The Ones Who Walk Away from Omelas

The Ones Who Walk Away from Omelas is an award-winning 1973 science fiction short story by Ursula K. Le Guin. She died in January, 2018 at 88 years of age. You can read this story online here. It begins,

With a clamor of bells that set the swallows soaring, the Festival of Summer came to the city Omelas, bright-towered by the sea. The rigging of the boats in harbor sparkled with flags. In the streets between houses with red roofs and painted walls, between old moss-grown gardens and under avenues of trees, past great parks and public buildings, processions moved. Some were decorous: old people in long stiff robes of mauve and grey, grave master workmen, quiet, merry women carrying their babies and chatting as they walked. In other streets the music beat faster, a shimmering of gong and tambourine, and the people went dancing, the procession was a dance. Children dodged in and out, their high calls rising like the swallows' crossing flights over the music and the singing. All the processions wound towards the north side of the city

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I'll be having a cup of Ugly Mug Hardy Passion coffee with The Husband this morning, and I have plenty of cups and mugs if you'd care to join us. I can even offer tea.

I'll be checking in at Elizabeth's T Stands for Tuesday blogger gathering.

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A word about sources for news:

Keeping up with current events is crucial in these days. I watch the daily briefings offered by our joint Memphis/Shelby County task force, and I regularly tune in to see what the state news is from Tennessee's Governor Lee. I used to watch Trump's mini-rallies live but stopped doing that after he bragged about his ratings. It's important to watch him in action, though. Clips and transcripts just don't give the full effect. C-Span's Youtube channel films them live and keeps them available. This one from April 13 is a doozy:

The day after that he said he would adjourn congress so he could make recess appointments. Saturday he said, “I really believe it could have been billions of people [dead from Covid-19] had we not done what we did". He continues to use these briefings as substitutes for the rallies he can't have. It's a disgraceful display.

Y'all know I'm not a Trump fan (and that predates his political career by decades), but he is the president and it behooves us to keep an eye on what he and his crew are up to. We're dying here, literally dying.

I don't have cable, so I can't be tempted by the 24/7 shows they offer. But there's a variety of reliable news sources that I do have access to. You do have to be willing to fact-check even your favored sources. I watch press conferences live as much as I can, but none of us should expect these people to fact-check themselves. We need to read reports and analysis and be aware of the context of what is said and done.

It's important on TV programs to distinguish news coverage from commentary. In written sources, news articles and editorial content are completely different things. Don't condemn the commentators because they're not news. I can't emphasize this enough.

Here's my list. I'd welcome your suggestions.

The Associated Press (AP)
Reuters
PBS
The Atlantic
Foreign Affairs (here's their U.S. coverage)
Politico
Axios
The New Yorker
BBC
The New York Times
The Washington Post
Christian Science Monitor
The Guardian

There's news coverage on ABC News, CBS News, and NBC News (I like Lester Holt).

There's a chart here that might be helpful.

It's not true that all news is #FakeNews or that reporters just make stuff up. It is true that some sources are biased, and that sometimes there are mistakes. A good way to judge a news source is whether or not they issue retractions when they make mistakes.

I find it easy to get a news overview on Twitter by following several reliable sources and scrolling through them. Here's a Twitter list that includes all the ones listed in this post. I don't discuss politics on Twitter, but I get a lot of information from sources there. And it's Trump's favorite venue.

I enjoy discussing politics on Facebook, but I don't get my news there. I think it's important that we talk about these things with people who don't already agree with us -not to convince, but to understand and be understood. Sticking our head in the sand doesn't change what's happening. Refusing to listen to the opposing side just makes us ignorant of all we don't already agree with.

Compare the news coverage from several different sources. Please don't just take Trump's word for it, or the word of any one person for that matter. Like I said, you can't expect these people to fact-check themselves.

November is coming, and the Trump faithful are truly faithful. He was right when he said, "I could stand in the middle of 5th Avenue and shoot somebody and I wouldn’t lose voters." The least we can do is stay informed.

If you stuck with me to the end, thanks for giving me a hearing. Sometimes we just need to have our say. Feel free to have your say in the comments. I'm an equal opportunity political ranter.