While confined at home due to the COVID-19 lockdown, all sorts of strange topics have began dancing through my head. I’ve watched lots of television in order to maintain some degree of sanity. Nonetheless, below, please find a sample of topics that I’ve saved on my laptop.
After the Moon Landing and the creation of the Internet, both in 1969, science lost its appeal, at least for me. In my view, all this hoopla about landing spaceships on Mars is totally overrated, not to mention expensive and useless, especially since scientists cannot even make the public address system in New York City subway stations work.
Also, how can we celebrate space exploration when aircraft manufacturers cannot even figure out how to bring some warmth to the area around the exit doors of commercial airplanes?
We in the press go gaga (not Lady Gaga, who would make more sense) over the discovery of a galaxy so far away that it’s already dead, yet we seem to have no way
to detect earthquakes in advance.
Journalists the world over get overly excited over Mars exploration when only 10 percent of the oceans have been explored. Is it possible that the oil and plastic industries don’t want to encourage ocean exploration so as to avoid showing the public the damaging environmental impact of plastic bottles?
Don’t you laugh when looking at ads from oil companies that tout their environmental commitment?
Don’t you chuckle when hearing car manufacturers advertise their concern for clean air?
I also question the utility of donating to medical research. Let’s face it, Big Pharma only finances research that is geared towards treating diseases — not at curing them. If the world wants to find cures for cancer, diabetes, or various coronaviruses, research should be a state priority and out of Big Pharma’s control.
Don’t you find it ironic when fashion icons go on humanitarian fundraising tours knowing that their industry is the world’s largest polluter and user of slave labor?
And why can finance industry executives often avoid jail time by paying huge fines?
Where is the media, which is ostensibly tasked with representing the public, in all of this? Or has the public been duped into believing that even talking about social, environmental, and financial issues is tantamount to “socialism”?
Does the public realize that, at least in the U.S., Social Security (state pension) and Medicare (state health care) are the best forms of socialism? Try to suggest eliminating them, and anti-Socialist Americans will eat you whole.
So what is the solution? Science no longer works for us. The media no longer pro- tects our interest. The public is too preoccupied with social media influencers. Politicians are in the pockets of special interests. The solution is… watching television as a way to maintain some degree of sanity. As the COVID-19 lockdown has amply demonstrated, people resort to television to get information, especially in times of crisis. They watch it during the day to keep up with the news and at night to be entertained.
(By Dom Serafini)
Audio Version (a DV Works service)
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