Inundated

I am inundated (overwhelmed) by the deluge of breaking news day in and day out.  I can barely keep my head above water.  Most of us are already inundated by our “own stuff of life,” and have little time to pay attention or be involved in what may be going on in our own community/neighborhood, county, or state, let alone deal with the unrelenting and continual breaking news coming out of our nation’s capital.  And I haven’t even mentioned the breaking news that comes at us from all around the world.  Just as we cannot halt the tide of the sea, or control the weather, so we cannot isolate ourselves from this overwhelming, constantly changing, ongoing news barrage.  We must suffer the bombardment.  We must listen and pay attention.  We must keep informed. Don’t write it off as “fake.”  You must be in the “know” in order for our democratic republic to continue.  To be in the “know” these days is to be inundated! 

Why, just this morning there is important news that we all need to hear and know about and think about.  Exactly one month after 17 people were killed in Parkland, Florida, the survivors of that mass school shooting will be joined by tens of thousands of students across the U.S. and walk out of classes today.  It will happen at 10 a.m. and last for 17 minutes.  Its purpose is to “highlight ‘Congress’ inaction against the gun violence plaguing our schools and neighborhoods.”  Over 185, 000 people in 50 states are expected to join this walkout.  We need to know this, we need to think about this, and we need to feel the emotions involved in it.  You might not support the intention or the purpose of this walk out, but by golly, you better support the right of these students to do what they are doing.  Otherwise you are contributing to the demise of the First Amendment of our Constitution, and what good would a Second Amendment be if you lost the first one?  

The news today of the passing of Stephen Hawking, famed theoretical physicist who defied a diagnosis of ALS (Lou Gehrig’s disease) to live his entire adult life with the disease and in a wheelchair, reminds me of John Donne’s famous words, “No man is an island entire unto himself.”  Hawking is a person everyone in the world ought to know about.  His courage to accept his physical challenge and to go on living and thus give the world the gift of his genius is something we all should know and read about.  

Many want to know all about the doings of  Prince Harry and Meghan, but we also need to know about the doings that put the deadly “Novichok nerve agent” (apparently only the Russians have this agent) on English soil.  Pay attention to the news even though it may overwhelm you.  It is better to be inundated than to be ignorant. Let’s prove Isaac Asimov wrong and get rid the “false notion that democracy means that ‘my ignorance is just as good as your knowledge’.”