Auchtoon!

You may think I’m calling out the excesses of the political parties or social media or the so-called mainstream media and the breakneck speed with which they all flood us with news. And you wouldn’t be wrong. But the more subtle thing I’m calling out is us and what we do with that news.

Big news is breaking all the time (most of it not necessarily big). But even when truly big news does break (an assassination attempt on a former president, a current president bowing out of a re-election campaign) we tend to allow ourselves to accelerate past the actual news and move swiftly on to speculation about the consequences and ramifications.

Let’s call this the punditfication of America. We no longer receive news as something to learn about but as something to opine about. We are all pundits, supposed experts, talking past each other. We leave what is too soon so we can be the first to have a hot take on what might be.

There is a LOT of campaign left before the November election (and a new cycle that begins the day after that). Maybe now is a good time to take a deep breath and try to pace ourselves.

Last week Michigan Public had a story about the EPA’s latest Climate Indicators Report and how it shows significant changes for Michigan and the Great Lakes as a whole. Go ahead and read it. I’ll wait.

OK, you’re busy. And there is a lot to think through. That’s because it was created from data collected and vetted by scientific experts — highly trained teams of individuals whose literal job it is to put these reports together. What’s more, it is the job of the entire scientific community to test and question and poke and prod to try to find errors, biases, and false claims in those reports (and it fills them with delight when they find something so there is every incentive to make them airtight).

Meanwhile, there is an ongoing battle in the country as a whole over education and what exactly we should be teaching our children. The only thing that approaches consensus is that STEM-related courses (science, technology, engineering, math) should be a priority.

And yet, we routinely dismiss the scientists, technologists, engineers, and mathematicians when their expert recommendations do not align to our feelings and desires. The Supreme Court seemingly validated this by throwing out the so-called Chevron doctrine last month.

We’ve been doing a fine job of chasing teachers and nurses out of their professions. Are scientists and researchers next?

I’ve commented before about the challenges of dealing with hyper-fast news cycles. The presidential debate last week took place a few hours past my deadline, so I missed that. Then earlier this week was the bombshell ruling by the U.S. Supreme Court on presidential immunity.

And now with the Fourth of July holiday, I’m working a short week and guessing today (Wednesday) what might still be relevant Friday when the cartoon is published. This has left me playing catch up — but still needing to be careful not to run too far ahead.

So, no, I don’t really know how I came around to the Star Wars theme. And to readers who are Star Wars fans, yes, I realize that Trump is really more of a Jabba the Hut character, but I couldn’t make that work.