NOTEBOOK: The forest is burning, so quit arguing about single trees

By David McElroy · September 26, 2013

Cleaning out the notebook again…

Watching the bloody and useless battles over the funding of ObamaCare confirms for me once again that getting out of the system is the best choice for sanity and long-term logic. The forest is burning and it’s too late to put out the fire. The smart thing is to figure out how to escape the doomed forest, not fight over who gets to control certain trees. The whole thing is going to burn.

I’m frustrated by the utter lack of regard for the truth that I see in so many posts on Facebook and Twitter these days. Just because someone posted something and you’re reposting it doesn’t absolve you of responsibility for spreading lies. Show respect for the truth and your own credibility. Use some basic common sense before spreading obvious idiocy that can be debunked in 30 seconds. You’re making yourself look foolish when you do that. It seems that people are willing to post anything that appears to support their viewpoint, whether it’s credible or not.

For the last three months, I’ve waited through various delays for the person who had agreed to do the special effects makeup for my next short film. The continued delays in getting certain supplies were frustrating, but I thought everything would be on track once she finally got those supplies. She told me about two weeks ago that she would be ready to go in two weeks, but she sent me an email out of the blue last Thursday to say she was quitting because of “work and personal matters.” So I’ve wasted three months on this project and now I have to find someone else who can do the same effects or else switch to a different project. I’m frustrated, because I thought we’d have a finished film by now. I’m trying to find someone who can do the same effects, because I really want to make this film.

I have a Facebook friend who just had to endure a criminal trial in which his brother was prosecuted for killing their parents. The brother was convicted earlier this week and sentenced to life without parole Wednesday. Sometimes when I look at his situation — and the situations of others who’ve endured very difficult circumstances — it makes me feel as though I have less to complain about than I sometimes feel that I do. I know that you can’t really compare people’s heartaches, but I do feel fortunate that I haven’t had to endure what some others have had to endure. I don’t know how well I could deal with some of what I see friends deal with. In many respects, I have it pretty good.

I know that social media allow many people to have public voices that otherwise wouldn’t be heard. But when I look at what’s actually said on Facebook and Twitter, I’m not sure we’ve really gained much more than a cacophony of nonsense.

There was a time when bad news-writing was unusual enough for me to point out and make fun of. But now it’s the norm. It’s almost everywhere. It’s not even worth pointing out, and I’m not sure how many people care. As an ex-editor, I’m ashamed of what’s become of professional standards. (And one of the worst offenders is my local newspaper. It was a very good newspaper at one time, but it’s pathetic today.)

There are times when you know what you’re going to do about a difficult decision, but you’re just working up the courage to tell the person or people who you think will be hurt by what you need to do. There are also times when you lose the chance you need to take because you didn’t take difficult steps sooner. I’ve been watching several people lately who are in this situation, and it reminds me of what I’ve done something similar. It seems as though most of our wounds in life are self-inflicted in one way or another.

If your opinions invariably match those of almost everyone in your chosen political group — about everything — you’re probably not thinking for yourself. I see so many people today who seem to find out what their group is supposed to believe about something before expressing an opinion — and then defending the opinion as though it was really their own.

In the last week, one of my cats has figured out how to turn the lights off in the bedroom. When it’s getting to be dinner time and Bessie wants to complain about not having been fed is the only time she does it. I’m pretty sure it’s just to get my attention, but I hope she doesn’t decide to trying turning the light on in the middle of the night.

It frustrates me that people make up explanations for things they don’t understand — and they’re not interested in the simple truth when it doesn’t confirm their dark conspiratorial speculations. I see that from more and more people today. The world is complex and it’s OK to admit that we don’t understand everything. Some people can’t accept that, though, so they make up explanations that confirm their existing biases. Once again, it’s essentially about a lack of respect for truth.

And, finally, mornings are wonderful, but they come at such an inconvenient time of the day.

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If you have problems with high blood pressure, I’d like to encourage you to consider making serious changes to your diet. There might be some people who don’t have any choice but to start taking prescription medications for high blood pressure, but I’d like to tell you that I have completely eliminated my issue by eliminating all sugar and almost all carbohydrates. (A couple of months ago, my blood pressure hit 185/144, which was dangerously high — considered stage 3 hypertension.) By completely changing my eating habits, I’m down 22 pounds and my blood pressure is now in the “ideal” range — without taking any medication. In addition, I sleep better and I have more energy. Getting away from the sugar-laden mess that we generally refer to as “highly processed food” has been a life-changer for me. Now my challenge is to avoid slipping back into old habits — by eating in the dangerous ways that almost everyone in our society has come to see as normal.

When I first heard about this, I thought it must be satire. When I discovered it was real, I was appalled, but I still thought it must be a one-time thing from some nutty activist. But it turns out it’s the latest bit of pandering to a bunch of far-left activists who believe that a man can become a woman if he decides to claim he’s a woman. As everybody knows, men have prostate glands. Women do not. Period. End of story. Men can get prostate cancer. Women cannot. But political activists are so eager to pretend that a man claiming to be a “trans woman” is really a woman that they are insisting that “women” be included in public health messages about the issue. This is nothing but political virtue-signaling. If you’re a man, you know which parts you have. You know that you ought to be screened. Nobody is made any safer by dragging far-left gender ideology into simple medical reality.

Every time someone tries to tighten requirements around the use of absentee ballots, I hear screams from Democrats and others on the political left that such efforts are nothing but “suppression of black voters.” These protests have never made sense to me, especially because it’s never been a secret that absentee ballot fraud goes on all the time in certain areas. (Everybody knew it when I worked in politics.) The people who engage in such fraud are rarely caught — often because the local political establishment approves of the crime — but a Democrat who won a primary election in Clay County, Alabama, last year has pleaded guilty to this sort of cheating. Terry Andrew Heflin was running for a place on the Clay County Commission. He was caught ordering seven absentee ballots in the names of various voters and sending them to his post office box — after which he used the ballots to vote absentee for himself seven time. Did he have other people cast additional fraudulent ballots? We’ll never know. But in a primary in which he was able to win with only 141 votes, it wouldn’t take many fraudulent votes to change the election. The next time you hear “civil rights activists” claim that it’s just “voter suppression” to hurt blacks which is at the root of efforts to stop this fraud, remember Terry Heflin. If you care about fair and honest elections, ballot security and voter identity should matter to you.

A state legislator in Maine has been stripped of the ability to speak in the state Legislature — and her votes are not being counted on legislative issues — all because she made a truthful social media post. Rep. Laurel Libby (R-Auburn, Maine) opposes allowing boys to compete against girls’ teams in school athletics and she’s become known for making an issue of it. On Feb. 17, she posted on Facebook about a recent example that she found outrageous. She posted side-by-side photos of a boy named John who competed last year in a state track event and won fifth place against other boys two years ago — and a photo of the same boy (now called Katie) who won first place in the same event this year against girls. Whether you find this outrageous or not, Libby is clearly being honest and truthful about the objective facts of an issue of public importance. But the state Legislature censured her. Democrats decreed that she could not speak in the House and that her votes would not count on legislation — until she apologized for the outrage of telling the truth. She refused and her constituents have been unrepresented in the state House since then. The people who promote this ideology are out of touch with reality and won’t rest until they force the rest of us to join them in this delusion. But even if you agree with “trans” ideology, you should be appalled at this heavy-handed attack on political speech.

The late Steve Jobs was at the center of our culture’s transition from analog to digital. He co-founded Apple Computer. He led the team that revolutionized personal computing with the first Macintosh. As CEO of Apple, he led the development of the iPhone and later the iPad. You would think the children of such a man would be surrounded by technology. But Jobs and his wife Laureen didn’t let their children use iPads. Their home had few screens of any kind. Even though Jobs spent most of his time developing and selling Macs and iPhones and iPads, he was home with his wife and children for dinner when he was in town. The family ate together at a simple wooden table in their kitchen — and there were no digital devices or focus on popular culture. Instead, he’s said to have guided his family toward deep discussions of art, philosophy and education — with no iPads to be found. If the man who guided the development of such products chose a different path for his own children, does that suggest that his digital experience taught him that children need human connection, not screens? And does it suggest the possibility that we might be better off if we made the same choice for our families?

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