Editor's note: This weekend is for spending time with your loved ones.

So instead of our normal fare, we're doing something a little different in this weekend's Masters Series...

We're featuring a pair of essays from our good friends at American Consequences. In today's essay, editor in chief P.J. O'Rourke explains what he's asking for this Christmas...

My Christmas Wish

By P.J. O'Rourke, editor in chief, American Consequences

Of course, what we're supposed to wish for is "Peace on Earth, good will to men." But that's asking a lot. Requesting a footprint of the American chicken ☮️ flipping-the-bird+1 ✌️ absolute end to global conflict and a complete and total change in human nature is pressing our luck with Santa. It's telling Mom and Dad that what we want in our stocking is not a pony but the King Ranch.

I'll settle for a more modest gift of peace, as in a little peace and quiet, please.

The modern world has become a very noisy place. This is not the old-fashioned pandemonium of clanging bells, shrieking factory whistles, rumbling freight trains, beeping car horns, and the roar of the crowd. Rather, it's the noise in our heads – the quietly riotous clamor of digital connectivity.

Nowadays we are all hearing disembodied voices and seeing things that aren't there the way crazy people do. The insanity is drummed into our heads by ubiquitous glowing screens and omnipresent pulsing devices. Every person, place, and thing on the planet now has the means to instantaneously get in direct contact with... me.

I hate it. TMI! But that's an over-generous acronym. Very little of the "Too Much Information" is informative or even has coherent form. The noise-to-signal ratio is too high. Any sense is lost in static. Fact, fancy, fantasy, fallacy, falsity – feh!

The Internet is the light shining out the devil's butthole.

A Google search is looking something up by sifting through the ashes of the Great Library of Alexandria after Julius Caesar burned it to the ground.

E-mail is playing Post Office with ugly party guests you don't want to kiss.

Texting is the infinite number of monkeys on the infinite number of typewriters, but they can't write the works of Shakespeare because of autocorrect.

Twitter is a public toilet for your words. And when you post something on social media, you write your name and phone number on the toilet door.

To go through life with earbuds in is to bung the cork into the barrel of ignorance that is your skull.

Every selfie is a mug shot of an intellectual felon.

You might as well slap yourself silly while playing in traffic as you walk around being Mr. Phoneface.

The problem is communication. We have somehow gotten the idea that "communication" is always a wonderful thing. This delusion didn't start with the digital revolution. Henry David Thoreau pointed it out 164 years ago in Walden: "We are in great haste to construct a magnetic telegraph from Maine to Texas... but Maine and Texas, it may be, have nothing important to communicate."

And yet... And yet... We insist on believing that life would be better if only we all were "communicating."

If children and parents just communicated... If Democrats and Republicans communicated... If Palestinians and Israelis... If lions and lambs...

"I resent you."

"I despise you."

"I'll kill you."

"I'm eating you."

"Baa, baa, baa!"

But the communications we receive from the 21st century's perfect digital connectivity are even less interesting than that. We've always had more ways to connect than there are connections we ought to be making. Now, however, we have the ability to broadcast our every thought every minute to everyone everywhere. And tout le monde returns the favor.

I'm a person with lots of interesting thoughts. I'll bet you are, too. But let's be frank. There are (according to the latest UN estimate) 7,664,927,320 people on earth. And the other 7,664,927,318 are pretty much idiots.

And let's be honest with ourselves, too. How much time do we spend thinking thoughts like "Beauty is truth, truth is beauty," and how much time do we spend thinking thoughts like "The f***ing Christmas tree lights are f***ing tangled up like f***"?

I just Googled "untangling Christmas tree lights" and got 1,290,000 results. That's the kind of communication digital connectivity gets us. Furthermore, I have tried – so far – 387,211 of the suggested methods of untangling Christmas tree lights and none of them work worth a darn.

Thus, I send out my Christmas wish to the whole wide world and to you and yours and, for that matter, to myself...

SHUT UP!!!

Regards,

P.J. O'Rourke

Editor's note: American Consequences is a free online monthly magazine from famed satirist, best-selling author, and editor in chief P.J. O'Rourke. The December issue – out last Saturday – took a break from the political and economic chaos of November and looked toward Christmas and the year ahead. It features gift ideas (both good and bad), holiday party tips, financial advice for 2019, and more. To sign up to receive these issues directly to your inbox every month, visit AmericanConsequences.com.