I’ve spent practically my whole life trying to navigate . . . unchartered waters.
Today you hear that term a lot. So many of us are endeavoring to survive this pandemic that’s forcing us to try new ways of doing things, apply different approaches, adopt new methods to put food on our tables, make ends meet, save our families and our marriages, our businesses and livelihoods . . . our sanity!
Once I was promoted so fast up the corporate ladder into the stratosphere, high up the ranks into the executive hierarchy of network television. I had to quiz my children on what they liked to see on TV, which for me were still unchartered waters as I started out in print journalism, not network television. I didn’t want to sound like a nincompoop at nose-bleed level meetings with the divisional presidents at NBC and before that, at ABC where I was on another high-speed escalator, fast becoming a roller coaster.
Then lonely and depressed following the death of my first wife, Angela, I dove headlong into the unchartered waters of Internet dating and wrote a book about it, “Love Boat 78.” Happily, I survived the adventures and perils of online dating and I’m now safely married to my darling Rita whom I met not in unchartered waters, but in a friendly stream, a neighborhood sports bar called Duffy’s.
The Internet undoubtedly is the largest expanse of unchartered waters we’re all trying to navigate, yet it’s often a seething, teasing, seductive sea churning with misinformation which sometimes traps us into taking the wrong course or coming to the wrong conclusion, like the other day when I was preparing to speak at the virtual conference “20 Days to Save the USA.”
I wanted to criticize those advocating defunding the police, which I believe is a dangerous course and a potential detriment to public safety, to law and order.
I came across an article on the Internet which said such proposals were eerily similar to the orders Hitler gave to Hermann Goring in 1933 so police would be too weak to stop his brown shirts from rioting, looting, burning property and beating people in the streets. I said it was part of the Fuhrer’s strategy to sway an election, but I was wrong. According to historians and the Holocaust Museum, the Nazi state fused police with the SS and SD, two of the most radical and ideological committed Nazi organizations. So, they didn’t defund, they Nazified.
And here I gave a nice virtual talk that was well received and reported in news media, but now I find it wasn’t true and it makes me feel like those deceiving unchartered waters sucked me in and drowned me, so I’m now giving myself CPR and correcting what I said in that speech.
Iranian Threats
Now our intelligence community is warning us that Iran and Russia are trying to interfere with the presidential election. Iran is sending out emails to registered Democrats saying “Vote for Trump or else!” and warning they have gained access to the “entire voting infrastructure” to know if people vote for Trump or Democratic presidential nominee Joe Biden.
“You will vote for Trump on Election Day or we will come after you,” the email threateningly reads. “Change your party affiliation to Republican to let us know you received our message and will comply.”
Yes, we all need to be more careful. More skeptical.
Don’t believe everything you see or read on the ultimate unchartered waters, the Internet, or what winds up in your mailbox as we are all potential victims of cyber crooks, bullies and liars.
And with this election coming we’re heading into ever more treacherous . . . UNCHARTERED WATERS!