Politics, at its best, is as you describe. In social media it is almost entirely mindless baiting and ludicrous insults. Oddly, not as many outright lies as we might expect in such a toxic setting but tons of spreading ridiculous rumors. I would not be over-reaching to say DJT relies on that aspect of politics more than any other.
Tower work? As in climbing? Sounds both exciting and terrifying.
It becomes familiar pretty quickly. The first time I was only about 60 feet up, but I got a reality check when I saw a hawk circling below me. After I got used to it, there was no twitch except when I got maybe 15 feet up… since they were almost always mountaintop sites there was a change when the scene changed to the lowlands thousands of feet down.
Safety regulations, at least in the company, required being fastened to the tower on at least one point at all times. One of the hot dogs (bad news in demanding situations) failed to obey that and lost his balance about 20 feet up. He landed on both feet but – being old and a smoker, and hitting hard clay – thoroughly destroyed both ankles. What a price to pay!
One of the features that attracted me to Go Comics comments is that, despite occasional mindless trolls, we have more than a handful of tremendously bright people and countless reasonably bright people. We also have some who can’t see beyond political parroting, but such is life. Some are a bit of both worlds.
Sometimes I miss the old job, finding and fixing communication problems. I don’t miss the snowcatting and tower work, though. The “fixing” part made me feel alive; the other parts… not so much. What really was great was the sort of people I worked with. Educated and brilliant (the first part was desirable; the second part was a job requirement), they were utterly reliable. I often doubt the political parrots we see here are reliable at all.
We are mostly adults here; we learned to live in whatever the world is. Politics has no place in my life. It is full of ignorant crap and sanctimonious arguments by people who are barely able to fill out their own life.
It took a couple weeks for me to eat normally, and even then with due care. IIRC chewing meat was a couple months later, when the holes had mostly closed.
In the real world, how things are portrayed hardly matters. We are not a nation of the sorts of characters displayed in commercials – thin, able-bodied, carefree…. When we let go of our pointless concerns we have more energy for things that matter.
It’s a mystery…. (Good catch. I didn’t notice it.)