The Cruise Ship of America Moving Into Another Season of Distraction

Bill Evans / Peace Piece

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A fantastic post from my good friend Rich. So true!

As we move into the college football season, Rich used to be much more of a football fan than he is today. 

He is skeptical now of the Fall football season as a huge distraction in the entertainment of sports away from personal and societal problems and the greatest challenges of our times. The true challenges and not the ones that governments worked so had attracting attention to it. Attention was always a form of momentary ownership of someone. The more attention gained from a particular medium of course the greater power of this medium. Whether a YouTube video or a top song. Perhaps the Director or Writer of Star of a top film today.

I know this is hard to hear from many out there. But there are things more important than football coming Fall season. As I’ve written many times before, the modern governmental state in America controls far more by indirect distraction rather than direct orders to the populace. Of course Hollywood and entertainment is one of the great distractions depended on so much by the government. Not only the benefit of the distraction of entertainment but also the subliminal propaganda of content infested throughout the Hollywood product. 

Sports of course is another grand distraction that is very useful to the government. With college and professional football seasons upon America, there is every reason to believe that a large part of the population will be distracted from current events happening to focus on college and pro football. To not focus on football during this upcoming season is almost sacrilegious to many in American, especially many men. Or all those who identify as men today without any question. Important potential leaders at this time in our nation’s history and there is a good chance they will be more involved with football and sports much more than politics. 

The government moves on towards its own goals. They move on largely unopposed because media today is not involved with providing information as much as distraction today. All media connected to the sports and entertainment distraction method of maintaining control, and, power of a populace. Learned from the theories of Freud and certainly Freud’s nephew Edward Bernays, father of Public Relations. Learned during the Creel Commission and the propaganda commissions of America in WWI and WWII. 

On the Carnival Panorama Heading South to Mazatland in the Mexican Riviera

Learned from the brilliant theories of Jacques Ellul. And yes, learned from Russian dictators and mass murders. And learned from experiments of the military over the years. And now, there is talk in one national article that AI is being used to master propaganda techniques. Of course, the major type of mind control or distraction from the important things in one’s life. Things all around them each day. Around them so much that they don’t see them. Like the fact that fish probably have little perception of water around them.

The ship of the nation moves forward into the Fall American college football season. It moves forward into distraction from many of the political events happening today. Little noticed compared to the score of Notre Dame football last weekend. Or that Bengals game. I use the metaphor of ship for our nation today as I just got back from a week on the Carnival Panorama – one of the largest cruise ships in the world with 5,000 passengers and 2,000 crew. (I suggest any who go on the Panorama to the Mexican Riviera book close to the Havana Club on the aft of the ship, 5th floor. In fact, I suggest that anyone who books on the Panorama get the Havana Club rooms on deck 5 and then buy the Cheers Unlimited drinks program. We became such good friends with the bartenders at the Havana Club that I need to send them Christmas gifts.)

This ship of distraction from the important things of life is in fact the nation itself as it moves into the massive distraction of Autumn football in America. During this great season of distraction, the ship of state will sail forward towards the next election to see who will be captain of this ship of state. 

The Top Of The Panorama and the Great Stack on Top of The Ship with Constant Steam

Once our leaders made Americans stop and come out of the coma of their distractions and find a new life and new passions and things one wanted to live for. Goals that are important for one’s future. For all our futures. Even this consideration of the future is such an admirable thing it seems to me. Briefly not stuck in that distracted moment of the present and able to reflect on the past and contemplate the future. Such a rare quality in today’s world.

The national “ship” moves into one of the most critical times in its history. But it is a good bet that many in the populace will be focused on the entertainment of sports versus the reality of politics.
In all of this, as we move forward, one of the key questions we need to ask ourselves is not what the content of an ideology is. Or, those who profess various ideologies. Rather, we need to ask whether we can be weened away from the distractions in life most in America are invested in. Like a particular addiction. No wonder addiction rates in America are so high. Drugs have never been the only addiction. Of course the government has little interest in suggesting they might work through a constant addiction of the populace, Through media. But a good argument could be made that this is the case. 

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One of the key questions America needs to ask herself as she moves forward (into 2023 football season) is whether the distraction is going to work its magic on one this college football season. These words are supposed to exert a type of reverence just by themselves. It is not a question of what distracts us but rather whether we are going to allow others to distract us (through sports, entertainment and media) from the things that important in our own lives. And not the life of some “celebrity” of life. Some major movie star. Music star. Sports star. 

The key to the future of America is not any new fangled belief system or even some AI system defining what our nation will be. Rather it is simply Americans waking up from a type of collective trance we have been placed in through the sophisticated and refined methods of modern propaganda, entertainment, sports, cruises, all forms of distraction from the reality all about of. This invisible environment as Marshall McLuhan called it that is invisible to us similarly as water is invisible to fish. 

Nothing radically new for the “ship” (cruise ship) of the nation. Moving a distracted passenger group already to distracting locations in the world. Distracting people like me with the special Brazilian rum drinks that Marcelo (from Rio) in the Havana Bar recommended got me drinking each night. The official drink of Brazil. The entire nation stops work on Wednesdays and Saturday and has this drink. Of course it seemed natural that they would do this after having some of the Brazilian rum drinks made at the Havana Bar of the ship. In a more sophisticated and quiet back of the great ship. Almost a fifth of a mile up to the front. Much more noise and action up in this section. But much more serenity around the Havana Club and out rooms just above the club. 

Action Area Forward, top deck, on Carnival Panorama / The Most Distracting Place of All

American moves into the Fall football season. One of the grand distractions of the nation based around sports. Perhaps the great sports distraction in the nation. Something similar to a number of Hollywood blockbusters in a row. Which seldom happened so the grand distraction function seems to have fallen into the sports area. 

One of the major questions we must answer today is not what is the best ideology for us but rather the best source of access to information and knowledge. And yes, perhaps a find some renewed commonality of those others who are not distracted but have woken up from the collective dream state of our distracted nation. Freud, in his later books, spoke about whole cultures and societies being neurotic. 

The battle really might be between distraction and non-distraction today.

And nothing else.

After all, what else is there?

Thanks to my close friend Rich below. In the middle of my marriage and Rich’s bachelorhood, we would watch Buckeye Football games at various bars around the Columbus area. I had graduated from UCLA but over years in Ohio I had become a Buckeye fan. We were both football obsessed fans I would say. Going to some little place near the mainline tracks through the center of Columbus. Rich suggested the place and they always had the game on and wasn’t one of Columbus’ huge sports bar.

But now, with politics becoming more and more insane, the real show seems all these things the government wants to distract us from. Like American football in the Fall. It has served as such a grand distraction of many in America from the workings of government. For many years. 

In effet, Rich declares he is through with the distractions of football so many have been captive too. A fascinating few paragraphs of information. A few paragraphs many might focus on for a few minutes and perhaps felt upon. 

Cabo in the Early Morning Hours / The Panorama Arrives and Anchors A Mile Off Shore

But Rich’s few words are directed both at this grand season of college football distraction from what is really happening in America. If you do not think much is happening in politics than I have nothing to say to you. You’re too far gone. At this time. In the Fall of 2023. 

There might be others out there. Like my good friend Rich below. Who will not let things distract them from who they really are. Someone who has disconnected from distracting media. In effect, really disconnected, almost like a Buddhist monk, from the world today. Of course, this was always the way of monks. To not be distracted by the devices of culture used to maintain control over one’s freedom as an individual. Alone and not part of any group.

Interesting things Rich mentions below. I might add football images in this post. But then again, these images, like everything else in this particular trance, are distracting attention away from the reality of the moment in time. I might add music.

Distracting or a context for receiving information? When one is not distracted. Some information that might create a distraction or help in waking up from the collective coma so many are under the spell of today. Somewhat like the citizens of that northern California town in the film The Invasion of the Body Snatchers. Who are the pod people and who the real people of earth?

The Twenty Year Old Cruise Ship Sovereign of the Seas Seen In Puerto Vallarta

All questions of our modern world. Perhaps the major question to ask ourselves in a vary Eastern spiritual way, am I awake or am I asleep today.

Awake or asleep.

The asleep populace of the nation is so much more powerful than those few awake population of the nation. Controlling things. A particular government system.

Much absurd stuff to the understanding cohorts of my generation. Yet so perplexing to other generations.

Anyway, Rich’s post below.

John

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With all disrespect to fuutbaugh. This is more of what college is really about.

Wonder why college grads move left.

Is it any wonder why recent college grads are so far left!?

Anthony Fauci may be retiring, but he’ll now become a “distinguished professor” at Georgetown Medical School, making him the latest in along line of failed and fired left-wingers who go onto teach at woke universities…Lori Lightfoot, the disgraced one-term racist mayor of Chicago, will teach a course at Harvard’s School of Public Health titled “Health Policy and Leadership”.

Chesa Boudin, the recalled Soros-backed San Francisco DA, was recently named the founding executive director of UC Berkeley’s new Criminal Law & Justice Center.Brian Stelter, the fired CNN talking head, joined the Shorenstein Center on Media, Politics and Public Policy at Harvard’s Kennedy School. Hillary Clinton, who never became president but destroyed Libya and enabled her predator husband for decades, got a teaching gig at Columbia University as global affairs professor.Peter Strzok, the disgraced and fired FBI special agent, also known as Lisa Page’s lover who had an “insurance policy” to take down Trump, is an adjunct professor at Georgetown University’s Walsh School of Foreign Service.James Comey, who helped frame President Trump and makes a living virtue signaling on MSNBC, taught a course on “ethical leadership” at William and Mary.

Sally Yates, who was fired for insubordination at the DOJ and for being a partisan hack, got a lecturer gig at Georgetown Law.Beto O’Rourke, who is really good at wasting donor money on failed political campaigns, got a job teaching Texas Politics for the Department of Political Science at Texas State in 2020, and now he’s teaching college students about “democracy” at the University ofChicago’s Institute of Politics.Stacy Abrams, failed two-time candidate for Georgia governor and author of adult erotica, teaches about “race and politics” at HBCU Howard University.Andrew Gillum, the failed Florida gubernatorial candidate who was found inebriated and naked in a hotel room with another man who wasoverdosing on drugs, received a teaching fellowship at Harvard’s Kennedy Center in 2019.Mayor Bill de Blasio, perhaps the worst mayor in New York City history, became a visiting fellow at Harvard’s Kennedy School in 2022.And this is not a comprehensive list…!Universities have become a golden parachute for the most wretched and miserable “elites” our society produces.  

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Started Above With Bill Evans and Ended Here With Bill Evans and Tenderly.