We're Not Doomed, It's Always Just Darkest Before The Dawn

There's an old adage, "It's always darkest before the dawn", which has a lot of wisdom in it. Many times, perhaps most times, things do get their worse before they get better.

I've seen the same thing in my life. When times were hardest, once I got through them, times got a lot better. Sometimes just because it feels much better, sometimes because you worked so hard to get out of your bad situation, you overshoot when things start to turn for the better. Or you put out calls and some finally pay off, sometimes after you no longer need them. Not always the case surely, but many times it is true and frequently for some of the worst times.

This certainly isn't news to me but for some, they seem completely ignorant of it and that brews up anger and bitterness in them; sometimes in ways to work against themselves.

I was recetnly listening to Fareed Zararia's Sunday morning news show as I always do on the weekend: Real Time With Bill Maher on Saturday mornings for a lighthearted view of what's going on in the world and Fareed on Sundays for a more serious orientation, as I prep my next Monday blog.

I realized something about how bad things have been at times and questioning, where's the relief, where's the end? It occurred to me it may be closer than I thought.

The US Congressional Republican's stupidity these past years, the stupidity of China's leaders, the insanity in the Middle East, perhaps all this is their death knell and good times are soon to be upon us? News networks like Fox News who push rational issues to the point of media manipulation and sensationalism purely for the purpose of ratings and money, greed. It's dislikeable, disagreeable and stupid.

Rational people dislike types such as Bill O'Reilly who are a part of the hiding in plain sight, conservative anti-intelligentsia...the "Intelligent Stupid Elite", who exist under the transparent media "rocks" of the anti-liberal wingnut.

People dislike national leaders such as Vlady Putin in Russia, an ex-KGB punk, grown just a bit bigger than tiny. Wait, punks are cool now, let's say, chump, instead then. Look, I'd say thug but I don't want to disdain the good name of thugs everywhere.

Putin who dresses (IN a dress? Hey, who knows in private, right?) when he doesn't have his shirt off, to try to satiate his bloated ego and girlishly sensitive self-esteem. He's like the self-esteem insufficient bully in the elementary schoolyard who picks on poor little Ukraine who was minding their own business and only wanted to talk to the cool kids in the west, and so he steals their Crimea while everybody is looking, then dares anyone to do anything about it. This isn't very impressive for everyone else, by the way.

Putin who takes up a sport like judo (or wrestling for that matter). Unless you are looking to get up close and personal, rubbing up against sweaty skin with other men. Look, there's nothing wrong with either Judo or wresting, But it's different when you are leader of a nation. Things, count for more than the seem to and they should.

When wouldn't he take a really good Martial Art like Aikido, unless he feels that is too peacenik-like so then he could go for, Krag Maga. What does it say about Russia's leader that instead of taking up an excellent home grown Martial Art like Systema, he takes on a Japanese one and not even an Martial Art but Japan's venerable and national sport? Is this a brave Russian Bear of a man?

If he's a real man, if he wants to prove to the world how powerful he really is, let's see him produce a television cartoon making fun of the Prophet Mohammad.

Now THAT, wold take a real man.

People also dislike his similar counterpart in more extreme North Korea's Kim Jong-Un whose carnal and culinary satiations have gotten so far out of hand his ankles rebelled and broke. Or the too thin right up through to the brain, Bashar Al-Assad in Syria.

Or the pathetic movements of ISIS\ISIL, with their sad abuses in allowing juvenile desires to run rampant and free with weapons aimed and fired at who many innocent people? This is a group whose single obvious goal apparently is to get Iran talking with the Great Satan!

Yes, lots of things going on around the world today.

These are sad individuals all, whose sense of self importance trumps that of the abused citizens in their care.

But these are all tiny despots including Putin in massive and still mighty Russia, whose people will one day wake up and kick his abusive ass out of office and take out his cronies and backers as well. Putin who is still just a tiny man in control of a large nation on their way out of this ever modernizing world if Putin remains in power.

Enough of these concerns about these tiny egotisticals.

Consider the slow engagement of governments to clamp down on issues like ebola. An issue which drastically points out how not helping poorer nations, can truly affect those who think, "this isn't our issue".

Because, it is. It's all our issue.

Sometimes it takes things getting to their worst, to gather the attention of everyone, before there is a strong enough and cohesive enough of a reaction in order for real positive change to come to fruition.

Perhaps, just perhaps, we're finally almost there.

Of course, many times things go on seemingly forever. Sometimes bad things fizzle out and suddenly there is a newer, better arrangement and things simply evolve into being better, without an Arab Uprising, a Tienanmen Square, or a Civil War.

But the current issue with ISIS/ISIL is pretty bad, pretty ridiculous, pretty offensive; not only to the world, to the west, but to the Arab and Islamic world, too.

We may be viewing the death knell of much bad in the world. It doesn't look or seem like it. But when it happens we will look back over it and only then see how it was obvious at some point after the fact; when it seems like it should have been obvious during the fact; and yet, we couldn't see it. Why?

Just ask your self, why, and look around you, try to see what isn't obvious. Of course you have to cut through the media's skewing things for sensationalism and their lies depending on what compromised news network you listen to (that is Fox News as opposed to Al Jezeera, maybe), and the spin doctors and publicist's manipulations.

If that is the case, if things are about to get better, let's at least consider it now, when we most need to see the light of a new day and not the sunset of an old one. To be aware of the possibility of an upswing, so that later you can say, I saw it coming and not, I really had no idea and I did unnecessary harm to myself and others in my professing "the sky is falling", which seems to be so much anymore about life in our modern times.

Just... be, aware, be, hopeful. And act toward making things better.

TUNN - The Useful News Network - News That Gets Things Done

This is an adjunct blog to today's earlier blog (USCNN).

Our news networks have been sucking, long and hard for some time now. Worst offender in the realm of Journalism? Fox News. Others? MSNBC. Worst News Network overall? Probably, CNN. Which is so sad considering what they initially achieved in their birth and creation of the twenty-four hour news cycle.

Sadder still, currently one of the best journalistic networks in the classical sense, is a foreign held news network (based in Qatar), Al Jezeera. What does that say about our home grown, bloated, biased news networks?

Some of the issues?

Instant media. The need to fill a twenty-four hour news cycle, even when there is nothing really going on in that period. Also, the belief by networks that people are only attracted to certain types of news, and the whore-mongering race to present those news pieces, regardless of what America needs to be hearing about. Advertisers. Advertisers who might pull their support if the wrong news is presented. Also, an overwhelming deluge by some networks of their corporate opinion. OpEds, over editorializing. Companies pushing agendas to make a buck at all costs with considerations of journalism taking a back seat, especially with politically partisan ones.

We need useful news.

We need a news network that isn't beholding to anyone. Who can do pure journalism. We need news that gives us what we need and not what they want, what their owners want, what a political party wants, what religious organizations want, what extremist conservatives or, liberals want.

We the American people are being held hostage by these groups, and it needs to stop. We need to start using our minds, to be intelligent, and to be a knowledgeable, even if in many cases not an educated citizenry. We need to be educated, even if only by our news networks.

This new network could be one where, between "hard news" segments, they could have alternative shows like the Jon Stewarts and The Daily Show type shows. Humor is a great way to get people to absorb news that is hard to hear, or accept. Stewart is an obvious liberal in his orientation. Perhaps a humorous liberal show followed up by a conservative show; but I'd suggest going another way.

Still, these types of shows show us the foibles in our ways, much in the way that the original Star Trek TV show, exhibited to us through science fiction, through aliens ("Those stupid aliens, who are nothing like us!"). They showed us things we needed to look at but couldn't, unless we saw it through the filter of it being others, outside of who we are.

We still need to see this kind of news, to deal with it, to ruminate on it with enough information so as to make useful, informed decisions. And we can't currently do that with the type of news we are receiving. The American people need news. Real news. News presented in a way that is useful. And news that we need to hear and not just want to hear.

In short, we need a news network that is giving us what we need to hear, and yes what we find interesting, but most of all not just editorialized and opinionated but real information with possible solutions; or at least a path to finding those solutions; ways to think about how to achieve solutions. Those are the key elements.

We need to know what to do about some of these intense issues so that when we talk to others about them, debate them, even argue about them, we have some meat, some fuel to use in order to achieve some kind of consensus.

We need news media that helps us to find the right answers and not just the answers for us, or for our group, our preferred political system. We need to put down the crazies, the extremists, the right wing fools, the left wing absurdities.

We need a news Network with programs that reports the news, even news we don't care about, until it is reported properly, and that offers the best case for fixing those issues; solutions as supported by the educated, the knowledgeable, even the public; and then updated over time in revisiting that news as better solutions and information make themselves known. Canvassing discussion groups, listening to the public, combing available information and actual journalistic endeavors.

The American people need to be informed. We need to be informed properly so that we support what our government does, so that they do what is needed, so that the American voice to our government not only supports what is done, or to be done, but can even offer solutions upward to our head of State and not only and always, downward from our head of State. It would need checks and balances but that can be figured out.

We need a new kind of news: a New News Network, a new kind of, "Triple N" that covers our nation's needs. Remember what John F Kennedy said: "Ask not what your country can do for you. Ask what you can do for your country."

Many people take that to mean, leave your homes, go out and volunteer, join the military, enter public service. But no, not only. It can be as simple as knowing what is happening all around you. Knowing the correct information, having an informed decision, speaking out what is true and necessary and others having if not the same understanding, at least an educated, intelligent understanding of the issues. Because in that, we can have productive debates. And in a productive debate, you can arrive at what is the best answer.

You have to have accurate information for a good debate and you have to have information on the things most important at that time in the world, as well as future considerations and their possible repercussions.

As I mentioned at the beginning, I just wrote a blog on this today titled, USCNN, that talks about this kind of thing, in part.

We need this new network to serve up to us the major and important news pieces. We need them to offer up to us perhaps the top three best solutions to the situation as it stands using (and over the next days and weeks), using all available resources, government, foreign governments, Vox Populi (the Voice of the People) via the internet and other news networks, using everything to continue to offer us the best solutions, possible solutions and not just that network's opinions, biases and hidden agendas.

Much as in the ancient Roman belief that a nation state should be run by the people, it takes an educated citizenry to properly support that best case type of a Republic.

In theory, we are a great nation.

To truly be a great nation and to continue being one will require us to pay more attention to what is going on; but first, we need to be sure that we are being supported in order for us to support our people, our government and thus, our position in the world and their perception of just what and who we really are.