Spinach recalls and police.

The media is driving me crazy with all of this police news.

I’m a true Libra, so I am almost always right in the middle – I try to see both sides of the fence.

I hate that most of the population is easily swayed by shiny things and loud noises.

Whatever the news stations and the interwebs are saying – that is exactly what the people swallow.

I feel very alone at times like this.  I feel like if I say the wrong thing in the wrong crowd, I’m dead meat.

During the peak of the Ferguson, MO shenanigans, everyone on the television had pitchforks and torches.  I can’t handle it.  I want to shake everyone and tell each of them to calm their tits and actually look at the situation.  

Speak of the devil, and he shall appear.  That is how the saying goes. 

Speak of Miley Cyrus dry humping at the VMAs, and everything in the news is Miley for a few weeks. Then we forget and find a new hot topic.  That doesn’t mean it goes away, just some other shiny topic came along.

Speak of Ebola, and everything in the news is Ebola for a few weeks.  Then we forget and find a new hot topic.

Speak of police brutality, and all of a sudden, all the news stories are about police brutality.  It’s the hot topic on which the general public is currently feasting.  This topic comes up every few years, n’est pas?

This hits me close to my heart though, because of the way that it directly affects society so immediately.

It also makes me wonder wtf is wrong with me.  Have I had too much exposure to the world?

A month or so ago, Kate and I were at the Yanni concert at Wolftrap.  After the concert, we were hanging out down by the stage, and then as we were leaving, there was some altercation, and the police were arresting a man.  They had him pretty laid out in the grass, and were cuffing him.  It was a normal take-down arrest.  I thought nothing of it, and hardly noticed it, but Kate…. Kate was a different story.  Kate was watching intently.  She was saying things like, “how can they do that, he’s an old man!”  I could see it in her eyes… the planted media thoughts.. I could hear her thoughts…  Police brutality.

Media is poison.

It was a normal take down.  I told her that.  She said, “I guess I’m just not used to seeing it.  You work in the city, so you see it all the time.” 

This led me to the most terrifying thought –

Is this what is happening to America?  Have I been overexposed to the world, and am now so calloused?  Kate absolutely had a lily-white naive upbringing, but… is she normal, or am I? 

This is like when there is an e-coli breakout in spinach, from one state, from one farm.  The media blows it up.  Then all spinach in America is burned, and no one will touch the stuff.  Doesn’t matter if 99.5% of spinach farms had nothing to do with it – they are dead meat.  Guilty by association.

That’s what this is.  Media highlighted the tragedy in Ferguson, and now police everywhere have to pay the consequences.  That officer will never stand a chance in the courtroom.  His side will never matter.  As someone who is a fence-sitter/observer, I hate that.  He will never have an impartial jury.  Not to mention; he will never have a normal life.  Ever again.

 Mass hysteria makes me very, very nervous.

I don’t know the solution.  I just know that it makes me feel very depressed and alone and patriotic.

What an uplifting blog entry!!!!  Look, I just need you to tell me that everything is going to be okay and that I’m normal.