But I was really going deep today, and realizing how my media addiction seems to mask a sort of existential nausea. And then it hit me that is a perennial emotional anesthetic, and that the cost of losing it goes up the longer the addiction lasts.
Put another way, if you deflect using media–or anything else, including booze and drugs–the feelings don’t go away, but it gets harder to go back to them and process them. If your life was a prison you were escaping, then the way out is to go back into the prison, and figure out how to walk out the front door. That’s not an easy thing, particularly if you have an easy way to avoid all that.
Here is what I would like to suggest: part of our national affliction with respect to a large, really cult-like social grouping saying and doing absurd, damaging, and divisive things, is that the members are ADDICTED TO THE MEDIA PUSHING THAT PLATFORM.
What would happen if they woke up? They would lose a security blanket, a known. They would be thrown back to the wolves of unprocessed emotion, and this as people largely unable to deal with emotions in the first place, particularly those I believe have Borderline Personality Disorder. The security of a Rachel Maddow–no matter how ludicrous the claims she makes–is vitally important to them. As long as that emotional need is there, no rational dialogue will be possible.