Okay, so…I don’t want to come off as a conspiracy theorist, here, but on the day whistleblower Frances Haugen testified to Congress about poor behavior of Facebook, Facebook’s entire network of social media sites went down for hours. Essentially, the charge against Facebook is that it promotes incivility in order to increase profits. Facebook knows this does damage everywhere, especially to young people and most especially to younger girls. They know it because they study these things and Ms. Haugen brought the internal documentation to prove it. They do it anyway because it increases profit.

As a sidebar, now seems a good time to mention that ANY business does everything it can to increase profit. That’s why businesses exist. It remains the responsibility of the society in which the business operates to define acceptable behavior of the business through laws and regulations. Only a fool would trust the wolf to establish the rules of guarding the hen-house…

After hours of testimony on the east coast and “network management” on the west coast, the world was offered a “deep tech” explanation – the kind of thing most people don’t understand and so won’t/can’t ask relevant follow-up questions. An amazing coincidence, this network crash occurring just as Facebook’s secret, damaging algorithm is being exposed in Congress.

I mostly make political posts. Before the testimony, I had been noticing a string of conservative ads on my page. They were all disinformation in the typical conservative style. They all twisted truth just enough to become untrue. On the day of the testimony/crash, I was trying to log onto Facebook to respond to a conservative friend’s post that had shown up on my page. Sadly, for Facebook, I wasn’t going to fight with said friend. There was even agreement to be had in the post and I wanted to comment. I had just seen the post that morning before the testimony crash began. BUT…

When one COULD log back into Facebook, the post was nowhere to be found. All of the ads from conservative outlets were gone, replaced by fond memories of friends and memes with meaningful sayings and inspirational affirmations. It was full-on “Peaceful Valley.” Oh, and boring. Apparently, Facebook’s internal studies showing that their best profit model comes from keeping people fighting is accurate. Sure, it’s a sorry statement on the state of humanity but, hey…profits!

I saw a headline that said the testimony will prompt action in Congress. I’m sure that’s true. Sadly, the action it will prompt will be an unscheduled round of bribe payments to various Congress critters…

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On Friday, Bill Maher went off on the threat the Dumbass poses to America. He pointed out that Republicans, currently refusing reality, have decided to shape “reality” by dismantling American democracy. Can’t win on the strength of your positions? Then, “win” with carefully placed sycophants and gerrymandering. For Republicans, the point is the win, not the positions. I think Maher’s right. I think America is in FAR greater trouble than we’re letting on. Many cons refused to accept the outcome of the 2020 election simply because it didn’t come out the way they preferred. There was absolutely no evidence of electoral shenanigans on the Democrats part in 2020. The outcome in 2020 was just because a LOT more lefties than righties voted. Still, the cons are out shouting, “I don’t like it so I don’t believe it.”

Now they’re actively, systematically undermining the Republic by putting toady sycophants into influential positions. If a Republican “wins” and the left doesn’t accept the results because of the actual instances of actual vote fraud that will actually occur, the cons will just dismiss the left’s angst and anger as sour grapes, the same thing the cons did after 2020 – only the left won’t be pretending. Still, it will be portrayed as no big deal in the media.

The truth is, elections haven’t been coming out right since Bill Clinton handed control of the media over to the One Percent in the 1990’s. TWICE since then (43 and the dumbass) we’ve had situations where most people chose one person only to have the other person get the job. The disparities have been SO bad, the One Percent’s media decided to stop doing exit polls – the gold standard of polling. THEY said it was because exit polls are undependable. The truth is, the exit polls made it far more difficult to “explain” why the loser was really the winner. And, oh my god, have the “winners” been losers. Far and away the two stupidest presidents America has suffered (let’s call them ‘Dumber’ and ‘Dumbest’) have been the result of electoral b.s. from Republicans – and Dumbest appears to be coming back for more. America will TRY to hand him his ass again but THIS time, the corrupted American system may well prevent good people from stopping bad people.

The fact that there are more sane people than conservatives, more people who love America than conservatives, and more people who respect the Constitution than conservatives isn’t going to stop the conservatives. They’re just going to cheat. But where will that leave America? The cons aren’t even thinking about the damage they’re doing. They just want the win. Those of us who ARE thinking about the damage don’t see any way around it. It’s being slowly baked into the system and once in place, the system will fail. That’s not fear-mongering. It’s history.

Our only hope is to pressure Democrats in Congress to take action. That will take a LOT of us calling and writing and even then, I don’t know how many messages it takes to offset million-dollar “campaign contributions.” (Remember when they were just called ‘bribes?’ “Bribes” is so much easier to write than “campaign contributions.” I think we should stick to calling the bribes ‘bribes.’ You know…for clarity…) Our Congress, both parties, is in thrall to – and working for – the One Percent…against the best interests of the American people. Call them anyway. (202) 224-3121. That’s the switchboard. They’ll direct you to the member who pretends to represent you…