Trump’s latest splatter of lies has ended up in a place where it actually may do some good. His nonsensical accusation of murder against TV host Joe Scarborough has led Twitter, the Presidential truth-less platform, to post a notice checking the factual basis of what Trump had been blabbering about. Trump has gone batshit preparing Executive Orders attacking Twitter and all the other Social media platforms and attempting to prevent them from creating any kind of factual controls.
So finally, even in his bumbling stupidity, Trump has actually accomplished something. He has led us to a confrontation over the responsibilities of social media platforms in their frantic search for the almighty buck.
This one event could very easily lead to a Supreme Court case over the need for Truth in Media VS the constitutional requirement of Freedom of the Press. Hold onto your hats, it’s gonna be a hell of a ride.
When creepy little nerd Mark Zuckerberg created Facebook as a way to get laid, he never imagined that he would some day face the responsibilities of controlling the monster he birthed. I’m sure Zuckerberg loves the billions his monster has earned for him; it’s just that he doesn’t want the work or the expense of controlling that monster. When he comes on the tube and says he doesn’t think he should be responsible for deciding what is true and what is not, what he is actually saying is he doesn’t want to spend the money it will take to discover what is factual and what is not. The slimy Zuckerberg refers to philosophical and moral judgments when in reality what should be required of his company is that it just tell us what factually happened and what did not. Did Trump say this or did he not? Was this bill presented on the day required or was it not? Was this money legally allocated or was it not? Or, is there some question that needs to be further explored in order to come to a decision as to its factuality? It’s about research folks, not about philosophical exploration. It’s about Congress, not the President, requiring media platforms like Facebook, Twitter and the like, to accept responsibility for publishing the facts. They don’t even have to deal with “The Truth.” That’s too nebulous a concept. “Just the fact’s ma’am.” That’s a quote that you old codgers may remember and it’s what’s absolutely necessary now or we can forget protecting freedom of the press because it won’t be acceptable if they’re publishing nothing but a mess of lies.
Freedom of the press is essential because we assume that our press is publishing factual information. We also assume that this information will be weighted by the point of view of the publication under consideration.
No one expects the NY Times and the NY Post to have the same slant on the same set of facts, just like everyone expects the readers of both papers to have enough intelligence and just enough sophistication to understand the differences. After all these people can read and they are doing so, even if it is just the sports pages. But we do expect and we do demand that both papers be factual.
That, of course has ended with the Trump era. When the President lies outright over 18,000 times in three and a half years, truth has left the building. Yes, the Fat Liar in the Oval Office has driven truth and even fact from the lexicon and it is now our job to retrieve them. Holding those who publish information to stricter guidelines about what is factual will be a beginning. Can we get it done?
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In case any of you have missed it there is a new crime wave sweeping the nation. Thousands, maybe hundreds of thousands of criminal kids all over the nation are stealing mail-in ballots from mailboxes. I know this is true because Donald Trump says so. And who would not believe a skell who has already lied to them 18,000 times in his three years plus in office. This is a clown who has lied about everything but his name. Oh, wait a minute. His real name is Drumph, isn’t it? Well, it was actually changed before he hit the scene so I guess it’s not his doing. But that’s not the problem. What really matters is that we catch those sneaky little mailbox bandits before the next election.
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Minneapolis exploded this week after the murder of George Floyd by four policemen. I say murder because I have now seen 3 films of it and none of them show Floyd fighting police while all of them show him being choked by police and one shows him actually co-operating with them.
So far there isn’t any consensus that Floyd was guilty of anything. So why the hell were they arresting him at all? The first information that hit the streets was that he had been arrested for cashing a bad check. Now, it seems that there was something about passing a counterfeit bill. Really? Would the average guy even know if he was passing a counterfeit bill? And when it does happen the usual situation is that the store just keeps the bill and tries to pass it on to the bank. Nobody really calls the cops over a fake bill. I worked in a book store on Times Square many years ago and we got plenty of fake bills but all we did was hand it back to the customer and tell him to come up with a real one.
So, it looks like Floyd was murdered over nothing and if the justice program in Minneapolis can’t bring charges on all four cops, they should be replaced. But it doesn’t stop there. This country has an unfortunate history of this kind of thing happening. The usual procedure after such an occurrence is that the President calls the governor of Minnesota and the mayor of Minneapolis and they all create a plan to deal with the situation. You see any evidence of Trump being involved in any of this? I see him running off to Cape Canaveral to watch a space launch. While the Mayor and Governor were trying to get this thing under control, the Fat Liar in the Oval Office was Tweeting about shooting looters
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It has now been almost a week since George Floyd was killed and peaceful protests, which we all appreciate and look to participate in has come and gone. I understand anger. It’s normal and often necessary to dissipate tension, but when it’s applied to demonstrations it usually leads to violence.
It’s been a failure of our society, our police and the demonstrators themselves that many demonstrations across this country have ended in violence, usually against the community that was wronged in the first place. No one saw the First National Bank in flames. No, it was the local barbershop, grocery store or appliance store, often owned by the same minorities that are being killed by bad cops. But that’s not what’s happening now.
Sure, there are bad cops, just like there are great cops but that bullshit about “bad apples,” always used by politicians looking for breathing space, is just what I just called it. The problem, as it is in all aspects of society is culture and police departments all over the country have historically had a certain kind of culture that has never given itself over to the kind of police presence that is necessary for the balanced society that thoughtful citizens seek in their communities.
Don’t get me wrong. When some hostile asshole spits in your face and you are standing there with a bat in your hand the normal human reaction is to rearrange his features. And that’s the problem. We need a better than normal human reaction and that takes intelligence, training and the proper culture. And even that doesn’t work most of the time.
Interestingly it’s starting to happen. Better hiring, more input from the community and better training are all having some effect. But there are years of tradition fighting the improvements. When I was a kid, many years ago, police departments in northern New Jersey were manned by those white kids who left high school with no chance at getting into college and the seeming inability to get any other job. That led to a lowest common denominator cop. They thought that way and acted that way and they wrapped themselves in a culture that would protect what they were. It was not surprising that they acted and reacted like common thugs.
But times have changed; better hiring practices and a demand from formerly silent aspects of society that the police actually serve all the communities under their jurisdiction have helped many departments evolve. The citizens of this nation must now act and vote for legislation that will move and energize that evolution.
This is not primarily about politicians, this is about people who will demonstrate and vote to push those politicians to do what needs to be done.
But let’s talk about the demonstrations; those massive movements of people who desire a goal that the politicians haven’t provided? Demonstrations are the American way, until they become the anarchist way. Until they allow themselves to be infiltrated by small but organized groups that come from the ultra left, the far right and for some ungodly reason anarchists. What the hell are the practical, functional goals of anarchists? There aren’t any because their actions all lead to chaos and there are no goals that come from chaos. Chaos is the absence of the condition that allows goals to be achieved.
So it becomes the job of the leaders of these demonstrations to actually lead and that means keeping the troublemaker’s out of leadership roles. Weeding out those that look to create violence and controlling those weak fringe elements that are easily led to violence.
Every time I see some asshole standing on the roof of a destroyed car, waving his fist in the air, I know I am looking at a loser, a non-entity who has achieved nothing and will now be able to rerun this self-image in his mind and think he actually did something in his worthless life. Better he had stayed home and watched wrestling.