I’m a big fan of internet showtime, the daily scroll.
But I keep it simple.
I’m not looking for verification, authentication, or validation.
Not looking for lawyers, guns, or money.
What I’m looking for is attention grabbing posts, videos, and stories.
Make me pause. Is that asking for too much?
So far Internet showtime has brought out the usual violence to scroll past from street fighting to robbery gone wrong that ends up in a street fight with motorcycles and guns.
I saw a mountain bike rider balancing on a ridge line that had certain death on one side, mutilation on the other, and wished them well.
An overhead beach video showed a shark in the water between swimmers and the beach. I wished them well.
Two videos on twitter I couldn’t scroll past because I needed to see the outcome?
One was a cheetah attacking a baby antelope after scaring the mother away; then momma came back and chased the cheetah off her kid for the win.
The other was a member of the House Representatives confirming how people are prosecuted in a court of law at the state level.
It was a great watch.
Before Internet Showtime
Once upon a time we read newspapers.
The newspapers sold ads for support.
People read the news, then watched some old guy talk on a TV like this one.
As kids we read the funnies and turned the channel to cartoons.
I was seven years old in most of 1966 with a late in the year birthday.
Then I grew up. So did everyone else.
Now I watch pinched-faced people in serious discussions and miss Walter Chronkite who I didn’t appreciate when he was on the air.
My news updates come with the internet showtime minus the commercials for soap that cleans everything faster than anything ever invented.
Too often there’s a new face talking old shit that’s already had its fifteen minutes of fame, but the modern attention deficit makes it new to some folks, too many folks.
Like what?
For some reason I’ve immersed myself in WWII history with books and video, but it’s no mystery since I’m a history guy with decades of work in the field.
My focus is American history with a specialty in Oregon history, but my joy is sensing the ebb and flow of world history and civilization.
My blood runs cold seeing guys dressed in brown shirts carrying torches in America, but hey it’s a free country.
That’s a sixty-nine year olds view, but I was historically motivated fifty years earlier when I joined the U.S. Army.
A-TEN-HOOT.
As a strapping nineteen year old I was typical cannon-fodder for the wars of history: small town strong, willing to help, but not a very good marksman.
I would have been good in the days of swords and shields? I like to think so.
I would have been good as an assault trooper storming a beach?
Probably.
When everyone goes, you go.
A total of 4,414 Allied troops were killed on D-Day itself, including 2,501 Americans. More than 5,000 were wounded. In the ensuing Battle of Normandy, 73,000 Allied forces were killed and 153,000 wounded.
One Thing Not To Do In History
You can’t re-do history anymore than you can rearrange the elements on this map.
Things happened, live with it.
‘But Boomer D, what about revisionist history?’
History is what people make of the forever-gone past out of surviving documents and artifacts, human recall, and such items as photographs, films, and sound recordings.
Indeed, history is created by the application of human thought and imagination to what’s left behind.
And because each historian is an individual human being—differing by sex and gender; origin, nationality, ethnicity, and community; nurture, education, and culture; wealth and occupation; politics and ideology; mind, disposition, sensibility, and interest, each living at a distinct time in a distinct place—as a community of professionals, they come to hold different views, have different purposes, create different interpretations, and put forth their own distinctive understandings of “the past.”
Revisionist history has been called an historical record not written from the winners’ side.
Instead it’s from the side not occupied by only white men.
And that’s a problem for people who ride internet showtime seriously and someone they like tells them, ‘This is unacceptable.’
We are allowed to make up our own minds, which shouldn’t be a surprise.
If you find yourself in the position of internet showtime influencer, don’t steer gullible people to their doom.
Just fleece them like a normal person would do and leave their hearts and minds alone.
Maybe explain how to avoid shark attack instead of stoking fear of the water. For a small price.
How to have fun riding a bike for fun and profit instead of emergency room visits and doctor bills.
Why not get comfortable knowing what you know and improve on that?
Pick an activity like weight training and get on it.
Weight don’t lie. You can either lift, or you can’t; you do or you don’t.
You may not look like you lift, but it will show in your carriage and response.
Joining an insurrection group?
Don’t do that. Professional shitbags know how to manipulate simpletons to do things they can’t or won’t do, and yet know it’s wrong.
If you missed your chance for a face to face screaming spit-job from an over-amped Drill Sergeant you may not be aware of the manipulation.
When you see or hear someone making promises to save your way of life, but they have no idea what that might be from their gold-plated penthouse, it’s not about you.
When someone makes you feel all cuddly and warm like sleeping against your Grandma’s arm, remember you’re in your thirties, your forties or fifties.
Check the time, check the place, and note to yourself that moment you realized enough is enough.
If that happens at a Trump rally all it means is it’s time to leave.
What time is it now, George Clooney?
About David Gillaspie
