Nothing is as it appears in the media now. Public life in this country is an orchestrated presentation through multi-platform digital media that assaults the senses of the planet with staged cities, uses locations as sets, and employs repeated catch-phrases and frames of reference to define a USA – and its philosophy – independent of the actual nation. The loudest and most definitive are owned by a handful of people. Musk owns X.

We are held hostage to the extremist nonsense.

It suffocates. It numbs. It stupefies with ignorance and active disinformation.

Journaling on a blog is separate and distinct from using “social media,” in that ownership of the words is mine, not Zuckerberg’s nor Alphabet’s, and so not subject to their algorithm’s censorship.

But also not availed of their reach.

It is a separate exercise to blog as a means of reportage upon our times and for defining a reliable self within ever-shrinking freedoms of speech and of the press.

It’s a Monday and you are not insane.