A Ranting Essay: Evidence of Decline, Opportunities for Rebirth

Remember “The Monster at the End of This Book (Sesame Street)”? In the book, Grover warns the reader that a monster is at the end of the book, and thus not to read on to the next page, lest we bring ourselves faster to imminent doom at the book’s end. Its endearing and a wonderful story I read as a child and that I have read with my own. And its almost emblematic of our times today.

Think about today’s media. So-called ‘pundits’ (a euphemism, I think for ‘hatemongers’), spend all hours of the day disparaging behaviors they simply do not like. And  mindless, dutifully, at every opportunity, ‘regular folk’ seem to parrot those sentiments with no real interest in stimulating conversation. They speak ‘truth’ with such absolutism it leaves no room for alternative perspectives. It drives us apart in a downward spiral that seems irreversible…as if devotion to belief regardless…