Americans shouldn't confuse feeling bad with being bad.

There is a difference between hard feelings, facts and criminal acts. There is time to calm down, ask questions and get the facts as a form of direct action.

Part of staying unfettered is to not get sucked into other people’s emotional campaigns to manipulate you. Typically, this is to hijack your priorities and replace them with the priorities of an agenda driven parasite.

If you pay attention to current events there is no shortage of things to be sad or angry about. Amid the enormous wave swell walls of indignation, impotent rage and heavy emotional weights, slamming down from incoming communications onto your small form, are a mere fistful of things you can actually control. The wiser will actively avoid getting dragged into collective uses of manipulation, emo-propaganda, disinformation, or simply just the network of your peers who have adopted whatever ‘thing’ there is to be outraged about today.

Today’s PSA: Use all your free force to get to even ground and be unavailable for emotional hijacking. Sometimes the only way you can do is shut off all vectors and ride out the storm. This too shall pass.

News presenters presume to tell you what you should know and think about; which content to be ‘mad’ about, for instance. The cable news outlets are an extension of the online ‘outrage monetization model’ seeking to produce content to get you to jam on your mobile devices with reactive emotional activity.

If you are not upset by something someone else is amped up over, notice that and hold your own perception. Ask yourself, what should I be doing right now? Do I have time for this? Do I actually benefit from whatever ‘thing’ the outrage train is on today? Is that *really* my issue?

For instance, abortion seems to be an easy escalator to rage-land for most sides, but adoption is a deflating balloon. Why is that? Moderate effective solutions don’t get the clicks, even though they are the most appropriate fit for adequate public policy. Partisans can’t capitalize on moderate solutions for anger and motivation to knock on doors for their candidates. They can’t capture your audience to listen to speeches from office holders whose record of doing nothing is stronger than any street rhetoric. Do you want to be used for this right now? Is this the best way?

Anyone can engage in cheap parlor tricks, bullhorn outrage, vigils for suddenly activated issues, like mass shootings. Sadly enough, there will be another tragedy of some sort next week. What is all this attention leeching costing you? What are you actually getting out of the litmus for public knowledge? What are you missing out on in life: happiness, fun, getting a few more things done? Are you being guided into a well informed forum of public debate where you can participate and add solutions to the outcomes for long term public policy or are you being thrust into a chaotic street mob, handed a sign you didn’t write and told what to shout and where to run next?

If it’s the latter, maybe excuse yourself to use the restroom and then redirect yourself where you’re actually supposed to be.