I feel like I’m living in a Shakespearean play, but rather than being the husband who was cuckolded by his wife (or vice versa) we’ve been duped by the weatherman. More specifically, the National Weather Service and the Weather Channel convinced us that a catastrophe was upon us when I’ve seen more ice accumulate in my freezer with the door open. It was supposed to arrive on Friday, then Saturday and finally on Sunday and it did for some, but not here in Emporia. I watched the radar for two days and what was heading for Emporia never materialized. In fact, it looked like the Red Sea parting for the Israelites. There was freezing rain and sleet to the west, south, east and north, but we survived reasonably unscathed.The question is, for all of us who rushed to the grocery and/or hardware store to stock up for the promised impending disaster, how could we be so gullible? Like most of those living in the forecasted extreme danger zone, we spent the last two days rushing around buying flashlights, batteries and silicone to keep the ice from freezing the car doors shut. We rushed out to the grocery store, unstocking their shelves. We covered our car with tarps and spread ice melt over all of the sidewalks. At least we made the local merchants happy. How did we get to the point where we let the weather prognosticators determine our future? What happened to one, being prepared all of the time and two, dealing with emergencies after they happened, not before? When did we start turning all of our decision making powers over to those with little more expertise than we have ourselves? I used to be able to look out the window and make a determination as to whether it was safe or not to venture out. How could we all fall for these so-called expert pronouncements and assume them to be one hundred percent reliable?
Then I check those thoughts at the door as I recall some of the outrageous posts on Facebook that we’re supposed to believe are real. The most recent one I came upon reported that all of the Hollywood celebrities were going on strike and are not going to be making any movies as a response to Trump being sworn in as president. If I believed it was real, I would ask, “How soon and for how long?” But I don’t think we’re that fortunate. My guess is that they all know that the movie industry is hanging by a thread and most of us could care less if they stopped making movies altogether. If they did, the world would not stop. In fact, the world might become a better place. The same could be said for all of the reality shows and fake celebrities.
I ask you, would John Wayne have quit movies just because he didn’t like the person who was elected president of the United States? Or Jimmy Stewart or Lauren Bacall or Donna Reed? In those golden days of movies, the stars knew what they were, and what they were not. They didn’t pretend to control our thought processes or even want to. They knew that they were just entertainers, like the court jesters in medieval times, and that their livelihood depended on pleasing their audience. Now celebrities think that the will of the people has to bend to theirs.
We are all being cuckolded to some extent. Both sides of the political spectrum feed us half-truths. It’s almost impossible to separate out all of the lies and fabrications from the truth. Sometimes I wish that the entire top layer of society would disappear down a giant sinkhole. The politicians, the elites, the celebrities, the media, the weathermen, the statisticians, and prognosticators are all feeding us junk food and we’re starving for truth because of it. I’m sure they feel powerful because they can push us around and force us to do things we would not do in our right minds, but I’m tired of it.
It’s wistful thinking on my part to hope that after Friday, when Donald Trump will be sworn in as the next president of the United States, things will return to normal; we will all come to our senses and stop being manipulated one way or the other by the media.
But back to the weather situation. As I write this, I am sitting here with one of the cats, enjoying the open window. It’s not close to freezing outside and the third floor, where I do all of my writing, heats up on days like this even when the sun is not shining. I watch one of the neighbors sweeping leaves out of the gutter and realize that life goes on, with or without the weather forecasters.