Reading the news divinatorily

To hear me read this post aloud (length: 3:46), click here.

I originally put this on Threads, but decided to copy and paste it here.

I have gone back to the Washington Post and the New York Times. Even reading the Wall Street Journal when I have time. 1) They’re covering stuff I want to know about, 2) I finally figured out that my university covers the cost of these three while I’m still a student, and 3) this is no time to be uninformed. But still sending a small donation to the Guardian and following various independent commentators. I need to sit down and sort out my news budget!

But that said, if I want to know how public opinion is shifting, I look at TikTok. (What are you, 20? No, I’m 56.) Why TikTok? Because it has reliably informed me about certain shifts that I wasn’t hearing about elsewhere: that Americans do in fact care about Gaza, for example. TikTok was telling me that by the end of 2023 loud and clear, while the papers were only telling me the dry facts. It’s dicey to read such shifts from social media, of course, and I factcheck it as I go.

And I say this to you, friends who include other diviners, because I don’t know about you, but newspapers/news generally evokes my intuition as much as cards do, or more. I find myself reading the news divinatorily. Reading between the lines. If you don’t already read the news like it was a tarot card (I am sure many of you already do, but do you do this *consciously*?), it’s something to add to your repertoire.

With politicians, I really recommend watching them speak and watching their facial expressions. It sucks because they’re often boring or enraging. But if you’re looking for intuitive intel, I believe it’s there to be read. We have to be ready to hear what we don’t want to hear. But the nuances are indicative of weaknesses, or of hypocrisy and deceit, stuff the headline or the tiny clip doesn’t show, stuff that is there in the fuller context.

After this election, a lot of us don’t want to know. We’re newsed out. But we don’t have the luxury of not knowing things. And sometimes there are hints in the news of things to be hopeful about as well (like corporate America’s pushback on Trump, for example).

I think (I haven’t lived in one before) that people who live under authoritarian regimes (which I’m not saying is where this is going, but maybe, we were warned it might be) develop sharp intuition. A sensitivity to nuance. Not just with each other. With people in power. This attention to intuition and nuance makes it easier to pivot faster when needed.

Sorry, I didn’t mean for this thread to get so long. Or so ominous! Nor do I mean to encourage a cynical reading if the news. Just an intuitive one. It’s empowering to read with an ear (or I guess, an eye) for what you may need to know in the future.