Donald Trump built his image and his presidency on social media. He figured out that even with the love of Rupert Murdoch’s twisted Fox organization he would never get the mainstream press to buy the bullshit he was spewing all over the airwaves, so while he enticed ignorant clowns like Sean Hannity and Rush Limbaugh to carry his water on Fox he added Twitter and Facebook, as his personal message boards.
How did that happen? Why were they so available to a man like Trump with his anti-democratic message of racism and hatred?
The answer comes from the roots of their invention by a group of Ivy League nerds who wanted a communication platform that would enable them to engage the opposite sex in a way that would mask their own social ineptness. It worked, and as a sideline it exploded into a social and communications phenomenon that shook the Internet.
Because of its reason for being, not to mention a good dose of normal human greed, there was little oversight of the giant’s content as it grew. As soon as its inventors realized the commercial potential of the site, they concentrated solely on profit. The same was true of imitators and competitors as they appeared. Expansion of the base and maximization of income led the field, leaving control of content to unsuccessfully care for itself.
And that’s where Trump came in. For the great liar, the medium was no longer an insignificant means of social interaction. It was now an ultra-significant tool for the dissemination of political misinformation and propaganda. Trump had transformed a growing but meaningless social interaction platform into the greatest propaganda machine in the history of man. He had taken Joseph Goebbels’ “big lie theory,” expanded it a hundred fold and trampled the concept of truth in communication into the dirt.
The owners of the platform, having ignored its possibilities in the pursuit of big green, had no idea what they had wrought until they we being accused of having released a monster onto the democracy. It was only when they became aware of serious attempts to limit their markets, censor their output and most important delve into their profits that they awoke to the threat.
They have reacted the way big business always reacts. They backed off from the controversy by barring Trump and other violators from their sites. This has temporarily silenced the lies, but it has opened many questions involving freedom of speech among those who worry about that kind of fundamental American right.
Trump has been silenced for the moment, but that will last only as long as it takes for him to assemble a coterie of shady lawyers to attack this decision and to defend him in his up and coming criminal trials.
*****
A week before the inauguration Joe Biden did what we elected him to do. Recognizing that the nation’s number one priority was beating the pandemic and number two was getting out of this economic crash, he proposed spending $1.9 trillion to get the engine started. In doing this he exhibited a clear recognition of what he did with Barak Obama to fend off the horrors of another Republican created economic crash.
Understanding that even in the middle of this horrible recession rich Americans had increased their wealth by roughly $1.5 trillion while some 18 million Americans were unemployed and over 400 thousand businesses had failed, Biden stepped directly into the breech, raised his sword and yelled “CHARGE,” establishing for the first time in a decade that the Federal Government understands what it’s there for.
It was the first step in a march toward financial stability. If all goes according to the “Biden Plan” it will lead to changes in our healthcare, our energy plan, our educational structure and our infrastructure that will become interconnected in ways which, in the end, will coordinate in a master plan thatwill lead to financial stability for the working and middle classes and a return to “the good life” that we all would like to experience as a nation.
*****
And that “good life” mentioned above is really the key to reuniting our significantly divided nation.
If the majority of the public had been comfortable and secure on November 4th, Donald Trump would still be president. If the rich were secure in the idea that Joe Biden would make them richer the landslide of that Election Day would have been a tsunami. People vote their best interest, at least the smart ones do.
So if you set up a government that makes people happy, at least most of the people, you will be very successful on Election Day and you will have the best shot at uniting the country. Politicians have party loyalty; people have loyalty to their families or to causes that are dear to their hearts. And guess what? That “party loyalty” is there, only because it provides good paying jobs.
The best shot at achieving the best country, other than having a benevolent dictator and there aren’t many Kings of Jordan around, is to elect smart, honest, moral people to run our country. We haven’t done anywhere near enough of that lately.
Joe Biden may be our best shot but we still have a House and Senate filled with greedy, lying crooks that have no idea and little care of what those who elected them need and want. It is imperative that we get the likes of Mitch McConnell, Ted Cruz, Josh Hawley, Kevin McCarthy, Ron Johnson, Lindsay Graham, Jim Jordan, Rand Paul, Marjorie Taylor Greene, Tom Cotton and similar scum out of politics a soon as possible.
*****
There is a real reason for being pissed off that Rand Paul’s neighbor didn’t beat him into incapacitation. We all saw it on Sunday when Paul appeared on This Weekand raved like a maniac in support of Donald Trump’s lie that the election was rigged. He claimed that he has an open mind. He doesn’t. He barely has any mind at all.
Biden beat Trump by over 7,000,000 votes. In a nation where presidential elections are decided by fractions of 1% that’s a landslide.
Paul claims that he is going to spend the next two years, his last in office if there is any justice, trying to prove that the election was rigged. Yeah, that’s what he’s being paid for; that’s why his constitutes elected him. They have no other needs.
Paul is obviously as stupid as the day is long and what’s amazing is that he proves it every time he opens his mouth and still gets elected.
*******
The great Henry Aaron died this week. I remember when George Bush gave him the Medal of Freedom. That’s the same medal that Donald Trump gave Jim Jordan, thereby proving that there’s always some asshole who knows how to fuck up a good thing.
But now we have a real president and a real hero who deserves such a medal. I’m speaking about Eugene Goodman the Capitol officer who held off the mob of insurrectionists in the Capitol hallways and led them away from the chambers. Goodman deserves some kind of medal. Maybe we should discard the one spoiled by Trump and invent a new one for Goodman.