"...we have been been over-stimulated for too long...Over & over & over."

[kpete]

Thoughts On Our Political Exhaustion
January 4, 2022 at 10:01 am EST By Taegan Goddard 17 Comments

Charlie Sykes: “The world is too much with us, of course, but the real problem it is that it so dumb, so infused with mind-numbing bad faith, and a grinding sense of futility that anything will matter or change.”

“This exhaustion is not to be confused with boredom, because, if anything we have been been over-stimulated for too long. On social media and cable television, the emotional level has been set somewhere between alarm and emotional meltdown for years now. We’ve experienced endless assaults on the public mind, with the ever-escalating goal of inciting, inflaming, and grifting. We’ve been saturated, pummeled, and battered by it for the last five years.”

“Over and over and over.”

https://politicalwire.com/2022/01/04/thoughts-on-our-political-exhaustion/
https://morningshots.thebulwark.com/p/thoughts-on-our-political-exhaustion

[The Roux Comes First]

1. Hell Yes!

Without putting it into words so well (even the doubled words). this is why we turned off our beloved MSNBC months ago.

[Sherman A1]

7. You did yourself a great service by doing so

Cable Noise feeds you manufactured drama to fill airtime between ads for drugs you never knew you needed. They brush up against journalism from time to time, but it isn't anything planned, just happens by accident. The world would be far better off without any of the Cable infotainment stations.

[Rebl2]

8. Stopped watching them

last summer. Have just started watching again last week, but for short amounts of time.

[yellowdogintexas]

20. no cable - I just catch highlights on You Tube nt

[nebby70]

2. Sykes is spot on....

...between the angst of this week's political events and amazing covid numbers (and predicted upcoming snow event)...
... it's getting harder and harder to get out of bed in the morning...
... looking to you, DUers; we're going to make it thru this -- right???

[inthewind21]

6. Yes, we are. Now, repeat after me

God, grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change,
Courage to change the things I can, and the wisdom to know the difference...

[3auld6phart]

13. Thank you

A wise saying. I could use that one myself.

[Wounded Bear]

3. K & R...nt

[PatSeg]

4. Very well said

[Cuthbert Allgood]

5. Charlie Sykes is a horrible human.

Even horrible humans have a point once in a while, I guess.

[kpete]

9. yeah

I am not fond of him either

[nuxvomica]

11. We have mass media and social media amped up

Thanks to their studies in human manipulation, psychologists have given corporations the key to engaging those eyeballs: rage and conflict. It's not just Facebook's rage-to-engage algorithms but mass media's focus on conflict. Example: a recent Politico story referred to the resignation of the FDIC chair after a "partisan brawl". There was no actual "brawl" but mass media likes to frame these stories in terms of violent conflict. This bias was probably ok in quieter times but now it overheats coverage and makes us want to turn away for our own peace of mind.

[CaptainTruth]

12. "inciting, inflaming, and grifting"

That's all the GOP does anymore, it's their standard operating procedure. And far too many people allow themselves to be manipulated by it.

[Initech]

14. I think social media has added to a lot of the misery.

People are afraid to talk to each other anymore and it's because social media politics have veered toward the right and far right and it sucks. You can't go anywhere without running into belligerent douchebags who want to shove their political beliefs into anything and everything.

[Hekate]

15. Very insightful

[somaticexperiencing]

16. Over-stimulation is basically the definition of TRAUMA. During trauma, when...

the body can no longer fight or flee, the animal goes into a state of freeze. The pursued prey drops to their knees, before being pounced on. This ensures less pain if maimed or killed. This preserves the chance of escape, should the predator lose attention or interest.

In the wild, if given a chance to escape, the prey will spring away. Upon reaching safety, if they look around and find a calm, safe spot, they will shiver and shake and discharge all that negative energy. Then they go about their business.

The human animal, with their big old brain, doesn't discharge energy so easily, thinking it strange or uncivilized. We don't look around, not wanting to see what's out there.

When overwhelmed or traumatized, nobody can think straight.

Yes, we all need to establish a sense of community, where we can heal in the presence of others. Thank you DU, for being some of that. We need to help each other sense and feel, including "negative" feelings of hurt and outrage. We beed to sense and feel and move and deal with images, just as much or more than we need to create meaning, especially false meanings. We need to love. We need to encourage and help each other to have agency.

Yes, the world is in a state of trauma. It doesn't have to be that way. And it starts with each and every one of us.

Things I use to deal with the trauma.
[link:https://organicintelligence.org/|
[link:https://traumahealing.org/|

One valuable exercise is to find a safe spot, let your eyes wander around your environment, floating like a butterfly, freely and spontaneously. Take in what is there. IF you find yourself drawn to something that is out there, feel free to light upon it, to settle down there, to rest there. You will usually find that thing to be positive, even meaningful or useful to you. If you get tired of that thing or the process turns negative, feel free to lift your gaze up and move away, either to gaze on something else or to do something. A process called "orienting". A way to locate yourself with agency in the here and now, to reclaim what is valuable to you.

Good New Years!

[KPN]

17. Key word: "grifting". An apty descriptor for social and news media as they exist and operate today

-- as well as over the past 20 years. "Ka-ching" -- that is all it's about in the end.

[BannonsLiver]

18. Cable news is engineered to agitate

And yet we have people here who have it on in their homes 18-20 hours a day. It’s like with the pandemic. You can spot the people who get their news from total hair on fire nut jobs like Eric Ding vs. others who have a more rational approach to bad news.

[TeamProg]

19. This over stimulation can also be defined as "noise". There are ways to get away from it but

many people become adicted to it before they realize.

[Cosmocat]

21. I mean, this is what conservative media has been doing for a long damn time

Yeah, everyone is tweaked out to hell right now, but they had a LONG running start on cranking up Rs - going back to the 80s and 90s, at least.