“In the year 3535, ain’t gonna need to tell the truth, tell no lies. Everything you think, do, and say is in the pill you took today.” From In the Year 2525, written by Rick Evans.

There’s an old saying about closing the barn doors after the horses get out. This is not as much a metaphor as it is an axiom. It is what we do.

Our “24-hour news cycle” opened the door to a new form of pop journalism, which, if you think about it, always has been a lynchpin to our popular culture. When network teevee news started — well before satellites, portable live cameras, and Zoom — it ran 15 minutes a night during dinner time, and before the invention of “TV trays.” We ate our meals in the kitchen or the dining room with our brood and we had “family conversations.” Nobody had to look up from their dumbass smartphones, as they did not exist. In fact, network news started only a bit after Dick Tracy got the first two-way wrist radio.

That started to change when the network news expanded to an hour and added a bunch of prime time weekly “investigative journalism” programs. Shortly thereafter, the network owners abandoned their policy of viewing the news as a public service and started to monetize those divisions by pandering to humanity’s most basic instincts. What we used to refer to as the “news hole” (a print reporting thing) grew into a bottomless pit. So-called 24-hour “news” channels on cable teevee greatly enlarged that pit, which introduced the concept of quantum physics to the world of reporting.

Filling all that additional time and competing with other outfits to fill that time created a plethora of engineers of bullshit and speculation replaced facts. It’s as though all the news directors were replaced by Loki.

As speculative reporting became the industry standard, one of the primary notions of journalism was abandoned. Damn near everything you hear when a story actually breaks is wrong or, at best, incomplete. Do not confuse this “information” with fact. It will change every quarter-hour, but the fact-free blather uttered by the wags, pundits and drug store experts, certainly in the initial hours, must be taken with so much salt it would make the Morton’s girl wince.

So, the news media moved on to the realm of speculation. Most of what we see, hear, and read — particularly on the internet — is a prediction of what’s going to happen next. This nonsense is padded out by uninformed, “pre-fact” and largely uniformed speculation of what really did happen, once again passing bullshit as fact.

It’s as though these outlets hired Sybil the Soothsayer from the movie Network when what they really wanted was Howard Beale. At the very least, Beale’s anger would have been honest.

These days, no news is good news. Argumentative speculation built upon early, unconfirmed reports is not news at all, but it does fill time and, damn it, it sounds like news, doesn’t it? I totally get that. We’ll believe whatever mindless theories that promote our personal fears, whatever they may be.

And we’ll tell others. Some will believe it because it feeds into their personal fears. Others might pop you one in the nose.

There is a place for such discussion. It’s called the neighborhood tavern. Preferably one where Studs Turkel tends bar. In my youth, I would have these tête-à-têtes at various Chicago neighborhood joints, but I had a leg up on my opponents as I did not, and do not, drink alcohol. If you feel a strong need to win an argument, try going to an old man’s bar sober and order a lot of ginger ale. But that was decades ago; today, make sure you go to a bar with a no-guns policy.

I am not qualified to say the world has gone nuts. However, I can express my informed opinion that the United States of America most certainly has.