by roscoe00 | Feb 18, 2018 | Current Events
Facebook used to be a nice idea until it got caught up in a big problem: politics. Well ok, politics is just part of their bigger problem which is life on the internet. Now that news travels faster than ever, it pollutes Facebook faster than pictures of grandma or your nephew’s graduation. Thus the current political climate, which is ugly as sin, has dragged down Facebook with it.
I don’t even need to read propaganda from Russia or ads from Blacktavist, I could not care less if 13 bozos from Russia were indicted, It pales in comparison to all of the propaganda generated here in the US. Russia is utterly insignificant – which doesn’t mean Putin isn’t chortling at our folly. No, I get it all faster and far more intense from my erstwhile FB friends. Yes, I used to have friends on Facebook and then they started to get ugly. Even before Trump was elected and while Hillary was shutting down the Bernie campaign, the political establishment in both parties fought to the death on politics, to the point where Trump supporters are afraid for their well being and are essentially in hiding.
This caused massive consternation at FB prime, but it didn’t end there. Not only did all the FB friends dis each other on politics – which continues to cause mass de-friending, but the hate process evolved. It permeated college campuses, caused organized protests and is even blamed for shootings and terrorism. Thank you Facebook. It used to be a sanctuary where I could see how my old friends were doing, look at family pictures, get advice and opinions on movies, restaurants concerts, get local news etc and generally feel good. Now it is a place I go only occasionally and with much trepidation for fear that even people close to me will turn to the dark side.
Is this peculiar to Facebook? Of course not it’s the internet and Facebook is the biggest player in the feelgood space. And according to millennials, Facebook is for old people anyway and not even in the mainstream anymore. Geez where does that leave email? If email has gone the way of the rotary phone then I must have missed a lot of Russian political spam and I think that’s because they didn’t bother to send any. Why? It probably didn’t make them any money.
In fact the biggest missing ingredient from this Russian scandal is money. The 13 indictees sure spent a lot of money on ads but I doubt they got much back. At least Hillary knows how to do it. Spend other peoples’ money on campaigns and make money on speaking and illicit foundation activity, I doubt she pickpocketed the Russians but they did contribute to the effort.
by roscoe00 | Feb 17, 2018 | Current Events
A fascinating twist in the world of Russian collusion has just happened from the oddest of sources, the Mueller investigation. After a year of bizarre back and forth with the likes of CNN and the NYTimes in one corner painting Trump as the antichrist and conservative media returning fire at Hillary, Obama and other targets on the left, the special counsel surprises everyone. What did Mueller and Company do? They indicted 13 alleged Russian internet trolls that used social media to influence American elections and politics. In fact Rod Rosentstein went into pretty deep detail of exactly what they did and how they did it. Of course these folks are living in Russia so we can’t get at them but at least we have established and verified the nature of the problem and can proceed from there.
So now the left can scream “See Mr. Trump?? There was Russian interference!!” While Mr. Trump can scream “See CNN?? we didn’t do it”. Which goes to show you how utterly silly this whole affair is. Nobody wins this game except perhaps Mueller, who takes himself out of the crosshairs at least for a while as he throws a bone to both sides without fingering any Americans. Actually that’s a brilliant strategy to keep himself in the game while not incurring an overabundance of wrath from either side. At the same time he might well be serving American democracy, a novel idea at that, by identifying the real culprit and establishing the Russians as the common enemy.
This shouldn’t have come as a surprise – after all, Russian collusion should involve Russia, right? But lately this concept has been obfuscated by partisan sniping, big time, with CNN drooling for Mueller to indict the next liar. And so it is now written in stone for the world to see – its about the Russians, stupid. So we can put aside the side issues of Flynn and Manafort who really should be small potatoes in this thing anyway, especially since all of the real crimes are in the Hillary camp.
But the real takeaway from the ordeal was the revelation that the Facebook Ruskies orchestrated protests on all sides just to be a nuisance. They hardly even knew who they were rooting for. They were apparently pitching for Bernie, and yet, as Laura Ingrham quips “they were no match for the DNC”, So the Mueller contribution is to point out to the American people that we have been flailing away at each other while the trolls sit back and laugh. But it got worse that that. They had us at each others throats.
The intense reach of social media enabled the trolls to incite protests and rile up the public. Conservative media blamed this on George Soros and his many attack foundations and pacs. But it actually doesn’t matter who drummed up all the protests it matters that the American people understand what is happening. To the extent that the Russians have had any impact at all, no not in the election but in the undermining of our democracy, we should realize we are being played. Maybe Obama should have stopped this nonsense in 2014, but now it came through loud and clear from the special counsel. The Russians are messing with our heads, and, judging from all the hate mongering from the media, it is working.
So put aside your left or right wing agendas and your distaste for whoever is in the White House and remember you are an American. As soon as we stopped debating the issues and started weaponizing them, we stopped getting anything done and played right into their hands. And the trolls will keep on doing it. So when you see some self serving propaganda on Facebook from a fringe outfit you never heard of make the assumption that it is un-American and isn’t worth the time to read it. In fact it was probably published by a collection of back room internet losers from the other side of the world who aren’t even sure what their message is.
