Critique on Culture

    As I have been mending from a severe bout of mental illness, I have been occupying my brain with the theater that is politics, and culture at large, as presented to me by apparently happy souls on the television. I have decided that the news is no more than a series of questions and answers which produce narratives.

                

   We see this most visibly on the local and national news, but big stories that consume us for a time get better ratings so a narrative yarn must be actively spun. Jon Stewart remains the most astute when it comes to pointing this out, (and thank goodness for him, beacon of sanity that he is.) Colbert will get there; he is still a little raw for my taste…

   On the one hand I am grateful to my television culture which gives me something to think about, but I would not be a very good liberal if I were not at least a little embarrassed by it. Judging by our own very real complicity, however, it persists, and we are responsible, each of us, for changing it. 

 
   There was a guy who promised us change not too long ago, and I for one am encouraged. People are very interested in seeing the results, but government is less a machine than a service. Service is a normal thing to expect, but for some reason we get unhappy when change is not delivered to our doorstep in a bow.

  The economy, I understand, is very difficult to wait around on, but the man works out of Washington, not Vegas. To this point he has inherited a financial crisis and kept us afloat. Nothing more can be done except watch the numbers. This leaves us to consider his words.

  The adage reminds us that words do not speak as loud as karate chops, or something, but in this internet age aren't words a kind of currency? 

  The man Obama has laid down some seemingly fundamental laws of decency (transparency, conciliation, non-aggression) which, it must be said, differ drastically from the previous administration's hubris; my daring use of that word is not a battle cry, just a fact.