Jeff Buckley 1966 to 855-weeks-ago Thursday
Mr. Buckley could express doubt with the best of them. And not that annoying, middle-school girl, ‘does he like me or not,’ indecisive crap. No, the real kind where you make risk commitment even though you know you could be wrong. When he sings to his lover “It makes me so angry, because I know that in time I’ll only make you cry,” you hear his tortured voice choose to love despite his real fear of a tearful end. It’s the cover of Leonard Cohen’s ‘Hallelujah’ that he leaves behind, however, that cover draws you into knowing that you can have doubts but go on living, an insight altogether lost on some of our political contemporaries.
Jeff Buckley – Hallelujah – Live at the Liquid… by jB88jkRE
Narendra Dabholkar 1945 to eight-weeks-ago Tuesday
Mr. Dabholker doubted, among other things, the possibility of removing dirt and cowflies from an ear with supernatural glass rod and a man claiming to be a God who could materialize Swiss watches from thin air. Trouble is, many around him weren’t open to considering his message. So much so that Narendra was assasinated last August by religious fundamentalists. Why was he willing to go to the grave in his admittedly condescending, if scientific, quest? Because it was the poor who lost when superstition reigned–false Gods trick cash out of poor Indians promising answers to their plight. He leaves behind dozens of conjurers and sorcerers unmasked for what they are–con men who prey on the weak.
O.P.P. dawn of human reason to two-weeks-ago Tuesday?
You saw this one coming. It’s the death of Other Peoples’ Perspective. You might say that Google, purveyor of all information, killed it. Eli Pariser explains:
As web companies strive to tailor their services (including news and search results) to our personal tastes, there’s a dangerous unintended consequence: We get trapped in a “filter bubble” and don’t get exposed to information that could challenge or broaden our worldview.
By counting our clicks and showing us content that we’d assuredly ‘like’, Google (and facebook and Yahoo! News and the list goes on) keeps from us any content that might disturb us. People who disagree with us disappear.
Realizing that, the certainty of Ted Cruz starts to make sense. There are those of us among ‘The American People’ who remain open to the possibility that Obamacare might not “destroy the economy.” But how would Cruz ever hear that voice? He may legitimately think that he’s a populist. In his information bubble, people who don’t oppose the Affordable Care Act might not exist. And this kind of politics is what this information bubble leaves behind.
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Cover photo courtesy Flickr user Gage Skidmore. It can be found here.
