All the News That's Fit to Depress | The American Prospect

It's as if we have declared knowing a virtue in itself, without recognizing what a great and potentially painful responsibility knowing is. Knowing is supposed to lead to action. That's what keeps compassion from rotting into hopelessness -- being empowered to do something about the feelings you are experiencing. But in our current climate, the news serves to depress us instead of galvanize us. Staying informed has become -- for so many of us -- a moral obligation that feels like hell.

That about says it all, huh? I invariably check eleven websites regularly. The order goes like this: 4 political, 3 news, 4 pals.

I'm pretty much at the point where I just skim the poli blogs, clicking if something interests me (which happens less and less now that each story has the agreeable but monotonous 'democrats are ineffective, but republicans are evil' subtext) and the news sites - until I get to the local sports section, where I devour Packers news.

My pals' blogs get most of my attention, but even that suffers from the same situation that my actual conversations do. Most everyone I know and interact with hate the direction the country is going in, same as I do (or maybe you hadn't sussed that out about me yet...), so our conversations tend to take on the quality of reading and rereading favorite books - except nothing new is realized within.

Or maybe it's just the weather.