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I guess I'm too connected to news sources biased to reporting frightening events, but still I wonder if 2016 is the year from Hell.

I mean, think about it. So far we've had:

[*]The Brexit, with a major cause of it coming through due to xenophobia and racism.
[*]The rise of Donald Trump and other scarily far-right figures. Also due to xenophobia and racism (notice a pattern yet?).
[*]Hell, hyper-nationalism/fascism is getting more popular in all sorts of places.
[*]The first documented extinction of a mammal due to AGW.
[*]Maybe more I haven't listed.

Right now the 2016 Presidential Election in my country is actually giving me butterflies in my stomach. Here's hoping 2017 is better than this year (ha!).

I did disconnect yesterday and went back on about 24 hours later thinking I had gotten less burnt out. But I guess that wasn't long enough. So I guess I need to disconnect for a longer period of time. How long would you all suggest?

I would also like to get some news fixes from websites devoted to positive news. Unfortunately the ones I've seen so far tend to be updated less frequently than the negative media. If there is a site or some other free resource that posts positive news regularly I'd be glad to know about it.

Calm down. Things are in flux a bit, for sure. But you hit the nail on the dead. News sources have an incentive to scare you so you keep watching. It's all gonna work out. Or we're all gonna die. There's nothing you'll be able to do about it.

Really?

SolarpunkFan wrote:I guess I'm too connected to news sources biased to reporting frightening events, but still I wonder if 2016 is the year from Hell.

I mean, think about it. So far we've had:

[*]The Brexit, with a major cause of it coming through due to xenophobia and racism.
[*]The rise of Donald Trump and other scarily far-right figures. Also due to xenophobia and racism (notice a pattern yet?).
[*]Hell, hyper-nationalism/fascism is getting more popular in all sorts of places.
[*]The first documented extinction of a mammal due to AGW.
[*]Maybe more I haven't listed.

Right now the 2016 Presidential Election in my country is actually giving me butterflies in my stomach. Here's hoping 2017 is better than this year (ha!).

I did disconnect yesterday and went back on about 24 hours later thinking I had gotten less burnt out. But I guess that wasn't long enough. So I guess I need to disconnect for a longer period of time. How long would you all suggest?

I would also like to get some news fixes from websites devoted to positive news. Unfortunately the ones I've seen so far tend to be updated less frequently than the negative media. If there is a site or some other free resource that posts positive news regularly I'd be glad to know about it.

Are you seeing a therapist? If not, please do see one. There's nothing wrong with seeking professional help.

SolarpunkFan wrote:I guess I'm too connected to news sources biased to reporting frightening events, but still I wonder if 2016 is the year from Hell.

I mean, think about it. So far we've had:

[*]The Brexit, with a major cause of it coming through due to xenophobia and racism.
[*]The rise of Donald Trump and other scarily far-right figures. Also due to xenophobia and racism (notice a pattern yet?).
[*]Hell, hyper-nationalism/fascism is getting more popular in all sorts of places.
[*]The first documented extinction of a mammal due to AGW.
[*]Maybe more I haven't listed.

At least one of those doesn't directly affect you (since Trump and Brexit didn't happen in the same country). Your first step is to ration your panic and panic on behalf of only those close to you.

(3) is part of (1) or (2). And I must point out, unless you live in a country with actual death squads going around and killing people, you really do not have cause for serious alarm. Should you wish to take action to resist such groups, by all means do so- but do not foul your breeches in terror that they will appear out of nowhere. Resist in a calm, organized, intelligent fashion.

As to a mammal going extinct, the mammal in question was a tiny rodent native to a single isolated island, such that it could be driven extinct by a few inches of sea level rise. This is bad, but it is only "hell" if you are in point of fact a tiny rodent native to that isolated island.

We have plenty of good reasons to fight climate control, but if the world goes to Hell every time a species of rodent on an isolated island goes extinct, then we have already been in Hell for a long time, and are likely to remain there.

In which case, you would be wise to remember one of Winston Churchill's aphorisms:

"When you are going through Hell... KEEP GOING!"

Stopping is inadvisable.

http://www.philly.com/philly/news/On-Ph ... -past.html
Positive news? How about old funny insane news. Phily paper recounts how it once literally acted like a page out of the onion's our dumb century by circling the city with an AIRSHIP in 1908!

SolarpunkFan wrote:I guess I'm too connected to news sources biased to reporting frightening events, but still I wonder if 2016 is the year from Hell.

I mean, think about it. So far we've had:

[*]The Brexit, with a major cause of it coming through due to xenophobia and racism.
[*]The rise of Donald Trump and other scarily far-right figures. Also due to xenophobia and racism (notice a pattern yet?).
[*]Hell, hyper-nationalism/fascism is getting more popular in all sorts of places.
[*]The first documented extinction of a mammal due to AGW.
[*]Maybe more I haven't listed.

Right now the 2016 Presidential Election in my country is actually giving me butterflies in my stomach. Here's hoping 2017 is better than this year (ha!).

Huh.

Well, as noted Brexit and Trump did not occur in the same country. Of course, the US and UK do have many connections but honestly, worry about one or the other not both. Let the Brits take care of their shit and hope to god the US takes care of their shit.

Yes, Trump is scary in some respects. I'm not too sure about Hillary, either, to be honest. But this is not nearly as bad as when Kennedy was assassinated on live TV (my spouse can wax eloquently on being a very young child and seeing the President's head blown off in a spray of blood and brains as it happened) or as bad as the Watergate scandal and crisis, which was my own introduction to an awareness of politics. It's not as bad as regular race riots burning down multiple city blocks or units of the Michigan National Guard engaging in multi-day gun battles with people holed up in a hospital emergency room, or unarmed war protesters being shot dead by the Ohio National Guard on a college campus. Which I'm also just old enough to remember. I'll leave out the bit about the Cuyahoga river catching on fire. More than once.

Which, in sum, is to say that while there are Bad Things happening in the world, and matters of real concern, this is not as bad as it's been at times even within the past 50 years for those of us in the US (or the UK).

I did disconnect yesterday and went back on about 24 hours later thinking I had gotten less burnt out. But I guess that wasn't long enough. So I guess I need to disconnect for a longer period of time. How long would you all suggest?

Until the news no longer scares you.

Try three days. Then a week. Learn to ration your exposure. Study the history of the 20th Century to get some perspective on current situations. The worst I've experienced in my lifetime pales in comparison to what happened between 1929-1945, which my parents remembered from personal experience. Those years were orders of magnitude worse for those in Europe and Asia. One reason I miss my dad is because he could put my fears and concerns in perspective*.

I would also like to get some news fixes from websites devoted to positive news. Unfortunately the ones I've seen so far tend to be updated less frequently than the negative media. If there is a site or some other free resource that posts positive news regularly I'd be glad to know about it.

That's a tough one - the problem is that reporting positive stuff doesn't pay as well as reporting negative stuff.

However - are you aware that the last segment of the World News on NBC every night is a positive story? Some of them are really good. Look for headers like "making a difference". There are times I check in for just the last five minutes of that broadcast. If my spouse or I hear a positive news story we share it with each other.




* I do confess to a small freak-out when dad commented that the Great Recession was the worst he'd seen "since I was a kid" - and I recalled he grew up in the Great Depression. Oh, wow, dad, that bad? Yep, that bad. But, as dad pointed out, they got through that, we can get through this. It also alleviated a lot of guilt on my part that I had somehow screwed up. Nope, victim of circumstance, you personally aren't a screw-up. But that is also why we've had a rise of nationalism/fascism since then, because the one tends to follow the other. It's still bad, but once you realize the connection it's not so mysterious and it shows why having a healthy economy and jobs for people is important, but it damps down those sorts of things. You never eliminate it entirely, but fix the economy you also go a long way towards fixing that, so it gives you a direction to aim for if you want to work on making a difference. I didn't find the rise in extremists surprising post 2007 because I actually expected it to happen.

Thank you Broomstick!

I'll give a three day net sabbatical a try and after that I'll take a look at the NBC World News segments.

And thank you Napoleon. I'll go see a therapist as soon as possible.

I think it's high time I start getting my shit together.

..... I could have sworn I said something similar several weeks ago. Pfft. Chop chop, chap!

As for Brexit, it wasn't entirely down to racism. There's a complex social-economical and political root to it, that can't be handwoven away as something so simple or black and white.

It's not yet had a huge impact for most of us beyond the price of marmite increasing, and parliament seems to be preparing to water it all down anyway.

Good luck with being Tangoed, though.