criminal, incompetent, dangerous, etc you are as a politician, as long as you promote white identity politics you’re guaranteed 60 million votes in national elections. Throw in various forms of cheating (voter suppression, gerrymandering, hacking election, abusing the census, etc) and the GOP are a powerful national party.
Trump may be their last stand, but its going to take a while for the demographics to change. But I do hope by the 2050s at the latest, we are done with Trumpism as a national threat.
In blue states the GOP is already moving into the wilderness. California for example is basically a one party state at this time. But so far, I don’t know if it has changed anything.
I also worry the GOP will stack the courts with yes men who overturn any laws passed by millennials and younger generations when they take power.
I follow Candide’s advice.
I cultivate my garden.
Rubbing dog bellies helps too.
Hard-bitten cynicism.
“This too shall pass” works better for kidney stones than reality, in my experience;)
On a good day, I consider that if someone had said in 1855 “10 years from now, serfdom in Russia and slavery in the US will be abolished,” people would have laughed at them.
On a bad day, I think of Eduardo Galeano’s “Let’s save our pessimism for better days.” And his paraphrase of Fernando Birri:”Utopia lies at the horizon. When I draw nearer by two steps, it retreats two steps. If I proceed ten steps forward, it swiftly slips ten steps ahead. No matter how far I go, I can never reach it. What, then, is the purpose of utopia? It is to cause us to advance.”
On the worst days, I think of the German expression, “Hope dies last.”
I’ll likely be dead in ten years or so, so I’m finding it harder to become outraged over the latest thing that some shit-for-brains politician says.
First thing I look at in the morning is The Far Side website. It sets the tone for the day. Secondly, I look to see if any of my kids have posted on FB. Thirdly, I go to the Dope to see if I need to enlighten any of you with an inane comment or two, and generally avoid the politics, pit and debate fora, although once in awhile I get sucked in.
And I wait for my wife to see the latest news and relay anything vital to me. Then we do the daily crossword and jumble in a friendly competition. I don’t read about Trump, and I mute the TV whenever he is on it. I do watch local news, which is usually just about as stupid as the national bit. I try to take a walk every day to observe actual life going on instead of the fake lives being lived in Washington, DC.
I don’t care who is running for POTUS on the Dem side, because I will vote for whomever wins the primary. Twice, if I can get away with it.
Sarcasm, mostly. And the fact that the times have always been bad, and much worse even in the lifetime of my parents (WW II).
Oh, and I never, ever, under any circumstance, look at this.
I don’t know, but for me, it’s so disheartening to see that the people in power, right now, are actively rolling back things that took generations to build. It has depleted my optimism that humanity will always progress. It won’t. And there is no law in the universe that says it will. Our technology has allowed everyone to live in a virtual reality, only seeing and hearing what we choose and no reason to change that. So things are bad and things will not get any better. And anytime now that I hear new crazy, depressing shit on the news, I just accept it and turn inwards towards my happiness and family. I think to myself that if I never listened to news I’d never know any difference between who was in any federal position, and during in my blink-of-an-eye time on this earth, there are things I can do that bring me and my loved ones happiness independent of the world around me.
I used to be an information junkie. So I get it.
BUT, there are so many things I really need or want to do for myself and my loved ones that I don’t even have the time and resources for that it makes it very easy to be ignorant of stuff I don’t want to engage. So, staying busy prioritizing stuff that matters goes a long way.
I have followed that thread religiously from the beginning and I wonder how I have kept my peace of mind and my hope in humanity. But you gotta be informed to complain.
Skiing, off-roading with dogs and the Drink.
Irrespective of what’s happening in the news, that’s the problem with news on TV; most is puinidts being pundity.
I don’t recall which comedian it was, but one of them had a routine where he said that back in the day there was only half an hour of news a night and now it’s 24 hours “and back then, that was correct.” He was right. It just isn’t possible to cover the news 24/7 and actually have 24/7 worth of news to report. You can sum it all up in an hour, tops.
You need to reduce your news consumption.
Things have always been like this.
There are natural disasters, you say? Always have been. Viruses? Always have been, and hell, it used to be worse. Wars? Always have been. Crime? Always have been. Poverty? Old news. Outrage? Since the dawn of time.
Nothing is really different right now.
Turn off the TV. You won’t miss it.
I appreciate your thoughts, AND I said in my OP that I don’t watch TV news. I don’t have cable, and the only station I get OTA is PBS. I don’t watch the news there either.
I agree with all the posts saying how most ‘dire’ current events don’t affect most people very directly except insofar as they get upset by watching news coverage of them.
But the main point is Rick Jay’s just above. A similar description of ‘these troubled times’ could have been given pretty much any time since I’ve been alive and conscious of what’s going on outside my own life. How about watching them read off the names of those American service people killed in Vietnam each week as one news channel used to, a long list ca. 1968, and that didn’t include the names of a whole lot more Vietnamese, allied and opposing, who got killed that week. How about obsessing over the possibility of all out nuclear war? And you can still do that if you’d like to, though the media doesn’t pay much attention to the possibility anymore.
And this is talking (my conscious experience) 1960’s on, not far more ‘troubled times’ in many or most places longer ago.
If you have emotional trouble dealing with very bad news from far away with no real practical effect on you, or even the potential for very bad news which might indeed affect you in the future (nuclear war, climate change etc) I think you just have to pay less attention to the media, or seek professional help if you can’t get yourself to do that. Re ‘I don’t watch TV’ with due respect some media must be giving you the idea things are so dire compared to the normal state of the world. Whatever media that is then, consume less, if it’s really bothering you. Is my 2 cents anyway.
I know the feeling. I guess I used to subscribe to Fukuyama’s view that the end goal was liberal democracy, and everyone was marching towards that in their own ways. As nations got wealthier, healthier and better educated, they would eventually demand democracy and human rights.
But lately I’ve seen so many nations willingly abandon democracy in favor of xenophobia, tribalism and dictatorship. Russia, Hungary, Poland, Brazil, America, Venezuela, Turkey, etc. Then you have China using AI to create the perfect dictatorship and they’ll export this technology to the entire world. Even civilized nations like France, the national front’s share of the vote went from 18% in 2002 to 34% in 2017.
What also really sucks is this feeling that a lot of people will abandon every principle a civilized person should have in favor of tribalism. “Fuck my grandchildren, my tribe needs me” could be the mantra of a lot of people nowadays and it sucks hard. Who cares if your kids and grandkids can’t see a doctor, find a good job, have a right to vote, live on a sustainable planet, etc. There is some black guy or muslim somewhere who is scary and thats more important.
I really hope this is a blip, but I don’t know. I just know this made me realize how important checks and balances are to deal with the inevitable rise in authoritarianism. If Germany had had strong checks and balances, then the Nazis may have just been a blip in history and been voted out of power within a few years. Venezuela tore down their checks and balances, and Poland is trying to tear down the checks and balances there too. And the people there keep voting for it election after election.
What I do focus on are the success stories. Mexico created a universal health care system. India is building a national health care system. Germany is defending democracy. People in North Korea are consuming foreign media and learning the system there is all a lie. Kids are starting movements to deal with guns and climate change because their parents let them down, etc.
