Let's all think twice about how much constant, cheaply sown outrage is costing us.

Turn off the popular media pundits who are specifically being paid to make you upset. They are not worth your time.

8/9

"His griefs grieve on no universal bones, leaving no scars. He writes not of the heart but of the glands."

- William Faulkner, Nobel Prize acceptance speech, December 10, 1950.

Audio: https://buff.ly/3ldnftS

Transcript: https://buff.ly/2IsrXOy

7/9

"He writes not of love but of lust, of defeats in which nobody loses anything of value, of victories without hope and, worst of all, without pity or compassion.

6/9

"...the old verities and truths of the heart, the old universal truths lacking which any story is ephemeral and doomed – love and honor and pity and pride and compassion and sacrifice. Until he does so, he labors under a curse.

5/9

"He must learn them again. He must teach himself that the basest of all things is to be afraid; and, teaching himself that, forget it forever, leaving no room in his workshop for anything but...

4/9

"Because of this, the young man or woman writing today has forgotten the problems of the human heart in conflict with itself which alone can make good writing because only that is worth writing about, worth the agony and the sweat.

3/9

Faulkner: "Our tragedy today is a general and universal physical fear so long sustained by now that we can even bear it. There are no longer problems of the spirit. There is only the question: When will I be blown up?

2/9

In his most famous speech, #WilliamFaulkner spoke in 1950 of writers laboring under a cloud of gnawing fear during the Cold War. But his words also apply perfectly to the gratuitous fear and outrage constantly being sown today in #PartisanPolitics.

#FearlessMods

1/9

ICYMI: Russia's Role in the Far-Right Truck Convoy: An analysis of Russian state media activity related to the 2022 Freedom Convoy

Thanks, @[email protected]

https://doi.org/10.21810/jicw.v5i3.5101

I'm grateful to have #JoeBiden as POTUS right now, rather than TFG. He'd have handed the U.S. over on a platter. And I imagine much of the GOP is privately grateful too, regardless of their trash talk. #GoverningIsAThanklessJob #FearlessMods #China #Ukraine #Russia
https://www.wsj.com/articles/china-aids-russias-war-in-ukraine-trade-data-shows-11675466360

The following applies to #Wars both real and perceived:

"Among the calamities of war may be jointly numbered the diminution of the love of truth, by the falsehoods which interest dictates and credulity encourages."
- Samuel Johnson, The Idler, 1758

#LoveHumanity
#FearlessMods

We need better thinking about #China, folks.

https://www.foreignaffairs.com/china/china-trap-us-foreign-policy-zero-sum-competition

Tom Nichols: "The real malady afflicting these men...is the deluge of narcissism in the modern world, especially among failed-to-launch young men whose injured grandiosity leads them to blame others for their own shortcomings and insecurities—and to seek revenge."

https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2023/01/lost-boys-violent-narcissism-angry-young-men/672886/

Here's a good analysis by RAND.

#GunViolence kills 120+ people every DAY in the U.S. It injures many more. No single approach will solve this problem alone. But we can all benefit from heeding science over myths from special interest groups and the politicians taking money from them.

#ReduceGunViolenceNow

https://www.rand.org/blog/2023/01/responding-to-the-firearm-violence-crisis-are-some.html