I spend a lot of time reading the news. A lot. More than has ever proven useful. Working from home, it's easy to get endlessly distracted, and pointlessly so, since none of my work is ever news-related. I think I share the same kind of fascination with the news that so many have with the stars, pre-telescope. I imagine them all, Aztec and Mayans and Egyptians and Celts and Anasazi, studying the stars for generations and generations, trying to plot the patterns, master the mysteries. I imagine the sharp-sighted wizards and priests and witches and shamans accumulating lore and generating theories about the movements of the universe, building mythologies and temples.
I think that same impulse drives my fascination with the news, all those wasted hours and days trying to make sense of it all, trying to track down the truth, the core motivations, the impeti, trying to predict what comes next, following the history, the origins, the grudges and atrocities and manipulations and conspiracies. And sometimes, after a few hours of cycling through the Washington Post, the New York Times, the Guardian, and various and sundry others (including DK), I ask myself, "What am I looking for? What am I hoping to find?".
To be honest, I'm still hoping to one day turn on my computer and read the headline "Everything is Fixed!". Not gonna happen. But that's my hope. Even though I know, on some level, that Utopia is Now-Here.