Orangutan shot with pellet gun
Why is this news? Not that I am unconcerned with the plight of our dumb friends. It is a despicable human being that engages in cruelty to animals. Perhaps the perpetrator was not being cruel, but was engaging in self-protection and was merely underpowered? We don’t know.
But there's a deeper question: Is the proliferation of news from around the nation and world slowing driving us all crazy? My heart aches to hear of a little girl kidnapped and murdered in South Carolina, a car wreck that kills an entire family in Ohio just before Christmas, a woman stoned to death by bloodthirsty misogynists in a stone age country...
The true goal of the news media is not to inform us. It is to make money. Nothing wrong with that. The 24/7 news cycle is their money machine: Create a constant drumbeat of scary news, salacious gossip, snarky he-said she said, and nail-biting cliffhangers, and they're in the money. There is a whole world of human misery out there, and as long as there are people hooked on that stuff, this model should prove quite lucrative.
I don't think we were designed to throw our arms around the world. Casting a sphere of concern that so dwarfs your sphere of influence so that you are but a pinprick upon humanity is demoralizing and leads to a sense of futility.
I'm going to work hard and be a good dad and husband, play my guitar, drink beer and cook out on my grill, as I work on my own little corner of this vast earth. Life's too short to spend it stuck to the TV anxiously sweating over the latest crisis or outrage.
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