One of the greatest and most powerful weapons our enemies have to use against Americans is our gullibility to believe what we read on social media. Russia, China, and North Korea are the three most adept at creating dissension through the spreading of conspiracies they created.

            The fourth enemy is the greed of some Americans like Alex Jones to piggyback on the conspiracies of foreign groups to advance themselves. Fox and several podcasts help to advance the division by using those created conspiracies to increase viewership for their private and corporate sponsors.

            Putin thought his efforts with Trump, the GOP, his agents, the broadcast media like Fox, and social media had weakened our connection with NATO and other alliances to allow him to invade Ukraine. With Trump’s divisive tactics gone and Biden’s resumption of leadership of the Free World, Putin found the World united against him.

            Every divisive comment made here gets replayed in Russia and China. Many of those divisive comments are made by a former President who had secret meetings with Putin, his representatives, and Russian billionaires. Millions of Americans have been duped into believing his comments are for them and not just to boost his ego at America’s expense.

            Authoritarianism destroys Democracy. Many countries are finding Democracy has slipped away. Many states are governed by people using social, broadcast, and cable news to take their citizen’s Democratic rights away, one at a time.

            What are people thinking today? We have a large group of people who are so into themselves they won’t take the Covid 19 shots to keep thousands of others alive. They don’t even care about protecting family and friends. They have staked their position and won’t change it even after political heroes have had their vaccinations.

            We have another group that is caught up in a circular line of reasoning. They buy guns because others are buying guns and, thanks to the propaganda they have read and watched, they are scared not to have several guns. Some have been conned into buying one gun for each vehicle and room.

            We have a few groups who want to overthrow our government because they are susceptible to the corrosive conspiracies generated by delusional and insecure people. Some probably come from Russian intelligence that is supposed to create division within our country.

            We still have millions who can’t get global warming and the effects it is causing in their heads. North Carolina actually has a law making global warming illegal to talk about. Coastal developers lobbied to protect their climate change affected development. Florida is another denier state.

            Why are so many Americans so anti-science, unpatriotic, anti-government, gullible and just plain stupid? Social media has spread those mental aberrations but the lack of using personal intelligence to determine what is truth and what is not exacerbates the situation.  

            To those who criticize the social media companies banning Trump from their platforms. Remember, Trump has been in favor of this for his entire presidency. Social media has been shielded for the libel laws TV, radio and newspapers have been subject to. Trump wants the platforms responsible for the content put on their platforms. Section 230 considers them like a telephone company but many in leadership and congress want to eliminate that protection since they have the ability by algorithms and human viewing to audit and drop bad content.

            Would 9-11 have happened if social media had been monitoring their platforms? Trump has often said no. His constant telling of lies and conspiracies has been the root cause of the mistrust and violence Wednesday. His personal appearance before the attack just repeated what he and his family had been saying on social media.

            Remember, we all agree the laws preventing people from yelling fire in a crowded theater are correct and inciting people to riot is also wrong. The only way to stop gullible people from being misguided is to restrict lies and baseless conspiracy theories from being spread on social media. We must agree with Trump on stopping people from the illegal, immoral, and stupidity that social media has allowed on their platforms.

After watching the November 24th 60 Minutes, I still wonder why any group or anyone is stupid enough to put any confidential information on any digital platform. They are absolutely right in that Russia’s hack is no different than the robbery of the paper files of the DNC in the Watergate event.

Why people put their personal files in their computer, on servers, and in the “cloud” is beyond comprehension. There is no place for people to safely put their info in the digital world. If the military and the State Department files can be gotten to then any files kept by the reader can be gotten by some twelve year-old in his bedroom. Every time you use your credit card, loyalty card, or go to a medical facility you can be sure your info is available to a hacker and then sold for a few dollars to anyone.

When I was in high school the price for a name and address was a dime. Now it is about the same but in a bulk of millions of names and their entire digital history. Today it is almost impossible to be completely off the grid if you use anything but cash to buy something. But to use social media to put your life out for everyone to see is asking for trouble.

Anyone expressing an opinion by writing a letter to the editor might expect some reader to write an opposing opinion. Among the many things I have been called in my long life, satirist is a new one. I looked it up in my trusty Webster and now I will add it to my literary accomplishments.

The use of the word indicates to me that at least some readers have a higher education level than the average fifth grader. I have been told I am writing at a level, which the average reader doesn’t think. Maybe that is truer today then before. Hundreds of times I have read or heard people saying things that only a naive fifth grader might believe. If average American comprehension level has fallen so low then Roger Ailes has won the battle for control of the American mind. Repeatedly he voiced he could control the thoughts of the Fox viewers by lowering the content. I have heard MSNBC was created to combat the Fox agenda. I don’t watch either because I want pure facts, not muddied waters.

In the age of social media and the Internet, correct facts are so rare. Currently we have wackos from the right and left spewing the most stupid, unsupported and inane statements. Along with the people’s lack of fact checking and quest for truth, Russian trolls, and probably soon the Iranians and Chinese will fill the Internet and social media with misinformation and lies to skew public opinion.

Webster says a satirist uses ridicule to attack follies. Those of us who see social media and the internet as a bane on the American moral fabric must be satirists. Who knew that we satirists would be the protectors of sanity and America’s morals?

A long, long time ago I was a participant in a gossip experiment. The grade school teacher gave a short message to the first student in the first row to her right who told the one sitting behind him. Twenty-five students later, the last student gave the teacher the evolved message. It was nothing like the original. I still remember that lesson.

The same lesson could be applied to the social media of today. Not only does the social medium skew the real facts, I believe most of the information going into it is crap to start. A great example is the video of Pelosi that was slowed down to make her appear senile so Trump could imply she had changed. I watched one person morph into another so the second person’s words came out of the first’s mouth. The voice was enhanced to sound the same. Today the only way to know for sure is to watch an interview with at least one other person on real media.

Is social media the way most people will be getting their news? We have entered a time when those with money and power can control their people so easily. Of course there will always be some fruit-loop that spouts crap and gathers millions of followers. I fear common sense and factual information has gone forever.

A writer should always indicate any possible conflict of interest so a reader can decide if the writer is biased. My wife and I own shares of FaceBook and SnapChat. I did not buy FaceBook near its initial public offering because I could not believe people would put personal information out for review by the world. That started to change when a Congressman informed people of his minute-to-minute morning routine in the bathroom! I did not understand its business platform possibilities at first.

FaceBook and other social media are being pilloried for allowing outside companies to collect information on their subscribers. The FaceBook problem may have started when Cambridge Analytica asked subscribers to voluntarily answer a questionnaire about their habits. What we know at this time is that questionnaires gave Cambridge and Steve Bannon (yes, that Steve Bannon) access to all the participants’ friends’ information. It’s called “mining” and it occurs every time we use a credit card, buy a subscription to something, belong to a charitable organization, or use a loyalty card. Your alumni organization sells your name and contact information.

Early mining occurred when I graduated high school. Supposedly, companies paid a nickel for each name and address of graduates. Today’s technology allows companies to form a very in depth profile of everyone through our involuntary dissemination of our personal habits. Social media mining just increases the profile perfection. Right or wrong we give out information about ourselves so companies can target ads or information to us. For instance the NRA won’t waste money trying to recruit me or my friends because of our memberships in other organizations.

My generation used to believe privacy was the cornerstone of our constitutional rights. But today we are the biggest population user of FaceBook. Times change and everything we do increases some company’s targeting of information to some siloed people by Breitbart, Fox and ads put Trump in the White House. Did the Russians use the information in their meddling or just get extremely lucky?