I’ve decided what to call the blind followers of bad politics. ‘Mold People’.

Why Mold People? Is it because they are easily shaped and sculpted into the worst people in the world? Close, but that’s not it.

It is simply based on a metaphor I came up with. Mold, as in a form of fungus. It grows fast and covers a large area if it’s in the right environment. It will take over and nothing can stop it.

It’s almost like a virus too. It spreads and takes over until it kills or makes the host very sick. But it’s not a virus, because we have vaccines for those and they don’t take over completely, and because we also have science. Smart people who understand stuff.

Mold People feed on negative thoughts, especially blame, fear, and hatred. The source is sensationalized news shows. Not the actual fact based News, but those opinion programs that pretend to be News. You know who they are.

The mold is always there. It’s underneath the rugs of the White House, and in News rooms, and around the family Thanksgiving dinner table.

It’s the negative nature of humanity that originally kept us safe from the other tribe that had an infectious disease or wanted to steal the meat from the fire. But we don’t need that anymore. We just need to be informed by trusted informants we can trust.

You may wonder, is the susceptibility of the mold based on intelligence? I don’t know. I’d hate to call someone stupid for being a follower of insanity. Let’s just call it evolved. No, that’s not any better.

The good news is that we now know what is happening. The environment is full of mold. The bad news is that there probably is very little we can do about it. It just might have to run its course.

Does that mean America will be a fascist nation in the future. Probably.

Does that mean the end for America. Not necessarily, but it will be a different America.

We can fear for democracy and our children, but honestly, they’ll be okay. Especially if they were born white and rich. Everyone else will have to struggle as usual. So not much will change really.

Sure, more people will suffer and die. The perception of our Rights will change and we will be forced to follow a different law. But that’s just the mold. It spreads and covers everything eventually.

But there’s hope.

Eventually the Sun will come out again and the mold won’t be able to thrive. It’s almost like a revolution. A changing of the season. A dark Winter followed by a fabulous Spring.

We won’t be alive to see the flowers grow again, but maybe our posterity will.

If we could only bury ourselves in the yard like a time capsule and come back when people are sane again. Where kindness and rationality matters. Where intelligence is aligned with morality. Where wealth and power are bad things again. Where people are actually equal without question. Where a mass influence of negativity would be unheard of.

So don’t worry about America. It’ll continue to perpetuate the atrocities of the past. It’ll always take advantage of the poor. And it’ll always strive to be corrupt. It’s just evolution.

Go ahead and vote the way you think you think. Keep watching that horrible TV show. If you are one of the Mold People, you’ll eventually win.

If you’re looking for a trusted news source. Not cable news. Not sensationalized media, but actual unbiased current event facts, it’s the Associated Press.

Most of my childhood I would go see my dad inside radio stations across the southwest and somewhere stuffed in a closet or back room was a Teletype Machine constantly autonomously typing away like a futuristic robot. It was simply called “the AP”, “the Feed”, or the “Wire”.

I was always fascinated by the idea of the entire news of the world being constantly pumped and pushed through the airwaves and phone lines across the country and translated onto neverending rolls of non perforated paper, folding and rolling itself into gigantic piles on the floor. The off-white colored smooth paper had strange markings along the edges that lined up with mechanical gears to feed it through.

At some point, a frantic DJ would bolt into the room, read some headlines, and tear off a piece of paper- then run back into the control room to broadcast the typed words onto the local air, informing all that could hear it through a single speaker, rattling in the center of the dashboard, or a small radio sitting on a shelf.

The noise of the constant, sometimes sporadic typing was mostly ignored by the inhabitants of the media workplace. It was the background soundtrack of their daily lives. White noise.

You might remember it (as someone in a prominent network TV station had the thought to put a microphone on it) starting a news program with the sound of fervent typing. It was the sound of serious business. Your fate. The sound of News.

For me, it was a comfort zone in a tiny building somewhere in a small town, knowing the machine kept us all safely informed. It was a responsible super-power hidden inside a back room in my dad’s office building that I knew was the complete authorized voice of humanity. The opposition of anarchy and corruption housed in a marvel of technology, disguised as a simple ugly, boring, paper vomiting, grey metal typewriter machine sitting on a small wooden table in a closet.

At the time, the AP was only available to radio and TV stations authorized by the FCC to relay the information to the public. It was up to the discretion of the owners and deejays (who were an accurate diverse representation of all humankind) to decide what was important enough to convey to the village citizens and strategically use the precious seconds of time to attract and monetize their audience.

But now, it’s available on your phone – in your hand right now. The voice of humanity. Untainted by biased opinion. It’s directly up to you to interpret.

Stop listening to hyperbolic, overwhelming, opinionated cable and radio news. It’s bad for you. It’s bad for America.

Associated Press

Heavy post time.

My youngest kid’s birthday is on Halloween.

He’s always had a difficult time just existing. He’s had issues with anxiety and depression since the very day he was born.

It’s taken a lot of work to figure him out.

Right now he’s attempting middle school. He’s been mostly home schooled since the first grade. It’s really difficult with his social challenges but he’s trying so hard.

He’s figuring himself out too.

Luckily, he has a great team of educators working with him this time around. The support he’s getting this year is awesome and is making all the difference.

I told him that if he can manage middle school he can do anything.

It’s probably the most difficult time in our American lives. Kids are mean. Grown ups are mean. Everyone is judgmental and impatient all while we’re trying to go through a massive brain development that shapes us for the rest of our lives.

Some of us don’t make it. We have an arrested development and stay at a seventh grade mentality forever, ironically forever unaware.I am incredibly proud of both my kids, but Halloween is all for my little monster.

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I’m also proud of myself.

I was about his age when my family broke apart and I was essentially emotionally abandoned. These are formidable years and I am proof of the damage that can be caused by shitty alcoholic parents.

I was also battling being a shitty alcoholic parent up until just a few years ago. I was just slightly better than my own shitty alcoholic parents because I was still trying at least. But hangover dad is never a good look. I couldn’t be there 100%.

When they say, “where do you want to be five years from now?” Well, five years ago, I wanted to be dead and I was well on my way. (told you this was heavy). My depression was gloriously intensified by alcohol and I was hell bent on drinking myself to death.

My most powerful driving motivation for getting sober and fighting alcoholism (besides not leaving a disgusting mess for everyone else to clean up) was my kids.

I knew they were still going to need a dad. A functional one.

A sober one. So I quit drinking. It finally took after a few tries.

I tell my kids, there’s no such thing as failure as long as you keep trying.

And now I can see the difference I make in my kids lives. I see it every day. I’m not bragging, I’m just glad I survived to do some good and even make new stupid mistakes.

I’m proud that I have surpassed my own parents. I also thoroughly enjoy the time I have with the kiddos before they grow up and leave.

No matter what I do with my own life to call it “success”, from here on, I’m satisfied. I survived when others haven’t. I’m still here and that’s something.

And I think my kids are going to be okay.

At least I’m not going to make their lives worse.