Another two for the price of one

Two topics are racing around inside my head these last couple of days so I thought I would try to be succinct on both of them and combine them into one post. The second portion of this post will be about the Press and Donald Trump and the Press.

The first post is about the open carry law here in Texas that starts January 1, 2016. I have to admit in my past I have gone skeet shooting, duck hunting, and some other general back forty shooting so I understand wanting to have the ability to own guns. What I do not understand is the need to display guns in public.

And maybe I should have spoken up sooner or actually written a letter to a legislator or something because I fear this is going to be a real problem. And my fear is somewhat rational for most people I think.

First of all recent headlines show how dangerous this could be such as from the terrorist shootings in California to the police accidentally killing a third person while trying to apprehend and then shooting two suspects in Chicago. Imagine people with guns at hand being involved in these situations.

There is so much talk if people had guns then the shooters in California could have been stopped, uh a big maybe at best and how fast could others shoot them. And obviously now you have multiple people potentially shooting at each other and the probability of more innocent victims getting hit goes up. Or people who see police shooting deciding they need to “defend” themselves and a full fledge gun battle breaks out. How many innocent victims will there be now?

And then there is the usual road rage scenarios, people getting into an argument, public fights, etc and the easier a gun is to access the shorter amount of time you have to think about what you are about to do. Or just seeing someone else with a gun may make you think you have to have yours.

I hate to think or even mention, but sooner or later some real serious disasters are going to happen. It doesn’t take much for some idiot who really cannot shoot a gun to go crazy in public trying to stop a robbery or something and a whole bunch of people get shot

.

And like I mentioned I should have spoken up sooner and I will throw others under the bus, such as anyone else who perceives how dangerous this could be, and didn’t speak to our elected officials to stop this law from happening. This is one problem of people not voting. State Legislatures are not well attended elections hence a small group of people can have an undue influence on the outcome of legislation so this looks like the legislatures made all their hunting buddies and a few crazy groups happy with this dangerous law. If we had larger turnouts of people voting then maybe more common sense could have ruled when this came up for a vote.

I hope I am very wrong about my predictions, but if something does happen I hope every legislative person and the Governor have to answer for allowing this to come into play. There has to be some accountability for not governing for the betterment of the whole of society instead of the advantage or liking of a few.

So what is my beef with the press and my beef with the press and Donald Trump.  I have previously posted about the failure of the fourth estate so this isn’t new.

I am going to be a tad more blunt this time.

First the rise of Donald Trump is because the press is showing how and lazy and profit driven they have become. It is easy to write stories about him. And he gets readers.

Forget trying to write and compare how all the candidates compare on the issues. This takes work and it seems no one read these stories in mass compared to the name calling Mr. Trump does to excite the masses. Yes I know there are a few articles attempting to try to get an audience for a better discussion etc of the election and candidates, but the vast majority of what you read and see is what Trump said and what people are saying about Trump. Not too many stories on what does Mr. Trump mean and how he actually proposes to accomplish his rhetoric.

And it is partly the Press’ fault for this madness. They have been headed in this direction for a very long time. Yes you can say it is because the Press is owned by billionaires only looking out for their profits and this is one aspect of the problem. In some ways our friend Rupert is receiving some comeuppance now. There is no need to write anything people do not want to read because it does not make money. So we read about the Kardashians, or stories of corruption or sexual scandals in politics or sports figures gone bad as lead stories because this is what “we” want. Reading about others’ misfortune is fun.

Another fault is what our politicians did to education; or did not do for education. No one wants more because we are taught not to expect more. Or that we are unable to understand that the shallowness of modern news is unhealthy and reflects and unhealthy society overall. Our politicians want this because other than them getting caught with their pants down most people do not pay too much attention to them. Or at least until election time, then we vote in the people we know because we do not spend the time getting to know them better. ( I think someone else said something similar before).

And then the Press does not want to push any buttons on these people or help us understand our problems because they benefit from the status quo. It is easier to fact check a debate than dive in and look at what they are saying in depth. Keeping the Democrat’s and Republican’s institutions means they have the news hand to them from people they know. They aren’t forced to actually gather information. They can sit in their office and write opinions based on their own bias instead of examining whether what elected officials are doing is what is best overall.

Historically the Press has always been influenced by their opinions, but there is a difference between what some of the Founding Fathers wrote in the Federalist Papers and other publications trying to sway opinion vs. what modern writers do with trying to tell us who we should vote for and why we should hate so and so.

And the Press has been a profit driven business over the course of our history; so how different is it nowadays? To me, quite a bit. Yes, in the past there would be sensationalist stories, coverage of scandals, even gossip, but the press would go out and work to get their stories, they would dig, and even opinion pieces were based on long standing work. There was much more original work.  Today you still get some of that, but overall people write quick hit articles for the internet, many stories are reprints of something from the associated press. Sometimes you get the same article four or five times just with a different headline. Looks like there is four different stories, but nope. Everyone is trying to capitalize on what someone else did and this leads to shallow coverage. The less depth we have, the less we expect and over time we, the readers, become accustomed to this drivel.

And I could go on. The Press has never been perfect and you may remember terms like yellow journalism and muckraking, but what is going on nowadays is different, but just as bad. The Press is shirking their responsibility to a healthy democracy. They were given great freedoms by our Founding Fathers and are now completely abandoning why they were given the freedoms and powers that fall upon the press of a free democracy and republic.

One result is Donald Trump dominating the headlines because he gets readers and only because he gets readers. Look at the amount of coverage he receives versus Bernie Sanders. Mr. Sanders is taping into another group of dissatisfied voters as Mr. Trump, but receives nowhere near the same amount of coverage. Why? Mr. Sanders tries to do what he is suppose to do and tell the people his goals and how he would like to achieve them. Mr. Trump just tries to stay in the headlines with bombast and ridicule. And yet the weaker message is the dominant message.

Remember the phrase: you get what you pay for? Nowadays we are going to pay for what we are not getting.