In the blue flicker of screens, we consume
not just news but separate worlds—
Fox and MSNBC crafting realities
brick by digital brick, until the wall between

stands complete. I watch the talking heads,
their faces tight with that sweet intoxication
of (always) being right, of knowing absolutely,
and recognise the hunger in myself.

In the divided world of left and right,
we worship our separate truths,
each certainty a small, fierce god
demanding total and unwavering faith.

How strange that we who share one sky
have managed to divide the very air,
to breathe in atmospheres so utterly apart
that what you see as freedom, I see as threat.

In the beginning God made "man" in His image,
then speaks of "them"—male and female—
this curious shift suggesting a whole
before the parts, a unity now lost.

After Eden, those devastating words:
"he shall rule over you"—the template
for all dominations to come, for empires
built on the myth of might make right.

I've seen men paraded with shaven heads,
conviction preceding evidence,
certainty erasing their humanity—
the cycle complete: from pride to cruelty,
all in the name of being right.

This is what absolute certainty demands: not just
agreement but surrender, not just
victory but obliteration of the other
until only one opinion remains.

Yet wisdom lives in threshold spaces,
like a rooster caught between earth and sky.
"Through a glass, darkly," Paul said,
naming our condition, our partial sight.

Perhaps God can be found in our questions,
in the gaps between what we know
and what we hold as certain, in that trembling
pause before judgment falls. Perhaps

salvation waits in the surrender
of our certainties, in open hands
not clenched fists, in the courage
to say: I may be wrong, and so might you.

Reflections

It's pretty disturbing to see how we're all getting our news from different places and ending up with completely different ideas about what's actually happening in the world. Watching American cable news, or YouTube re-runs as I do, you are not just seeing shouting matches, you are seeing two completely different versions of reality being built in real-time. Fox News and MSNBC are not just offering different takes on Trump's latest executive order; they're engaged in a deeper battle over what reality even is. The political pundits on each network speak with absolute certainty, while social media algorithms boost the most extreme voices, rewarding not wisdom but outrage, to ensure the continued polarisation of the public discourse and the erosion of common ground.

Interested in completing the article? Follow Wynand on Substack