I subscribed to the online editions of The Washington Post. Yes it's a US news company! At USD$19 for an entire year it was an easy decision. I live in the UK but haven't yet done the same for any other UK news organisation, apart from giving a few pounds to The Guardian (paywall-free.) Incidentally, both 'newspapers' are running very similar headlines today, very encouraging.

Yeah, sure I pay an annual Licence Fee to the BBC and read their news, watch their telly, but the reporting is often infuriatingly bland and airs weeks past the time I've already seen it elsewhere.

Where was I? Yes, one of the reasons I subscribed to the Washington Post was reporter David Fahrenthold's tenacious examination of Donald Trump's assertions that the President-to-be gave away millions to charity. What is certain is the majority of charitable donations were falsely recorded and that the work won Mr Fahrenthold a Pulitzer Prize for National Reporting. And the reporting of his humanity, non-superhero ordinariness, in connection with that glitter gun.

I'm conscious of drawing from perhaps a greater breadth of sources than most other people when formulating my position on often complex ideas. And often simple ideas. Last year I asked around and gratefully received suggestions for people and media companies from which I could draw a wide range of opinions. With hindsight I bit off more than I could comfortably chew and had to step away from the process.

I can't say I'm much wiser now but the perspectives I've gained have led me to a more balanced approach than you'd know by reading some of last year's blog posts, e.g. 'Regrexit' and 'Chainsaws'.

In public at least.

The Washington Post subscription includes (from the welcome email):

• Unlimited access to washingtonpost.com from any device.
• Unlimited access to our entire suite of mobile apps for iOS, Android and Fire Tablet.
• The Optimist, a weekly email newsletter highlighting positive stories.
• Post Most, a weekday email newsletter with a rundown of popular stories.
• Shared digital access for an additional user.

(My emphasis above.)

Do they have any idea how inappropriate 'Optimist' will be for me‽

Joking aside I remember Martyn Lewis, a national UK news anchor saying he wanted to insert one 'feel-good' story into every bulletin. His rationale being that there's too much depressing news. At the time I agreed; now though it's entirely the wrong message to send to ordinary people. Given the magnitude of the worldwide change we're living through, I believe it's important to focus on the bad stuff.

There's one big problem with my current reasoning: if you make reporting so detailed that people don't want to watch they'll go to where the grass is greener, airbrushed, astroturfed… Yeah. Fairness, balance.

And finally, here's a link to a web page with a photo of a squirrel with big nuts:

• http://www.fark.com/farq/about/

For the avoidance of doubt as to my motives here at the end, Fark.com is my all-time favourite news-related site; the comment pages there are awesome. Awesome in a mainly US-centric, rounded but occasionally very unbalanced, good way. I pay them to remove ads.

I know someone who's better screwed together than I and she's read, er… (thinks) yeah, I'd best get this back on track before the list of people who are better-screwed-together than I grows beyond my ego's comfort zone!

Anyway, she's been reading Christopher Browning's 'Ordinary Men'; it's an examination of the motivations of, in simplistic terms, a WWII Nazi-run extermination squad.

Not an easy read, by her account, not by any means. It got me thinking again of what minimal set of events would precipitate a decline into times in which our society could condone such events. You've had only to look casually at the TV in recent years to find programmes about 'Doomsday Preppers', disease-created zombies or worse, the shutdown of the electricity grid, aliens intent on extracting all our planet's resources before moving on to the next mining proposition…

Go on then, what, practically, could sow the seeds of our society's destruction?

Our reliance on complex but easily-interrupted food distribution chains, the effect of social media on the ability of looters to congregate on and to lay waste to city centres, the notion that terrorists could strike anywhere even with the complete absence of coherent attack strategies, the transmission of disease across international and across species boundaries, the emboldening of xenophobes as government administrations move towards embracing nativism-inspired lawmaking?

Yeah, fragile. So what can we do?

Nothing, apart from conform to normal societal rules and hope that like the winds of change, it'll all blow over us without too much damage. And that's the problem, as vested interest has the rules change, the moral compass becomes destabilised. Has anyone from any other previous era, outside of wartime, had the rules change literally overnight?

Maybe.

I've read (and watched 2 versions of) Orwell's 1984, read and listened to Orwell's Animal Farm, experienced the dread of imagining the speed of onset of a technological catastrophe during The Terminator series, read Asimov's Foundation series and felt a hope inspired by knowledge there may just be a shadowy organisation skilled in manipulating populations and then crushed as one man with abnormal skills brings it all crashing down… Then there's the similarities between 28 Days Later, The Walking Dead, and Shaun of the Dead; the gulf between the dystopian Star Wars and the utopian Star Trek; the time between the first screening of 'Metropolis' through The Twilight Zone's 'To Serve Man', to the present day's fascination with superhero movies. I'd best not mention 'The Matrix'. Do you remember Bird Flu, note that colds and flu last forever these days, and at any one time, someone you know could easily be carrying an antibiotic-resistant strain of some superbug that'll mean a few days off work, or death (whichever is the least benign?) And finally, during a recent bout of flooding in the northwest of England the entire nation's production of pink sandwich and custard cream biscuits stopped. Ok, really finally: when a major UK retailer decided the post-Brexit-announcement price rises after the consequent fall in the value of the GB Pound could not be passed directly on to the customer so the supplier's profit margin must take the hit; thus iconic products temporarily disappeared from shelves as people panic-bought – no Marmite!

Having an active imagination at a time like this isn't helpful.