Ways to handle the stress of keeping up with the news

We live in a democracy, and for a democracy to function at its best, its citizens need to make informed choices at the polls. It's important that we all stay informed so we can elect people with the correct priorities. But we also need to find ways to deal with the stress of keeping up with the news. From Cindy Otis on Twitter:

Continued:

There are several risks to being overloaded with disturbing/negative content.

Complacency - becoming so used to the deluge that it all starts to seem normal.
Paralysis - that is, being so overwhelmed, you can't figure out what to do/how to move forward.
Crisis perspective - you get trapped in the Breaking News cycle where everything seems like a potentially world-ending crisis to you.
Depression/PTSD - you don't have to be on the frontline of a war have either/both. Disturbing content is absolutely a trigger.

There are also serious physical consequences to living a negative content overloaded life. I had a colleague who didn't know he had stage 4 brain cancer because the symptoms were the same as our very stressful careers--exhaustion, random fevers, stress, and dizziness.

So, what do you do? First, I strongly urge you not to ignore the news/current events. Ignorance is one reason we have this society. It won't make the problems go away & contributes nothing to their solving. Now that that's established, here's how to make it easier to handle:

1. TAKE ACTION. Volunteer for a food pantry, canvass for a political candidate, donate to a NGO, visit a sick friend. Seriously. Service of some kind in your community lets you be part of SOLUTIONS. You will see RESULTS when otherwise you'd feel helpless.

2. Conversely, for those who may take tip #1 to the extreme--know that you alone can't save the world. Accept your limits. You aren't a 7/11. You can't always be open. At the end of every day when I reached my limit, I silently told myself, "I've done what I can today." (Note: Repeating that to myself did not stop me from feeling like I could have done more most days. But it was important to tell myself anyway because I am human. We are human. It's good we *feel* things.)

3. RESEARCH BEFORE PANICKING. Easier said than done, but everything will seem like crisis/earth-ending if you don’t know what has/hasn't happened before. If it has happened before, it's can be hugely comforting to know how it was resolved and/or what might happen next.

4. GET UP & MOVE. Put the phone away, turn off the TV, log out of Twitter. Go for a walk, sit outside, get some coffee, call a friend. CIA is full of ppl walking the building with a colleague/friend. There's a reason. Our brains & bodies need breaks from stressful content.

5. SET RULES. Because of my work at CIA, I had a rule--I only read fiction at home. I had enough reality at work. In the civilian world, I set blocks of time each day where I turn everything off--no news or social media. Let yourself recharge so you can keep fighting later.

6. AVOID DARK HOLES. (I'm sure there's a joke to be made about that.) It's easy to get sucked into the swirl of bad news. You watch a gruesome YouTube video and the next one is all queued up to play right after it. Focus on one issue at a time. Deal w/ it before moving on.

7. YOU NEED FUN. When there is suffering, war, despair, etc. around you, it's easy to feel guilty when you have fun, feel happy, have a good meal with friends. You NEED these things. You will be better able to do good in the world if you let yourself have these things.

8. TALK TO SOMEONE. Often, we curl inward socially when overwhelmed w/ negative content. It's a means of protection. One of the great things at CIA was that everyone else knew what you were going through. Whether it's therapy or talking to your person, talking helps.

None of this is easy. I got burned out a lot in my career & many days recently, I've felt overloaded by the barrage. I'm sure you have too. But you and I can't check out. We can't give up & we need to stay engaged, but we can't do that if we get overloaded. Keep going.

What did corporate America do with that tax break? Buy record amounts of its own stock →

The Republican tax reform package that was supposed to raise wages and spur hiring has instead funded a record stock buyback and dividend spree, benefiting investors and company executives over workers.
...
"More than 70 percent of this [tax cut] will be returned to workers," said White House Press Secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders at a January press conference after the bill came into effect.
However, companies have instead used the extra cash to spend billions of dollars buying back their own stock, boosting the value of shares held by investors. Buybacks reduce the number of shares on the market, immediately increasing the value of the shares that investors already hold.
...
Compounding the issue is a recent study by the Office of SEC Commissioner Robert Jackson that found that a stock buyback announcement often leads to a short-term stock price pop, which corporate insiders use to cash out their shares.

A baby was treated with a nap and a bottle of formula. His parents received an $18,000 bill. →

Just normal healthcare things:

On the first morning of Jang Yeo-im’s vacation to San Francisco in 2016, her eight-month-old son Park Jeong-whan fell off the bed in the family’s hotel room and hit his head. 
There was no blood, but the baby was inconsolable. Jang and her husband worried he might have an injury they couldn’t see, so they called 911, and an ambulance took the family — tourists from South Korea — to Zuckerberg San Francisco General Hospital.
The doctors at the hospital quickly determined that baby Jeong-whan was fine — just a little bruising on his nose and forehead. He took a short nap in his mother’s arms, drank some infant formula, and was discharged a few hours later with a clean bill of health. The family continued their vacation, and the incident was quickly forgotten.
Two years later, the bill finally arrived at their home: They owed the hospital $18,836 for the 3 hour and 22 minute visit, the bulk of which was for a mysterious fee for $15,666 labeled “trauma activation,” which sometimes is known as “a trauma response fee.”...

Immigrant toddlers ordered to appear in court alone →

As the White House faces court orders to reunite families separated at the border, immigrant children as young as 3 are being ordered into court for their own deportation proceedings, according to attorneys in Texas, California and Washington, D.C.
Requiring unaccompanied minors to go through deportation alone is not a new practice. But in the wake of the Trump administration’s controversial family separation policy, more young children — including toddlers — are being affected than in the past.
...
Toczylowski said parents typically have been tried along with young children and have explained the often-violent circumstances that led them to seek asylum in the U.S.
The children being detained under the new “zero tolerance” policy, though, are facing immigration proceedings without mom or dad by their side.
“The parent might be the only one who knows why they fled from the home country, and the child is in a disadvantageous position to defend themselves,” Toczylowski said.

After Decades of Losing Ice, Antarctica Is Now Hemorrhaging It →

According to a comprehensive new study, global warming has already bled the frigid continent, which is larger than Europe, of about 2.7 trillion tons of ice. This enormous amount of ice has already raised global sea levels by as much as a centimeter.
This outflow seems to be increasing: Almost half of all losses have occurred in just the last five years. And the continent is hemorrhaging that mass in a way that will lead to especially high sea levels on the East Coast of the United States.
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The results, published Wednesday in the journal Nature, present what is generally considered to be highest-quality census of the world’s glaciers and ice sheets. Written by 84 scientists across 44 different institutions, including nasa and the National Snow and Ice Data Center, the paper combines several different modes of measurement to produce one consensus result.
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...For years, researchers have generally believed that the eastern two-thirds of Antarctica—dubbed “East Antarctica”—have been growing in mass. As the climate changed, snowfall had seemed to increase there, and the region seemed to be absorbing more sea level rise than it was contributing.
This no longer seems to be the case....

Tips For Staying Civil While Debating Child Prisons →

From the Onion:

...Recall that violently rejecting a tyrannical government goes against everything our forefathers believed in... ...Realize that every pressing social issue is solved through civil discourse if you ignore virtually all of human history...

Dems need to fight fire with fire over the Supreme Court

One stolen seat, and now we're looking at a potential extreme swing right. I try to avoid alarmism, but we've been slowly losing rights for the better part of two generations, and the recent Supreme Court decisions over immigration, labor organizing, and others, mean we're continuing that trend. Kennedy's retirement now could easily lead to an extremist court further eroding what little power the average American has left. Congressional Dems need to fight fire with fire over the Supreme Court, and use the same bullshit tactics the GOP used to get Gorsuch in:

On the recent "Biblical" defense of parent-child separation at the border →

It's hard to come up with a justice related issue in the Bible that's more prevalent than the insistence from the Torah, the Prophets, Jesus, and the Apostles, that we must care for least among us; and significantly, special consideration is give to "the foreigner among you."
If you want to play the chapter-and-verse proof-text game, I can do that.
"The wicked snatch the fatherless child from the breast." -Job 24:9
In this text, snatching a child from her mother's breast is presented as an example of indisputable evil.
Consider this pivotal story from the Old Testament: As the book of Exodus opens the Hebrews are the cheap labor source for Egypt. But the Egyptians are worried there are too many of these foreigners. So a law is passed to permanently separate children form their parents. (!)
For those citing Romans 13 as biblical warrant for "enforcing the laws of the land," I have two things to say.
1. The man who wrote Romans 13 was executed by the gov't for not submitting to the governing authorities out of obedience to Christ.
2. The Nazis loved Romans 13.
Now let's consider Jesus.
When Jesus was asked about inheriting eternal life Jesus pointed the inquirer to loving God with all your heart and loving your neighbor as yourself. When asked, "But who is my neighbor?", Jesus gave the parable of the Good Samaritan. (Luke 10:25f)
At the end of the Sermon on the Mount Jesus said, "Whatever you wish others would do to you, do also to them, for this is Law and Prophets." Jesus then concluded his sermon by talking about popular roads that lead to death and ill-constructed houses doomed to fall. Selah.
If you want to argue that the blatantly cruel policy of taking children away from refugee parents seeking asylum is necessary to keep America from having too many brown people, then just say so. But don't you dare think that you have Jesus or the Bible are on your side!