re: #608 albusteve

Granted, there’s ALWAYS plenty of reasons to be yanked off at government behavior.

I have a story that might relate a bit. My 75-yr old father has long been an avid watcher of news channels (and yes, F is one of his favorites). His politics have always had the tendency to occasionally spin off into some sort of bizarro extreme view, but largely human and sane, with humor. Over the last couple of years, it’s been getting harder and harder to talk to him without politics rearing its head (and, oddly, for whatever it’s worth, I’m usually loath to enter into political discussions with anybody) and anger surfacing.

He called me on my birthday last year, and started spouting exact quotes from Beck, tea party spokespeople, etc. I stopped him and said Dad, you’re watching too much TV news. He started spluttering (in a flouncy sort of manner) about being sick and tired about hearing how he can’t think for himself. (Missing the fact that the phrases he was using were things he had never had in his vocabulary before…..). I said no, let me ask you this: are you planning on starting a petition? running for office? attending rallies? volunteering for a party, politician, or lobbying group? He said hell no. I said, you’re still gonna vote, right? Hell yes was the answer.
So, I then said, you’re spending a lot of time allowing yourself to get pissed off at things you can’t control and won’t be doing anything to actively change; you’re taking the one thing you can control, which is how you respond to things, and allowing it to be hijacked. STOP WATCHING THE DAMNED NEWS CHANNELS, I said. Take a break. Watch movies that make you laugh, listen to music, watch war movies, read histories, play with your grandkids. You keep picking at a mental scab, and no wonder it’s pissing you off. Stay informed, vote smart — but revel in the good things.

He ended up calling me a couple of days later to thank me, saying he had gone the last two days without watching news channels and felt great. Relatives called me and said “what the hell did you say to him? and can we copy it?”

Not saying that’s THE answer. But I believe there’s a lot of people like my dad whose anger levels could benefit from less exposure to the 24-hour cycle.