By Roger L Simon
I woke up early this morning to beeps from my cellphone. I had forgotten to turn on “Do Not Disturb” the night before.
One beep told me President Trump had extended his deadline for annihilating Iranian power plants and that, according to his own post on TruthSocial, substantive talks with their regime were occurring.
I didn’t know what to make of it. On the one hand, I wanted the war to be over. On the other I wanted to be sure the evil mullahs and their Republican Guard gangsters were extinguished forever.
The other beep informed me of a horrendous act of apparent terrorism in London’s predominantly Jewish Golders Green neighborhood. Four of their local Hatzalah ambulances had been doused with chemicals and set ablaze with huge explosions, evidently by three masked assailants who were being sought. Even PM Starmer deemed it a “deeply shocking antisemitic arson attack”.
On X, the usual suspects were already frothing at the mouth, claiming this was a false-flag operation, as if the people of that community would blow up their own ambulances.
Meanwhile, LaGuardia Airport had been closed due to a collision.
Just your average morning. I wondered what the stock market would do.
But it was too early to look, and I wanted something to calm my nerves at the start of the day, so I turned to my most trusted source in news, Don Surber’s substack. He has a way of putting things in perspective, adding a substantial dollop of humor.
As it happened, today, under the headline “Bad war coverage, bad ratings,” Mr. Surber was detailing the sharp decline in the network news audience, likening its overpaid newscasters to mere podcasters (touché!). Those watching the news on ABC, NBC, and CBS have declined by 42%, while our population has grown by 38%.
So where do we get our news? Well, you’re looking at it. Social media (notably X), Substacks, and the rest of the internet, including those podcasters, too many of whom are, alas, attention-obsessed charlatans engaged in online food-fights more appropriate for six-year-olds.
What does this mean? It’s the proverbial good news and bad news. Years ago, when we were starting PJ Media, the man financing us would call the then-relatively-young internet “the Wild West.” He was preescient. It is everything to everybody and then some—the more so with the advent of AI.
On the other hand, we aren’t being force-fed. The news, according to Walter Cronkite, wasn’t all that it was cracked up to be. In fact, there wasn’t such a large difference between Walter and Don Rather, except that the former was more skillful at projecting gravitas.
We are now on our own in making our way through the incredible welter of information (and misinformation) before us. In other words, we must be adults, stay calm, and evaluate, as best we can, each morsel, big and small.
Also, we have to do our best to avoid jumping to conclusions about what I called in my blog years ago “the politics of the last five minutes.” That’s difficult, especially on mornings like this one, not that it is so different from many others.
Finally, it’s important to remember that every source is biased. That’s the nature of our species—homo sapiens. Show me an unbiased person, and I’ll show you a corpse. I’m especially wary of those who assert they are unbiased. They are either lying to us or to themselves or both.
From my reading of the comments on this Substack, my guess is that the vast majority of the readers here are well aware of this problem. Nevertheless, if you’re like me, you have to keep reminding yourself that whatever is driving you insane will likely change, yes, in the next five minutes.
By the way, as I finish typing this, I see that the stock market is up. Peace in our time. For five minutes.
MY BIASES
Of course, one of my strongest biases, and I hope yours, is against the Iranian regime and its Revolutionary [sic] Guard. If you haven’t seen them, two sources, biased my way, that I turn to for up-to-date news from the front are Amir Tsafati on Telegram and TousiTV.
First published in American Refugees
