So What Planet Is This, Anyway

I've been hanging back, lurking really, to see if I can shake this impression that almost everything I hear lately is trite, half-baked, the opposite of insightful - outsightful?   - inblindful?   And it's not like I'm not looking.  I read the Times, listen to NPR and the BBC, watch CNN and both C-SPAN's - but it all seems like they all  - pols, journalists, pundits - are starting the day reading the same playbook and then come out spouting the same utterly conventional wisdom.  To mix a metaphor or two.

Not that I'm a bundle of insight, but I think I know it when I see it and I ain't seeing it.

More than ever, it seems to me the most intelligent things to do are listen to music, tend the garden, read history, and keep the day job.  Plus, in my own case, hit the keyboards and try to sound different every time.  Plus, I would say, look for simplicity without trusting it, but the thought isn't my own.   Alfred North Whitehead - now there's a guy with insight.