No one will deny that, for the past half decade, the news has been toxic. Literally toxic. Like eating moldy food toxic. Like huffing bleach toxic (former presidential opinions non-withstanding). Toxic. I might even say virulent, but that’s too soon.
Yes the world is not in good shape: wars, floods, famine, terror, brutality, sickness, and while it might be a good portion of the horsemen it certainly isn’t all of them. More specifically it isn’t the orange-faced horseman of rank, drooling, lunacy. Honestly if given my druthers, I’d hug the horseman of “Impending Nuclear Annihilation” than the former. At least you knew the Nuke-pony wouldn’t try and cop a feel.
But it’s not to say things haven’t gotten better. Vaccination? Check. A different administration? Check. The rabid right finally coming out of berserk mode and rethinking, with regret, some of their past atrocities? Semi-check. There will always be those who just need a deranged dictator in their lives, I mean Hitler and Stalin still have their fan boys, even today. But things are calming down, and the news, while still depressing, doesn’t make your brain-explode like a bad space movie where someone gets a hole in their helmet in outer space.
So yes. The dull slog of demoralizing is bad, but without the constantly-over-the-top barrage of brain-vomit, it’s almost tolerable. And that’s a significant improvement over the near-past.
Maybe, just maybe, people will unwind enough to remember what life was like without all the ultra-amplified hate-noise and vitriol. Maybe, even if we can’t all “just get along” we can at least talk about why like reasonable human beings and realize that wannabe hate-geysers like MTG have no place in decent society.
One can certainly hope.