RIP 4th Estate—Another Reason I’m Reading Books Instead of Scrolling

What I read in May 2025

“I am not altogether on anybody’s side, because nobody is altogether on my side, if you understand me: nobody cares for the woods as I care for them, not even Elves nowadays.”

― J.R.R. Tolkien, The Two Towers.

In 2003, just after 9/11, when the Republican party and the media apparatus enslaved to their messaging tried to tell us the lie about Weapons of Mass Destruction, I turned off the network and cable news. In 2016, when Bernie Sanders was slandered by the Democratic Party and white women like myself were told that we only supported him over Hillary Clinton because, in the words of Gloria Steinem, “that’s where all the boys are,” I turned off NPR, Bill Maher, and all sarcastic, self-applauding Jon Stewartesque affiliates. In the summer of 2020, when the papers were reporting daily on how dangerous Covid was, scaring us into our homes and locking the public schools for 18 months, while claiming that everyone at the BLM protests were safe, yet we couldn’t surf or go to the parks, I stopped reading the San Francisco Chronicle. And when Joe Biden failed spectacularly at the June debate in 2024 and Donald Trump eventually became the 47th president, I cut the final ties to all media…getting off my daily use of Instagram, X, and Facebook in January of 2025 and canceling my last MSM subscription to the Chicago Tribune.

I’m officially MSM, scroll, and screen free.

It’s not easy to do this. I’ve always prided myself on being in the know. A long-time donor to NPR and PBS, my identity was once built on my intellectual standing among my peers. Being up to date with their lives on Facebook. Sharing my own life like an animal on display in the zoo. To be honest, the early social media shares were meaningful. I credit my being able to keep contact with my friends back home in Illinois with these tools. I even wrote a blog post in praise of social media. But we pay a neurological price when we fill our heads with scrolled headlines, soundbites from Byte Dance affiliates, and memes. A picture is worth a thousand words, but our attention spans are dying. No one can even read a novel anymore.** I’ve also written a blog post about the importance of preserving our neural networks, several of them actually.

Hence, in my desire to follow my intuition about the connection between internet use and mental health, I have turned to knitting, crafting, gardening, substitute teaching, and most importantly, the reading of books. I want to share an overview of my May reading—boy did I learn a lot with these three titles: An Abundance of Caution, by David Zweig, Original Sin, by Jake Tapper and Alex Thompson, and lastly, Tower of Basel, by Adam Lebor. The first two obviously go together; both document the abject failings of the 4th estate, the American press, once the beacon of hope in the world, now nothing but an arm of the executive branch and political operatives. However, it’s Tower of Basel, that brings it all together, for who or what is behind this game of global chess?

Why, the central bankers, of course.

I’ll start with Tower of Basel, by Adam Lebor. He wrote this book in 2013, just after the 2008 global banking crisis. Rather than give a lengthy review, here’s the book blurb:

Tower of Basel is the first investigative history of the world’s most secretive global financial institution—the Bank for International Settlements. Since its creation, the BIS has been at the heart of global events but often gone unnoticed. It now stands at the center of efforts to build a new global financial and regulatory architecture, once again proving that it has the power to shape the financial rules of our world. Yet despite its pivotal role in the financial and political history of the last century and during the current economic crisis, the BIS has remained largely unknown—until now.

Two things that became very clear to me when reading this. First, it was hard to put down. It is excellent narrative non-fiction, which is my current favorite genre. I rank it right beside Countdown to Zero Day by Kim Zetter (about the Stuxnet project that sabotaged Iranian nuclear efforts) and The Bad-Ass Librarians of Timbuktu by Joshua Hammer (about librarians rushing to save ancient manuscripts from Al Qaeda). I consider the ability to tell a TRUE story in such a way that I must know what happens next to be the highest form of literature and magic. The subject matter of Tower of Basel is must-read for understanding the role the central bankers have had in our world since WW1 is key to understanding what’s going on with NATO, Russia, and the EU.

To simplify, global foreign policy is all about the flow of money. More than national identity or loyalty, more than human lives or the dignity of work, what the central bankers care most about is the flow of capital throughout the world. Whether its funding both sides of a war, or even stocking stolen gold for the Nazis, the BIS has done it all. I would wager that the real reason Donald Trump has backed off his tariff bonanza isn’t because of the “Democratic Resistance” or even the rich Americans getting mad at him. Someone from the BIS delivered a message and he listened. I’ll betcha $100.

My thoughts about the other two books, An Abundance of Caution and Original Sin, are complicated. On one hand, the authors document everything that was plain to see as it was happening. Honestly, at the beginning of Covid lockdowns in California, I wrote about the dangers and elitism behind our lockdowns, including closing our schools for so long. Because my home burned down, I would spend the fall of 2020 in Los Gatos, and often I would walk my dog Evelyn to the coffee shop to pick up an oat milk latte and then sit outside of the Catholic Church with the statue of Mary they had on display. Along the way, I passed THREE schools: one Catholic, one Montessori, and one public. The Catholic and Montessori school playgrounds were filled with laughing, screaming, kids. The public school would remain empty and abandoned for the duration of my year living there. Did the kids, teachers, or parents at the two private schools die in large quantities? No. Did they die at all? No. An Abundance of Caution points out that evidence existed as early as the fall of 2020, when schools opened in Europe, that schools were not superspreader institutions. Actually, early evidence suggested that children were not carriers of the disease as was portrayed in the American media. The CDC itself published much of this data on their website, if you cared to dig around and read it.

David Zweig does a good job of collecting all this evidence in his book. I bought it for that reason, to have a documented primary source of information that was hidden or only partially reported by our media. It is a reference book that reveals the failure of the press to do its job. Zweig tries to figure out why so many people in the media and politics refused to take actions with the new information as it became available. That is the real role of science, to continue to evolve as new data is received. In the end, Zweig comes to the same conclusion I did back in late 2020—we failed to open the schools in Democratic-run states because that summer of 2020, Donald Trump, who happened to read the data coming from Europe about the safety of kids, teachers, and Covid, posted on X that we needed to open the schools. The moment Trump spoke, ½ the country refused the idea, without any consideration for facts, data, or the emotional, mental, and physical needs of public-school kids. Worse, many of those who spoke loudest against schools opening would then go on to send their own kids to those private schools, most of which opened fall of 2020 across the nation.

What should have been about our kids, became political. Thus “red” states opened their schools and “blue” states did not. We are still dealing with the outcomes: greater learning gaps between blacks and Hispanics and whites, greater learning gaps between the wealthy and the poor, children who failed to get early interventions for speech, learning, and other differences, and in many city schools high truancy rates still prevail in 2025. When you break the rhythm of school and community, the price is high for those who couldn’t pay a teacher and form a “pod,” which was most people who send their kids to public schools.

Heartbreaking that the media would continue to scare both parents and teachers, simply because of partisan politics.

I also warned every Democrat I could starting 2023 that Biden was unfit for another term. Most of them called me a Republican or a Trumpster. I even lost friendships over this. My copy of Original Sin is another primary source from the age of  “I told you so.” I’m not going to review the book, it matters not what I think of it. Too little to late is probably the best I can muster. Yet again, a book details how our government conspired with the media to either hide or deny an important story because of a fear of Donald Trump. Over and over it is mentioned in this book that high-ranking Democrats knew that Biden was deteriorating fast, that he could only manage to be active and on it from 10-4 every day, and that his group of advisors were in charge the rest of the time, but they hid it because Trump was such a threat to democracy. I will not argue their point either way, I’m simply noticing a trend here—it’s okay to lie, to manipulate the media, and to treat the American people with disrespect if you think the world is about to end, and for ½ of those who actually vote in America, Donald Trump is the end of the world.

Which Side Are You On?

At this point I’m sure many are wondering, which side are you on, Nicole? Like Treebeard, I’m not on anyone’s side, because no one cares for the woods as I care for them, not even the Elves (i.e. those who should care the most). In my case, the “woods” are simple: I’m on the side of common sense, affordable, high-tech infrastructure, an economy where those who wish to work hard are rewarded with dignified employment, and clean and safe streets, air, food, and water.

Oh, and an end to all war.

I imagine my last wish is impossible, for it seems the human heart desires war and conflict. The central bankers of the BIS suggest the solution to war is to remove all national and religious identities from our hearts, for war gets in the way of the flow of capital. The global citizen is their ideal. The IMF and the EU were born at the BIS. Of course, when war breaks out, they still manage to make money from both sides, so I wonder which side they’re on as well.

Since 2016, panic and hysteria have been brewing within the resistance against Trump, growing stronger with his re-election this fall. However after reading An Abundance of Caution and Original Sin, I can’t help but wonder why the media is allowed to tell the truth about these two Biden era stories now. What is the motive here? To blame all their problems on Biden so the Democrats can try and win in 2028? To get us to watch CNN and MSNBC again before they go out of business? I’ve read that Democrats have spent $20 million dollars to try and figure out how to “Speak with American Men” codename, SAM. They’ve also started spending money to figure out how to create the “liberal Joe Rogan.”

By lying and withholding critical information from the American people, the media, our beloved 4th estate, has died. I don’t think it will ever return. Adios amigos. Boomers will continue to watch their local and cable news, but Millennials and Zoomers are addicted to Reddit, YouTube (podcasts), and TikTok. I imagine someone can break into their world with a liberal message, but the thing is, Joe Rogan was the liberal Joe Rogan, until he felt lied to. He took the death of the 4th estate personally, and unfortunately for both parties, or maybe it’s fortunate, so have the majority of independents.

After Trump’s first win in 2016, I wrote a blog mentioning some concrete steps we could take to fix our democracy—from overturning Citizen’s United to investing in 3rd parties to streamlining the primaries—but here’s something else to consider. Only 40% of eligible Americans vote. Of those, 40% are Democrat and 40% are Republican. In the general election, you can run a pineapple as the Democrat and a rock as the Republican, and they will vote their party. They might suggest they’re considering the “other side,” but honestly doesn’t matter, they will not cross party lines. But 20% of voters have no party loyalty and strangely, many of them live in the seven swing states. I hate to be the destroyer of all good things, but if you lie to them, if you concentrate on the culture war issues like guns, abortion, and gays, rather than the economy, safety, and good roads, you can’t win them over. Democrats don’t need to spend $20 million to learn the “syntax used in male online spaces,” I’ll tell you how to talk to them for free.

Say hello. Ask how they’re doing. Be kind. Engage them in meaningful work and solutions.

The same goes for the Republicans, or the “other side.” You won’t have Trump forever, I’m still shocked you chose him to run again, but the primary results were clear. However, in the post-Trump age, if you focus on anything other than “fix-my-roads” politics, well, its likely governor good hair will be president in 2028.

Personally, I don’t care so much about who wins our elections. To me, the death of the media and its inability to do anything other than spin a hysterical narrative that drives people to madness, is what gives me concern. The Internet was supposed to save the media from its propaganda role, but with the advent of social media, the algorithms have turned us into hand-wringing, accusing, human-haters.

Pretty sure that ISN’T progress.

To endure the age of mass, mental deterioration, I have gone IRL. Real life is where it’s at. These are crazy times and I want a clear mind. I want an open, capable hand to offer those around me. I want peace in my home and in my heart. Politicians and the media can’t offer that. Beautiful novels, amazing narrative non-fiction, crafting, music, games, dinner with friends, volunteer work, prayer, and church are the spaces I now inhabit.

How about you? I’d love to know what you think about the death of the 4th estate. Can the media be redeemed? Is the future podcasts? Can you have independent journalism if you aren’t allowed to challenge the narrative of those funding your show? What are you doing for your mental health in these challenging times? Can you still read a book? I have three more queued up for June.

Please, don’t answer me on Facebook. I know I used it to get some of you here, but post your answer below after this essay. Or send me a PM. Or email me.  My brain doesn’t miss scrolling, but it does miss deep conversation. That was the dream of the Internet, before we gave it up to the algorithms…

…and the central bankers.

 ** Last fall, the NEA reported how, according to its 2022 Survey of Public Participation in the Arts (SPPA), conducted by the U.S. Census Bureau, 48.5 percent of adults reported having read at least one book in the past year, compared with 52.7 percent five years earlier, and 54.6 percent ten years earlier. Meanwhile, in 2022, just 37.6 percent reported reading a novel or short story, compared with 41.8 percent in 2017 and 45.2 percent in 2012. As we said at the time, the fiction-reading rate was the lowest in the history of the SPPA, a survey that goes back more than three decades.