MORE HUMBLE SUGGESTIONS FROM DOPOTO

The Department of Pointing Out The Obvious (DOPOTO) has taken time out from our hectic schedule of monitoring world events to fulfill our function of pointing out the readily apparent. Although that seems like a superfluous undertaking, we have found that it is astounding how often the obvious is overlooked. There are several reasons for this, not the least of which is the vast amount of information coming our way at breakneck speed these days, making it difficult for our neural receptors to process all this data. Then there are the legions of professional spin doctors out there attempting to reinterpret the truth to serve their own aims, either political operatives lying to further a hidden agenda or just for practice, TV commentators seeking to tailor every event and idea to reinforce their delusional world views or business interests simply looking to sell us something in the time honored tradition of making stuff up about their product and passing it off as accepted truth.

The modern world often boggles the mind and threatens us all with sensory overload. This is why DOPOTO was established, to try and help humanity to sort all this information out somehow. It is a daunting task, fraught with the risk of misinterpretation and the temptation to spend our days just laughing our asses off at some of the silly crap people try to pass off as information. But that would be counterproductive and a betrayal of our mandate so we try to keep our fits of maniacal laughter to a minimum and stick to reporting the obvious. Towards that end, we have come up with several suggestions regarding the (Mis)Information Age.

Don't try to read between the lines. - There is nothing but blank space between the lines of any written communication and empty silence between the words of spoken messages, therefore reading between the lines is a fruitless undertaking. Instead, try to pay attention to what is actually being said, unless of course it's a bunch of nonsense, in which case it's best to move on to something else that makes sense. You are under no obligation to pay attention to utter bullshit.

You need not be shocked by the mundane. - Politicians and TV commentators are constantly trying to get people worked up about their pet peeves, very rarely reflecting anything but their own personal neuroses and petty hatreds. Trust your own instincts to figure out what's an imminent threat to the general welfare and what is the delusional rant of some joker with an axe to grind. Let their anger be theirs alone, no matter how skillful they are at lying and the manipulation of statistics. If nothing is in flames and nobody's bleeding, odds are there's no emergency. Don't panic because an idiot does.

Demand to see the badges of the thought police. - When confronted by someone telling you how to behave, what to think, what to smoke, what to eat, who to admire, who to revile, what to believe in, what to hate, what to love and how to raise your own brats, ask to see some official credentials. Let them know in no uncertain terms (Fuck you! works well.) that self-appointed doesn't count. In all of the above situations, instead refer to your own conscience. If you're out of practice in thinking for yourself, well, it's like riding a bicycle; you can always do it again after years of not doing it. Even if you fall off a few times and scrape yourself up, at least they will be your scrapes.

Celebrate the absurd. - A lot of the information careening our way is actually pretty funny. Take some of these made up diseases invented by giant drug companies, like Adult Attention Deficit Disorder. Of course adults don't pay any attention to this twaddle, it's all made-up nonsense to sell gullible fools who never had any attention span in the first place expensive drugs. And damned amusing, too! With no attention span, these people will never know one way or the next if they're cured or not, and they can be talked into thinking they have all sorts of other "diseases" that can be cured by throwing their money away. This is nothing new. Ask P.T. Barnum, who coined the phrase "There's a sucker born every minute," or any snake oil salesman who sold bottles of cheap whiskey as "Magic Elixir."

Or how about that Keystone Kops new branch of our government, the Department of Homeland Security? It sounds and acts like a comic spoof of dictatorships like Fredonia in the Marx Brothers' "Duck Soup" or Tomania in Charlie Chaplain's "The Great Dictator," making our citizens very insecure, removing our Bill of Rights protections, making secret arrests and eavesdropping on law-aiding citizens. Our work is cut out for us to remove these Dr. Strangelove operatives creating fear so they have something to do. Namely, fighting those fears they created. How beautiful is that? Take your comedy wherever you can get it. If we can't laugh at ourselves, don't worry, others will be glad to do so. There's plenty of fun to be had in this world, it doesn't all have to be so grim and dire.

And finally, one last suggestion:
Pay attention to the obvious. - Easier said than done in this blizzard of misinformation we call modern life, but doable. When one nation attacks another nation with whom it has no argument, but the nation being attacked is sitting on a sea of oil, pay no attention to any other reason being put forward for that war. It's the oil, period. Any other arguments are transparent garbage, and when they give a thousand reasons, they doth protest too much and it's about the money. After all, oil is the currency of modern nations. When a government lets one of its major cities drown they are telling you quite clearly that they don't give a rat's ass about its own citizens. When celebrities, politicians and corporate treasury looters get caught doing something bad and then say they are sorry, what they are telling you is that they are sorry they got caught. Their subsequent behavior almost always proves that.

Watch what people do and not what they say for clues. Too often the truth is staring us in the face and we are mesmerized by the shiny verbal objects being dangled before us to keep us distracted. You can help The Department Of Pointing Out The Obvious by keeping your eyes wide open and don't let anybody try to pull any wool over them. The people out there trying to fool you are not exactly master magicians, just snake oil salesmen who have been having a good run of luck lately. As always DOPOTO defers to that font of celluloid wisdom, The Wizard of Oz, and urges you to indeed pay a lot of attention to that puny little man behind the curtain pulling the levers and pushing the butons. You're still in Kansas and the dream was fun but just a dream. You can open your eyes now, Dorothy.