And another crazy news day… wow! But as I am inundated with news alerts and the almost manic anticipation of waiting for other shoes to drop I am reminded of how little we really know. What is going to happen with Rosenstein, or Kavanaugh, or the Mueller investigation? What is the state of play in the midterm elections? What will happen when we look back at this time from the distance of months or years as opposed to how it feels to travel through this wormhole of the absurd in real time?
I can think of few moments in my life when the news seemed to more crowd out the rest of daily life, and I have lived through a lot. Part of that is, of course, the unprecedented age in which we find ourselves. But a lot of that is also the immediacy of our technological age. I remember listening to the dispatches on the radio from World War II. Huge battles were being waged on land, sea, and in the air. The fate of the world hung in the balance. But we often had to wait days until we heard what took place and often we only got broad contours instead of individual stories. Such was the nature and scope of the conflict and the ability to report from the front lines.
Covering stories like the civil rights movement, or Vietnam, or the fall of the Soviet Union, or Watergate, I remember feeling the immediacy of deadlines but still having the space to try to make sense of the bigger picture. That feels much more difficult today. So I beseech you as savvy news consumers, do not shy away from the firehose of stories flowing forth, but also try not to drown from the sheer volume. There are many twists and turns ahead, ones we can never predict. Stay informed, but also stay steady.