I’ve been buying print copies of the New York Times now and then lately. The print newspaper is so vastly superior to the online one. Like, I’m not forced to see a single op-ed in the print version. That shit is drummed into my brain online. But also, even with news stories, on social media timelines, you only get a couple stories, and even with them, maybe a paragraph or two at most. The print version is still thick enough, and I can choose to read deeper into shit. I quit buying the Washington Post and any local papers years ago because they weren’t even as thick as some zines. But the NYT stays with a solid word count it seems. I buy a copy, and then just keep reading it for a few days, and when I’m done with a section, it goes into a milk crate for my girlfriend to use to start fires in her cabin. Once I’m getting low on leftover sections to read in the still readable pile (or in the bathroom), I buy a new copy. I don’t even need to buy a copy but once or twice a week. My dad only had a 7th grade education (according to my birth certificate), but he was a pretty smart dude, and a big part of that was he read the paper most every day. But anyways, I was reading about a drug raid in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, where like 130 people got killed by police. I didn’t see shit about this online. Also, there was a long ass article about Trump killing civilians in boats off the coast of Colombia and Venezuela, without declaring wartime activities, and color me shocked as the article laid out the deep legal arguments being made for this shit, and how it actually was building directly off of shit Obama did in Libya in 2011. In fact, the direct line of Presidents dismantling the War Powers Act (or whatever that shit is called) was Reagan, Bill Clinton, Obama, Trump. That’s like the Mt. Rushmore of Icons of the Dying American Empire.
I do feel like print newspapers is one of those things that’s temporarily become obsolete, but will come back, one way or another, maybe not exactly like it was, but in some form. Capitalism tricks us into thinking everything has to make a profit, and that’s it’s only purpose for existing. So newspapers were consolidated by larger companies, and then phased out as they became unprofitable due to the internet. But the real reason for newspapers was to try and have a society where everyone wasn’t a Goddamned Idiot. Demographically, Goddamned Idiots have been skyrocketing in recent decades. We are ruled by Goddamned Idiots (that’s why they call them populists), and I don’t know man, the simple act of sitting in my secondhand recliner with the little reading light on and piddling around in the print paper, it is helping me feel like the Goddamn Idiocy is not colonizing my prefrontal cortex quite as quickly.
I do feel like print newspapers is one of those things that’s temporarily become obsolete, but will come back, one way or another, maybe not exactly like it was, but in some form. Capitalism tricks us into thinking everything has to make a profit, and that’s it’s only purpose for existing. So newspapers were consolidated by larger companies, and then phased out as they became unprofitable due to the internet. But the real reason for newspapers was to try and have a society where everyone wasn’t a Goddamned Idiot. Demographically, Goddamned Idiots have been skyrocketing in recent decades. We are ruled by Goddamned Idiots (that’s why they call them populists), and I don’t know man, the simple act of sitting in my secondhand recliner with the little reading light on and piddling around in the print paper, it is helping me feel like the Goddamn Idiocy is not colonizing my prefrontal cortex quite as quickly.
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