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Tom shouts
It is weird that paranoia is sexy, from the kitchen over the clatter of his moving pots and pans around in the sink. Like it's this cool sexy neurosis you know?
Dan is in the living room watching TV, one hand holding the remote, and the other inside his sweatpants.
Dude, all those people were talking about paranoia during the Cold War because they were legitimately terrified. It isn't sexy.
Well then it's weird that one generation's legitimate fears become the next's sexy neuroses. I am cautious of this to the point that I'm not sure if I am actually afraid of nuclear war in the event of Trump, or if I'm just playing a Cold War trope.
No, it's scary--Or both!--I've had the same thought. The guy is a narcissistic demagogue through and through.
Yeah but don't you get the feeling that it's tired and it's been done? Like we've had this impending disaster narrative for so long, just give it a rest. The DOOMSDAY CLOCK and whatnot.
The media contributes to overreaction, sure. But national politics has been turned on its head. It's a very strange situation and pretty much everyone agrees.
It's important and I am genuinely concerned, but at the same time I love how entertaining it is, Tom puts some more soap on the sponge. I can't deny that.
(It is very entertaining though.)
I feel uneasy with the fact that I am observing politics and evaluating it on a scale of entertaining-or-not, though. I mean these are real things happening in the world.
I think Trump will lose, Dan flips through channels, Maybe he won't, via some kind of Brexit polling disaster, but even if he does lose, it's like: where do we go from here? I'd be down for a political party split like they used to have centuries ago, except for the fact that there are nukes now.
Shouting even louder:
I can't decide whether to be scared or just thrilled!
Well the planet is getting full, and it's getting warm. Yet climate change is barely talked about this election. I think we're Fucked.
Yeah but everybody always thinks we're fucked. Tom scrubs a cutting board.
I'm usually with you, especially with how fatalistic people always get about new technology. But to play devil's advocate: Earth has finite resources and we are clearly changing the environment on a global scale. When things start getting truly scarce, post-apocalyptic scenarios might not seem so far out. Humans might be resilient and survive, but not without some serious fucking pain and turmoil.
In other words, business as usual.
What? Climate change isn't business as usual, even for non-humans.
Dan flips to the big menu of everything that's on and scrolls up for a while.I mean there's always been pain and turmoil. Who's to say the stuff happening now isn't exactly what you're predicting will come in the future? Maybe things are already truly scarce. Isn't the big lesson from history supposed to be that no one ever sees anything coming?
Dan settles on SportsCenter.
Yeah, but dude, look around you. You can't deny that some of this stuff is unprecedented.
Nothing is ever precedented, man. If this were a hundred years ago, we'd be listening to World War I on the radio, going This is it, this is the big one. And with mustard gas and machine guns and bomber planes, humanity is now capable of extinguishing itself. But here we are in 2016, alive, and with nukes.
It's dangerous to just write off your concern as hysterical though. I mean it's healthy to be wary of historical alarmism, but it's dangerous at the same time. People who compare Trump to Hitler are doing so for good reasons.
I am bored of everyone freaking out about Trump, but I don't like that that is something that can bore me!
There is still the clean hiss of the running water from the sink.
I was bored at first. I had a hard time finding it funny, even way back at the start of the primary. Now I'm scared.
The unnerving thing is not whether I find other peoples' reactions to Trump's antics entertaining, it's that I have this perspective on masses of people in the first place. I'm watching millions of people say exactly what I'm thinking, and then a split-second later I dismiss them: It's a trope, I'm bored of it now. Everyone's outraged, we know. It's disorienting, with the internet and 24 hour cable news, to watch all your genuinely-held opinions become clichés right before your eyes.
Yeah but now you're on that hip Cold War paranoia train you hate so much. Brave New World, even.
Dan changes the channel from ESPN to NBC, which is showing highlights from an Olympic medal ceremony. It's all fellowship and fanfare.
I know, and I'm trying really hard to hang on to my point of view in spite of that.
As much as I think it's lazy to blame the media, I blame the media. Where are you realistically supposed to get the news but from mass media, who turn every story into a comic book myth? It's no wonder that people are either horrified or bored, and nothing in between. The Internet was supposed to be a game-changer but it seems like all we're getting from it is the same old shit. Just a lot more of it at once.
The Internet is a game-changer. I am honestly more comfortable not ever knowing who to trust than the alternative.
What alternative? Just not being paranoid? No-- Easy living and happiness?
Knowing exactly who to trust. I mean, I want to be a good person. The thing about people who do terrible things is deep down they know they're right.
People who make great sacrifices to do good Dan flips back to SportsCenter are also usually convinced they're right. Else they wouldn't bother.
There is rice stuck to the bottom of a pot that is difficult for Tom to get unstuck.
We used to be able to trust Walter Cronkite.
Cronkite wouldn't make it as a news anchor today. Or maybe as a news anchor but not as a household name. His whole deal is preposterous. On the current uh, uh, epistemological landscape, ? saying 'that's the way it is' with a straight face is bold to the point of arrogance. You know who also claims to tell people 'the way it is'? Donald Trump. Also Hitler.
You distrust truth, dude. Sounds like nihilism.
I guess. But I feel like you can be a nihilist about truth while also like, giving a shit about people. The dangerous thing about 'there is no truth' is like, okay so now there's no moral truth, or what? But I think it's healthy to keep in mind that what humans have ever called 'true' they have only done so because 'true' is convenient shorthand for things we like. In fact, I think giving a shit about people just is carrying your own set of truths around as perpetually contingent upon the complete accident that is yourself,??and not as answerable to some kind of specious metaphysical authority like 'no, but really, outside of any human mind, actually true.' Enlightenment freaks are just as bad as evangelicals in that respect.
Yeah, I agree.
Tom screams: Better to question everything all the time than to risk standing behind the machinery of oppression as it does its thing. It wasn't so long ago that "trust the science" meant "gay is a mental illness." We need better ways of coping with the world than just factfinding and fact-checking. I don't like that I feel strongly in favor of this point of view but at the same time I know exactly where it all comes from in different shit I've read. Like what am I even questioning.
The thing about always questioning everything, though, is like: okay, fine, but I still have 24 hours every day for the rest of my life to spend doing what, then? Not fighting for any sort of cause, obviously. Whether I came up with it on my own or not, I'm always too uncertain to commit. And you're saying that's a good thing, because what if the cause I fight for ends up being the wrong one in retrospect.
You can't come up with it on your own anyway because everything has already been done. You can only jump on an existing bandwagon. Just about the only even remotely noble pursuit I can come up with is making art.
Yeah. Art makes more sense in terms of like, weaseling out of this existential quandary by planting your flag on whatever you discover in yourself that has never before existed. All cliché-sickness aside, you have to allow that we are all unique in some sense. Seeking new knowledge about the universe has always been important to me for the same reason.
If you're a nihilist with respect to truth, then what does 'seeking new knowledge' even mean but entertaining yourself with a hissing stream of endless possibilities?
Hannah Storm, live from Rio de Janeiro:
I have some shocking and sad news to report to you.
Our generous and talented and beloved colleague John Saunders has died.
John is one of the most familiar on-air faces at ESPN. You know him. He has been at ESPN for nearly 30 years, covering college football, basketball, the NHL; in addition of course to co-hosting this program--SportsCenter--and most recently a fixture on "The Sports Reporters."
Born in Canada, Saunders was an all-star defenseman in the junior hockey leagues in Montreal before becoming one of the most prominent broadcasters of our day.
Also a founding board member of the Jimmy V Foundation--such a critical part of John's legacy and the difference he has made in this world; all the work that he has done for cancer research, and that foundation named for his longtime college basketball partner.
(\ .'. | | _| |_ / |_| \ \ / '-----'
John Saunders was 61 years old.
Ms. Storm:
John Skipper, uh, the president of ESPN and co-chairman of the Disney Media Networks, has issued this statement, and I quote:
"John was an extraordinary talent and his friendly, informative style has been a warm welcome to sports fans for decades.
"His wide range of accomplishments across numerous sports and championship events is among the most impressive this industry has ever seen.
"More importantly, John was a beloved and devoted family man who cared deeply about people and causes, as evidenced by his long-standing efforts as a passionate board member for The V Foundation for Cancer Research.
"He was one of the most significant and influential members of the ESPN family, as a colleague and mentor, and he will be sorely missed. Our thoughts are with his loved ones at this extremely difficult time."
It's unclear. I do find it difficult to shake the Enlightenment idea of knowledge as a measure of progress. However you define knowledge. You can't deny that science is only getting better and better at what it does.
But the whole point of the 20th century is, like, look where that got us. Science ends up doing a lot more than what it sets out to do.
The 20th century got us pretty far, dude. We wouldn't be having this conversation right now if not for the progress of the last century.
Technology is a double-edged sword though. No shit. What about everyone who could have made it to 2016 but didn't?
Obviously we are all acting weird because of the Internet and smartphones. That's not what I meant-- I am all for being circumspect about unleashing the latest thing humans have discovered they can do to the world, but that viewpoint is ubiquitous and frankly boring.
But see, now you are evaluating an opinion based solely upon how entertaining it is.
Tom turns off the water.
Great, let's have a productive conversation about it then instead of acting like our idyllic 1950s America disappearing means the end of the world.
Whereof one cannot speak, thereof one must be silent.
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