I have an inchoate thought, which is suitable because there's also chaos here as we pack up to get on the road. So I'll toss out the premise and let you all flesh it out.

It's conventional wisdom that the monoculture of yore has fragmented into a thousand pieces. And while monoculture was run by gatekeepers and had lots of problems, the fragmentation is also a major problem - at least when it comes to news - because of all these splintered versions of reality.
(The fragmented culture of entertainment is maybe an improvement to monoculture?)

But monoculture is also a very recent thing - prior to TV, due to mostly regional variations. So maybe it was a fleeting confluence of forces - mass media was new enough that you had a few major players who took over, before devolving into the current scene. Maybe it was always fragile, and it just seemed sturdy because each year, you see the world through the of the fisheye lens* of that year.

*At first I wrote fish bowl lens, and then I had to stare at that for a while. It still makes sense to me though.

A bunch of you all linked to the recent passing of Alice herself. So if you find it appropriate to listen to 18 minutes of tribute, chase it down here.

VTSOOBC, here's what I emailed Stormcrow recently: "[B]logging at Unfogged is the best gig in the world! First off, I get to write to people who are literally much smarter than me, but they're all genuinely nice about it, and then they have extremely interesting conversations and I always get to goof around and get cut a lot of slack. It's such a wildly great gig that you couldn't conceive of such a thing ahead of time, just sort of stumble into it. I am punching so far above my weight class here. I truly rarely ever resent it."

So thank you, you reprobates.

Mossy character writes: People suck.

Heebie's take: I don't find it anywhere as grim as Mossy does. Early hominins, they're just like us! Everyone goes to the mall sometimes.

E. Messily writes: I don't know how much appetite I personally have for dissecting/thinking about this, and I also don't know whether or not Unfogged is tired of the topic yet, but this is something that has occurred in my life that is both interesting and dispiriting: a tailspin from "can't we all just be friends even though we disagree! Let's Work Together and Stop Divisiveness!" to "DC is a garbage pile, democrats are intentionally working to prevent anything getting better, and transgender people are mentally ill". In one very quick facebook exchange! So much for agreeing to disagree.

An acquaintance of mine who I previously thought of as kind and sensible posted this on facebook, with subsequent responses. She is, among other things, the parent of a deaf child who I spent the last 2 years working tirelessly with in a fight to get our bright-red state government to provide services for, mostly to no avail. I was in so many meetings with her where she ended up in tears, asking state officials why they were refusing to help her family. She is 100% on board with the family and their community learning ASL so that the deaf child does not have to change himself, she is 100% on board with listening to deaf people about the experience of being deaf, and she 100% wishes the state were fulfilling their obligations to the deaf and disabled adults in her life as well as to her deaf child. And yet...

The election may be over, but I know emotions are still high. Social media tends to drive division even further, and I think we've had enough of that over the last few elections. I want you to know that we don't have to agree on anything to be friends, I'm simply glad you're here. So whether your candidate won or lost, thank you for being my friend. I believe we all make America great, together. 🇺🇸

In the [name] house, we will continue to pray for our nation's leadership, the world, and each other. Local friends are welcome to attend [church] with us on Wednesdays at 6:30 PM; we can even pick you up if you need a ride. And of course, my inbox is always open if you ever need someone to talk to!

[meme of "'we can disagree and still be friends' does not apply to racism, sexism, homophobia, or transphobia"]

I've seen a lot of this meme and others like it over the last week. What I find interesting is that my more Democratic friends are willing to cut me off and not be my friend based on who I voted for. So the political party that is all-accepting and all-loving doesn't actually accept anyone and everyone, most especially me, all because I"m a Conservative Christian who voted for Trump. I certainly don't agree with everything that man has done; I don't even agree with some of my own decisions I've made over my lifetime; I just wish we lived in a country where we could lean into the conflict and learn from each other, rather than fall into the "cancel culture" routine and pretending that other people's opinions don't exist simply because we don't agree. I watched interviews for both parties, read each candidates websites, and did research on both sides to make an educated vote for myself and my fellow Americans. I used to fall more into the Moderate camp until George Floyd, and that's when I realized that mainstream media is selling flat out lies to the American people and that it is such a dangerous game. I think more and more Americans are coming to this realization, hence why the election had such a large turnout that ended in a Republican win by both popular vote and Electoral College.

If you'd be willing, I'm happy to send you my copy of Blackout by Candace Owens or have a watch party for Matt Walsh's documentary "What is a Woman." I'd also be willing to gift you a DailyWire+ subscription for a year if you'd like to have a better understanding of my views and beliefs. I won't apologize for my beliefs, nor would I expect you to apologize for yours. I don't love you any less and I certainly hope you wouldn't love me any less because of mine. Still I say, we can still be friends despite our differences. I simply ask you to consider if unfriending everyone who disagrees is going to help bring unity back to the country or create more division.

[other comments about various incredibly offensive things Trump has said]

I think you're referring to comments he made back in the 90's, but I was still a kid then and honestly had to look that one up. I just find it interesting the large number of minorities (who Trump is allegedly against) who voted for Trump. That doesn't seem odd to anyone else? The media hates Trump, the Democrats know he will cleanup the government garbage pile that is D.C., so they will paint whatever picture they want of him and take whatever they want out of context just to distract from what he's actually doing, which is indeed, making America great again. I heard the Reagan era was pretty awesome. I'll be the first to apologize if America goes down the toilet under Trump, trust me. I made an informed vote just like everybody else, and I'm tired of people turning against each other over it. So thank you for staying friends with people and keeping the convo open. If you want a DailyWire+ membership for the year, let me know. I do think you'd enjoy it and you'd have a greater understanding of the opposing viewpoints.

[other comments including a description of Trump as "a convicted felon and rapist"]

I reiterate that I don't agree with everything he's ever done. He's actually not a convicted rapist though, you can look up a Newsweek article that explains his actual civil convictions, but he has never criminally been convicted of rape. The transgender "movement" is actually a mental health crisis, so if Trump wanting to halt gender-affirming "care" (read: surgeries in support of mutilating children) is considered anti-trans, then you can consider me anti-trans too. I can't think of any other mental illness issue where we actually play along and support the illness by having complex, life-altering surgeries, and prescribe lifelong medication that never actually works. As for the women's rights issue, I think Americans have long lost their ability to take care of themselves and they now rely on the government's funding for everything, even birth control and their own regrettable one night stands. Do you know the only 100% effective birth control? Abstinence. But God forbid we ask people to keep it in their pants or pay for birth control themselves. You're right. I'm the bad guy.

Heebie's take: Barf, barf, barf.

It's two things:
1. She's been spoonfed rightwing media for years.
2. She's got strong emotions, and then is sort of patting reasoning around it.

JP Stormcrow writes: In lieu of groveling about in the detritus of the expressed will of many of our neighbors in this glorious shining city on the hill, here's something else.

Unexpected and Unwanted Reminders of the Passage of Time

Of course very personal instances of these come fast and furious for some of us, but I recently had one of a completely different nature that's haunted me a bit.

In a book I was reading, the primary narrator was a woman seemingly in her late twenties. At some point her mother describes a memorable summer while she was in college as being right after Songs from the Big Chair by Tears for Fears came out. This brought me up short, and my immediate thought was that the author had clearly made a mistake--the timing couldn't work; the mother must have been older. But no. It's not even a close call, it works easily, not even requiring her to have given birth at a particularly young age. Not sure why it initially struck me as implausible. Maybe in part because I tend to be an immersive emotional reader who was viewing things through the lens of the daughter, so the mother coded as 'old' to me rather than her in fact being a decade or so younger than me. Sigh.

So this is all just to point out that Songs from the Big Chair came out closer to the end of freaking World War II than to today.

Have a nice day.

Heebie's take: What's really sad is that Stormcrow's ability to do math is slipping. Songs From the Big Chair came out in 1985.

Unless he's literally going down to the month??? Let's see... February 25th, 1985 to November 25th 2024, versus September 2nd, 1945 to February 25th, 1985... carry the 1...

Nope, he's still short. In about three months, this will be really timely.

That said, one of my favorite games is to chase down as specifically as possible what was happening 10, 20, 30, 40 years ago. Slowly, more and more of those will get absorbed as "commenting on Unfogged".