Déjà vu, déjà vu.

There must be something wrong with my eyes.

Or was it a bad case of déjà vu?

Anyway, whatever it was, it caused me to stop reading newspaper for the past few years. Okay, it’s not that I don’t take note of current affairs. It is just that I don’t read the news in detail as I would have done in the past. Nowadays, I just skim through the headlines, probably read a few analysis and commentary columns, and laugh at the comics in the back pages. No, I hardly ever read the main news in detail nowadays.

Why? It is because I started to realize that all the news were recycled. No, really, they are. For all the accidents and murders and robberies and what-have-you-not in the daily tabloids, just change the name of both perpetuator and victim, change the venue, and change the time. Wow, it’s just the same news recycled. It’s much easier for those abused maid cases. Just change the name and job of the maid-employer. For those maids who retaliates by killing their employers? That’s even much easier. Just change the name of victim, country of origin of maid and how the victim was killed. I can almost fucking guarantee you that the reason for what the maids did what they’ve done was because the owner was abusing them.

But the type of news that beats the cake has to be the political news. Sometimes you just need to change the names of the countries involved. Sometimes you just need to switch the names of the countries involved. And the words those politicians sprout? Man, that’s even worse. When you hear those political leaders speak, didn’t you also have that feeling that you’ve somehow heard this before? And I haven't even talked about the nationalistic propoganda bullshit churned out at a constant and predictable rate by the beloved government yet. Déjà vu, déjà vu.

Here’s another good one. For the statements made by terrorist groups, or the so-called anti-terrorist groups, sometimes you just need to substitute God for Allah, or Jihad for Crusade, and you find that the statements are similar. Spooky, huh? But hey, this is a fallacy, for both of those terms mean the same thing.

Those running social news have it good too. No, really, just read the tabloids reporting old ladies being conned out of their life savings by magic stones, or the stories of people claiming that vinegar eggs/spring water/aloe vera juice/whatever has some healing power (can cure cancer!), and all those people scrambling for those commodities and thereby creating a shortage. Prices rise! And if I’m not wrong, no one is really much better off, except maybe those people who sell whatever was in the fad.

I could probably go on, but I won’t. You get my drift. What has the newspaper taught me? Not that the world is rapidly changing, but that people never ever learn from their mistakes.

I’m almost sure someone else must have said this somewhere else before. Déjà vu, déjà vu.