Arun Gandhi recommends using an anger journal to help control anger. I knew I needed one when I caught a story of the people that were stranded on the cruise ship. They had been without electricity for 24 hours and couldn’t flush their toilets. They had plenty to eat, but it was of rescue rations quality. And they complained about that.
What made me mad was that Haiti’s been without electricity for way longer than that, ditto for any sort of toilets, and they’re eating sand when they can’t get the rescue rations. There’s a nation that’s been adrift, thanks in large part to the 19th-Century prejudices of France, England, and the USA, and thanks even more to 20th-Century US support of horrendous dictators, and the news ignores them. When there’s a slow news cycle, do we revisit Haiti? Or the Ninth Ward of New Orleans? Or Darfur? No. We do not. We get shark attack stories. We get them because they help sell ads.
The love of money is the root of all evil, and there’s the reason behind the terrible way mainstream media reports news. If it doesn’t attract sponsors, they don’t run the story. That’s why there won’t be any huge investigative report into the financial collapse: the criminals that brought it down on us are major commercial sponsors. It’s exactly parallel to the way a drug dealer will spread his money around town, so the locals lose sight of the fact that every dollar is stained in murderous blood.
That makes me angry, and I have to find a way to manage that anger or it will destroy me.