What in the holy hell is going on in the news today?

The average American citizen is inundated with conflicting reports from mainstream media, alternative media, expert opinions, social media, local and federal governing bodies, first- and second-hand accounts from healthcare and other frontline workers, and murmurs and opinions from the community at large, regarding what is actually going on with COVID.

Maybe you are like me and are skeptical of both the mainstream and alternative media. Perhaps you view both sides with some apprehension and measure of discernment.

It is enough to drive someone insane. I want to shut it all off and tune it out for even a little respite from the noise. But I can’t very well do that because this concerns me, my family, and my loved ones, my very livelihood, everything I care about. The entire structure in which we live, love, create, and work is at stake.

Swirling and whirling in the dust of the media rodeo these days is a complex, convoluted, and jumbled mess of fear, blame, cover ups, whistleblowing, precarious civil liberties, undue arrests, a changing of the guards, vitriol and shouting amongst opposing sides of the masses, and an increasingly confusing climate of uncertainty.

I’ve started researching the history of media and journalism, and will be writing an article about what I find. It behooves us to ask questions about all sources. Who is behind the curtain?

"There always comes the point beyond which lying becomes counterproductive. This point is reached when the audience to which the lies are addressed is forced to disregard altogether the distinguishing line between truth and falsehood in order to be able to survive. Truth or falsehood—it does not matter which anymore, if your life depends on your acting as though you trusted; truth that can be relied on disappears entirely from public life, and with it the chief stabilizing factor in the ever-changing affairs of men.”

• Hannah Arendt from "Crises of the Republic: Lying in Politics, Civil Disobedience, On Violence, Thoughts on Politics and Revolution"