I try to ignore the news and all that comes with it, yet the hate, control, and posturing of those in power always find their way into the feed of my life. I have always believed that staying informed mattered. Knowing what both the left and the right are doing felt important, or at least the responsible thing to do. Still, I never identified as conservative or liberal. Both have always felt like cults of the extreme. Perhaps that makes me moderate; perhaps it does not. What I do know is that I believe in love and common sense, and neither seems to have much of a seat at the table anymore.
When you study history, or even casually track it, you see that turmoil and unrest are not new. Every generation in the last 100+ years has lived through wars, racial division, corrupt politicians, and men in power serving their own interests. I am not sure why this moment feels so different. Maybe it is not. But it feels different. It feels louder, uglier, and more saturated. It feels like the idiots have arrived in force, and they brought megaphones.
When the top ten percent of Americans own close to seventy percent of the wealth, it is no wonder we feel such a deep divide. What I struggle to understand is why so many people believe anyone in power genuinely cares about them. Or why sending billions of our tax dollars overseas, to only conveniently line the pockets of that same top tier, is somehow framed as a benefit to the average person. It is the same people who rage on Facebook about corporate greed and the cost of living while completely ignoring how little agency or resilience we have left. We outsource our survival, then act surprised when we are powerless.
What is hardest to digest is watching the hate and greed sensationalized by the media play out on a micro level in our own towns. We work ourselves into the ground trying to make a living, trying to find a little happiness, and yet we are so quick to forget that our neighbors, coworkers, and friends are doing the same. The traits I despise in our so-called leaders, the manipulation, the selfishness, the casual cruelty, feel like they lie dormant in all of us. It is as if once a certain level of status or net worth is reached, something dark is unlocked. But maybe it was always there.
I think back to my time studying Buddhism, sitting with the Five Precepts. They read like common sense. Commit to ethical conduct. Do not harm. Be honest. Be mindful. Abstain from killing. Who could read that and say, No, that is not for me? And yet, lived experience tells a very different story. Somewhere along the way, we collectively decided that these ideas were optional, inconvenient, and naive. What have we allowed ourselves to become?
Where is the hope in all of this? I am not sure there is any. Our lives are our own, and we are deeply selfish creatures, trapped inside our individual bubbles. Even when we think we have it figured out, we do not. We catch fleeting glimpses of what “right” looks like through our experiences, but the moment we try to apply those lessons to new people or new systems, they collapse under the weight of our ego, fear, and greed.
The uncomfortable truth is that the issue is also a reflection of me. I am not smarter than anyone else, even though it sometimes feels that way. And that feeling alone should be a warning sign. Maybe it is just another form of brainwashing, another product of media cycles and rage-driven algorithms doing exactly what they were designed to do. I am just as soft-minded as anyone else. My quiet rage surfaces and shapes my perception of the world in the same way it does for those I disagree with.
In the end, we may truly be alone. The world we live inside our own heads is not reality at all. Sometimes I am convinced that reality itself is a kind of fever dream, and that life is less a shared truth and more a collective psychosis pointing toward something greater than any of us will ever fully understand or experience.
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