Let's just be honest we get too much information. Now before your civil libertarian sensibilities are offended, let me say I think all of the information we get and more should be instantly AVAILABLE, we just have to stop allowing jerk-offs on 24 hour cable news from cramming it down everyone's throat.
Maybe you've experienced this (in jr. high if nowhere else), a chatterbox friend who tells you every bit of news, gossip and conjecture about EVERYONE in the world. Some of these people you don't even know! But she tells you with such fervor that it sounds like a life or death situation. Before you know it your blood pressure is racing and you are planning your revenge on some dude named Fernando who you're being told just keyed your new Porsche because you stole his Strawberry Pop Tart collection. It doesn't occur to you in the moment that you drive a Nissan, you've never in your life touched a Pop Tart except once at the strip club and...who the hell is this Fernando?
This all sounds trivial until you realize it's a perfect metaphor for 24 hour cable news. Not just Fox and their inane ranting, ALL 24 hour news. I don't need to know that it rained in Belize today causing a man on a bicycle to crash into a fruit cart resulting in the senseless destruction of seventeen pineapples and a kiwi. SERIOUSLY?
Do you really think all of the animosity in this country is a result of Obama or Boehner? They're just playing to the cameras. That's how you get "real Americans" on your side and get re-elected! We'll never do anything about oil, or climate change because before the sound byte ends their are seventeen "experts" on the air rallying the Jersey Shore audience to write their congressman!
The Obama administration is trying to make a deal to drill off Alaska and create some effective oversight of fracking for natural gas. Both of these things could make us able one day to tell the middle east to piss off and handle their own issues because we're cool over here with our Nat Gas Camaros that get 400 miles to the gallon. It would solve our economic AND political nightmares. But before he can do it, some grass roots group in Listentomybullshit, Oregon is marching on Washington. Imagine next time
Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad says "We will cut off your oil!" we could say, "Cool, babe. Let me know when you guys find the right anxiety meds. You're harshing my mellow."
And what about the markets? The fact that two million bits of financial "information" are thrown at us all day every day makes it no wonder the markets are schizophrenic. It's like trying to drive through DC rush hour traffic with eight clones of your mother in the car telling you to "watch out for that squirrel three blocks up and for God's sake step on it!"
Again, we need more and more accurate info available to us, but for the love of Edward R. Murrow could everyone just shut the hell up until we ask?
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