Facebook in the Disinformation Age

I have a personal stake in Facebook.  My son works on the management team and I have stock in the company.  It's been a lot of fun!  So what's going on with Facebook?  Frankly I don't really use the site that much except to occasionally look at pictures of my grandchildren.  I don't understand how to use it very well and I always find myself getting caught up in a million interesting posts which, quite frankly, makes me feel like I've wasted a lot of time.  I also don't particularly enjoy sharing my thoughts about everything under the sun with everyone on my Facebook page, most of whom I haven't spoken to in 40 years.  But every once in a while I like to write this blog to clarify things in my own mind and then share it on FB.
Recently FB has come under an artillery barrage of criticism over the "hack" of about 50 million(!) accounts and unauthorized use of this private information by Cambridge Analytica and the Trump campaign.  I don't get it.  It appears to me from reading the news stories that the "data" consisted of user profiles, locations and "likes."  That is a far cry from the the hack of names, addresses, driver's license numbers and social security numbers of 145 million people from Equifax in July 2017.  In 2015 the US government Office of Personnel Management had 21.5 million employee records stolen including social security numbers.  But maybe that's different because the government called it a "data breach."  In 2013 every one of Yahoo's account holders was hacked.   That's 3 billion (!) users.  And what about our most important secrets?  The one's our government develops to snoop on unsuspecting spies and terrorists.  Well, oops, in April 2017 those tools were stolen.  So when more than 300,000 companies, including hospitals, were hit with ransomware viruses like WannaCry that locked down computers until the ransoms were payed, who was responsible?
The point of all this is that computers are vulnerable and if the NSA couldn't protect their own deepest secrets, should we be surprised when private company data is compromised?  But let's also draw a distinction here.  Addresses and social security numbers are one thing.  "Likes" and buying habits are an entirely different realm.  Advertising companies have been collecting that data for 100 years to influence the public.  So what?  Someone just found a shortcut to sending out a million questionnaires, except now they call it "psychometrics."  They found out that if you like Lady Gaga you were an extrovert.  Oh my God.  That's why Trump was elected.
 I think it's important to protect data on Facebook.  They should be doing everything they can to protect our information from being used by anyone we don't expressly give permission to.   But hey, let's get real.  The reason Facebook has been so successful is that we all want a lot of people to see what we like and dislike.  That's a human character trait the Mark Zuckerberg learned how to exploit.  We love that FB allows us to filter  advertisements to those that interest us and that totalitarian dictatorships are brought down by social movements on Facebook.  And then we rave and rant when that same technology allows people to influence us in ways we feel tricked by.  So Cambridge Analytica used this data to try and influence us.  The more important point is that Donald Trump's team used a company started by Steve Bannon that specifically touted it's ability to influence people's behavior through its sophisticated understanding of human psychology and it's ability to target and persuade people of it's clients preferred message.  As far as I'm concerned that's just a convenient way of explaining why so many people were duped by Trump.    
And it's only going to get worse.  Pundits are saying Facebook is not a "social network" as much as it is a "media company."  And yet those same people are critical of Facebook for allowing the dissemination of "fake" news.  Probably half of the country thinks that the news on MSNBC is fake and the other half feels the same about Fox.  But Mark Zuckerberg got it right when he said the problem is that people using FB should be held to the same "truth in advertising" standards as every other advertiser.  That probably includes all of us.  If you write a lie and post it, you should be as liable as anyone "posting" on radio or television, even though half of the country thinks the other half is lying.
I propose that FB is doing everything right.  They're trying honestly to plug a hole in the dike that probably is unpluggable.  You think fake news and psychometrics are a problem now.  Wait until existing programs that permit computers to alter video undetectably are common place.  Any movie can be altered so that someone can be seen doing something they're not.  Then what's real?  If Stormy Daniels is altered to be Donald Trump will that make him ineligible to serve in the military?
  

It is a Brave New World

The Supreme Court of the United States has recently nailed one more very important nail into the coffin of the experiment in human democracy.  The court's decision to further weaken campaign finance laws may very well be the tipping point for this very shaky edifice.   Frankly, this wonderful endeavor of participatory governing was never destined to work forever.  The forces aligned against it are just too strong, namely materialism, greed,  selfishness, cruelty and the intoxication of power.  Every once in a rare while, the nature of humans has been outdistanced by their intellect and we are presented with a magnificent experiment in humility and self-sacrifice.  That's why the Constitution of the United States is such an extraordinary document and why our political scientists have marveled at it for so long.  It codifies self-denial against our human nature.  But the experiment is reaching it’s long expected end and so to with it, I am afraid, the end of civilization as we know it.  I don’t presume to see clearly how it all ends, but I see so clearly that it is ending.  
The corporatocracy in Aldous Huxley’s “Brave New World”, “The World State”, may seem far more Machiavellian than our own corporatocracy, but it is probably only a matter of time.  After all, as the rich begin to take over this country (and many others), their first order of business is to consolidate their gains with gerrymandering and voter protection (actually disenfanchisement) laws including the one I am referring to.  As the income gap increases, poor people who would be expected to vote against the rich are relegated to serpiginous voting districts designed to negate their influence, blocked from voting altogether by draconian registration and identification requirements, and inundated with advertising that makes them believe that voting for representatives who support their interests would result in the loss of everything they’ve gained.  The dissemination of fear, which is what the Supreme Court has just encouraged and enabled, is what keeps the rich in power.  

But greed is an ugly and paradoxical addiction.  There is never enough power and money.  The rich and powerful will convince you their factories are not changing the world.  The need for clean air and pure water is a myth.  Climate change is a figment of the liberal imagination and as long as you work for your pennies an hour, the world is your oyster.

Unfortunately the joke is on them.  The water we drink may come in bottles that are more and more expensive, but so far, the air we breathe is shared by all, and as it disappears so to will we.  They may convince the disenfranchised of this world that less taxes are good, that lower incomes are noble, that their garbage is better in your back yard, but in the end, for surely it must end, their oil and gas, their water and air, and their lives will end along with ours and there is no magical space ship, no matter how much money they make, that will take them to a better place.

Of course....but maybe

Louis CK, the well-known comedian has recently developed a skit which is fast becoming viral, called “Of course....but maybe.”  He uses some rather twisted examples, like peanuts.  “Of course,” his schtick goes.  “Peanut allergies are potentially lethal and we should make sure that children who are sensitive should be protected.  Peanuts should be kept out of all public places, airplanes, schools etc. etc.”

“Of course we have to protect our children...but maybe if we didn’t do that, peanut allergies would be non-existent in a generation.”

A rather dark image, but like all good humor, with a kernel of truth.

In looking at the current political situation I have some similar thoughts.

“Of course our politicians are in congress to represent their constituents, to do what they believe is right and just.  That’s what a democracy is after all, an imperfect way to bring different ideas together in smaller referendums.  Naturally a congress of 435 representatives should be able to come to a consensus and compromise on issues.”

“But maybe....maybe each and every one of them is out for their own personal gain...more power...more prestige...more money.  And even if they spout platitudes about wanting what’s right for the country, ultimately they really want what’s right for them.

I don’t deny the fact that part of them truly believes their doing right....”But maybe.”

Actually, I think, most politicians start out somewhere back in their past with an ideology, but it doesn’t take long before the game of politics overwhelms the philosophy and back room deals become more important than votes.  Unfortunately, politics conforms to a variation on the ‘Peter’ principle (incompetency rises) that I will call for lack of a better term...the ‘Paul’ principle.  Sneakiness, dishonesty and hubris rise to the top.  That doesn’t mean that all the most influential politicians are necessarily the worst people....”but maybe.”

In the midst of this crisis, four American soldiers were killed in Afghanistan and due to the government shutdown, their death benefits weren’t payed.  Outrageous!  The media went nuts and congress voted unanimously (one of the few times, unless they’re voting to give themselves a raise or go into recess) to reinstate death benefits.  “Of course” the media was reporting on just one of the most egregious wrongs among many personal tragedies caused by the government shut-down.  “Of course” it was shameful and all they wanted to do was shed light on why the shut-down was so devastating.

 ”But maybe”.... they really didn’t care so much about the deaths of those young people as much as they did about the story and subsequent firestorm they could inflame.  Their righteous indignation, interviewing loved ones just days after their sons and daughters and husbands and wives were killed couldn’t have anything to do with their desire to sway the debate and get congress off their collective asses, could it?   “And maybe” ...they really just wanted to bump their ratings and get more air time.

President Obama has told congress and the American people that you can’t run government by holding the process hostage to a small minority of fanatics.   You can’t turn around after negotiating through normal political channels and say “I don’t like the results.”  You can’t just throw a temper tantrum when you don’t get your way and filibuster or threaten to blow up the whole system just because you, representing a measly small percentage of the entire country, don’t like something.  Of course, I obviously agree.  And “Of course” President Obama is thinking of the country and of the future, where this type of crisis could occur every six months and if it’s not affordable care, then next time it might be abortion and even...heaven forbid...in a future with a republican president it could even be gun control demanded by a democratic minority.   Government should be elected not taken hostage and threatened with annihilation.

“But maybe”....president Obama is more interested in his legacy than in actually protecting the legislative process.  And maybe, playing brinksmanship with the world economy at stake is more about getting his way because he’s just not a good enough politician (or bad from the ‘Paul’ principle perspective) to bring people together.

The republican party has been criticized by liberal media and democrats for many things in the past decade.  We invaded Iraq for reasons that were manufactured, costing thousands of American deaths and hundreds of thousands of Iraqi lives and over 2 trillion dollars.  The economy was in billion dollar surplus territory when Bush took over and was on the verge of calamitous collapse when he left.  “Of course our leaders were patriotic men who truly believed that Sadam Hussein was evil, bad for his people and 

needed to be “removed” to make the middle east a safer place.”

“But maybe...these men were part of the so-called “military industrial complex” with personal agendas of increased influence, power and money.  After all Dick Cheney had been Chairman and CEO of Halliburtan, the parent company of KBR which was the number one recipient of over $138 billion dollars in taxpayer money given to private contractors in that war.  And the other architects of war were subsequently promoted to even more powerful positions, (Paul Wolfowitz promoted to head of the world bank, Stephen Hadley promoted to national security advisor, Stephen Luti promoted to special assistant to the president etc. etc)

“And maybe they were just trying to distract the country from their failure in preventing 9/11.”

And now the republican tea party is demanding that if democrats want them to pass a budget and raise the debt ceiling they’re just going to have to dismantle a law the republicans don’t like.  It doesn’t matter that a small minority is forcing an issue that is having devastating effects on people all over the country and soon potentially all over the globe.  “Of course....it’s the principle of the matter.  Affordable care is another entitlement and is shoving us down the road to socialism.  And even if the American people can’t see that, these republicans can and they’ll save us, like it or not.”

They’re the new McCarthys...the new overseers of unamerican activities. 

“And just maybe....they think that president Obama is slowly getting too many positive results in the economic recovery.  Just maybe they’re not happy that wall street is booming, the housing market is recovering and people are going back to work.  Just maybe they can’t stand that the first black president of our country, who they claimed was not an American and should go back to Kenya, is digging us out of a hole dug for us by the white royalty of American politics (success due in large part to the Paul principle.)  Just maybe they want the economy to tank so that in one year they can point out how useless Obama was.  Just maybe they are so Machiavellian that nothing else matters but their power.”

“of course....but maybe.”  

Our Future

Our Future

Here’s what I remember.  A time when I could run to a plane five minutes before it took off, disembark onto a Florida tarmac under balmy skies and waving palms to pick my bags off an outdoor carousel with no one watching.  Entebbe changed that.  I’ve learned to deal with taking off my shoes and throwing out my 4 ml bottles at security, standing in front of a machine to be body searched and standing in line, sometimes for hours to have my ID inspected. 

Here’s what I remember.  Going to Washington DC and visiting the White House, the Capitol, the museums and memorials without walking through metal detectors or standing behind barricades hundreds of yards away.  911 changed that.

Here’s what I remember.  Watching Sesame street and Mr. Rogers (actually I never liked him) or Howdy Doody (yeah really.)  My violent show was Rin Tin Tin who was so cute you couldn’t really hate when he bit somebody.  Now I visit my grandchildren to find them spending multiple hours a day with their friends from all over the country, engaging in social network war games where they kill the enemy and splatter his brains and guts all over the tv screen with as much emotion as they would swat a fly.  Sandy Hook will change that.  

This is the choice.  If we don’t step up and control our guns, we will do something.  William Bennet, conservative former secretary of Education suggested that it might be appropriate to have an armed guard in our schools.  That won’t be enough.  We’ll need barricades too, metal detectors, and preferably towers at each corner with machine gun nests to keep watch on all incoming traffic.  Our children won’t be able to carry back packs.  They’ll take their shoes off and God forbid they forget their ID.  They’ll enter school having transmitted their homework over secure networks, (hopefully no child pornography hackers will get a hold of that) ready to sit down and concentrate on the wonderful world of learning, trying not to look at the guard towers.  We as a country will be secure in knowing that our children will be better equipped to form “well regulated militias’ than our founding fathers ever would have imagined.  And if a bad guy enters their school and gets past the guards they’ll be right there to blow him away with their own guns.  Because, by then you know there will be plastic guns that they can get through any metal detectors anyway.

Gun Control

In the wake of the Sandy Hook massacre we had best wake up from our collective coma or we will surely perish from it.  It is time for thinking people to acknowledge the peril we face from the unchecked viral proliferation of mass killing machines.  Guns have become our e-bola virus, highly contagious with a 90% mortality rate.  (Only one victim out of 27 survived the Sandy Hook shooting.)  E-bola wipes out families and villages and if, God-forbid, it breaks out into the mainstream, it would be like the opening of Pandora's proverbial box.  But guns have gone viral, and they are killing our society.  There are so many arguments and arguers against gun control that it seems impossible we will ever agree on limiting them.  But I would like to address the ones I've seen and then make a proposal.
1)  To limit the ownership of guns in any way is a basic infringement of our second amendment rights.
              Let's look at the second amendment.
      A well regulated Militia, being necessary to the security of a free State, the right of the people to keep and bear Arms, shall not be infringed.
              What is a well regulated militia today?  Is it the United States Army Reserve, an organization set up to perform only part-time duties, but that has been a mainstay of the fighting in Iraq and Afghanistan during the longest uninterrupted period of war in our history?  That militia is armed by our government.  Or is it the Aryan Nation that claims no allegiance to the United States and arms themselves?  The concept of private citizens protecting themselves from our own military with their own weapons as a guarantee of a secure free state is ludicrous.  Will our assault rifles secure us against drones and tanks?  Or maybe we should be allowed to own those too.  The founding fathers bought and sold slaves and wrote that into their Constitution.  Times have changed.

2)  Guns don't kill people.  People kill people.
               Wrong.  Guns do kill people.  It has been shown that the animal kingdom is divided into two broad categories of "predator" and "prey." (On Aggression by Konrad Lorenz.)  Predators are aggressors with natural weapons of sharp teeth, talons and muscles.  When predators fight within their own species the fight to a ritual death, (a dog clamps his fangs around the jugular vein of his opponent, but the fight stops there.)  There is an innate neurological tabu against killing a member of its own species.  That makes sense.  Predators are skilled at killing and prey are skilled at escaping.   If predators had no innate mechanism to stop them from annihilating their brothers, it would portend the end of that species.  Prey are not so prone to those same inhibitions.  Their skills are defensive and so they have not developed those biological fail-safe stop gaps to the same degree.  Humans are prey.  We have no natural weapons.  Our teeth are vegetarian choppers.  Our eyes are relatively weak.  Our nails are short and we aren't very strong or quick.  We've survived because we have a brain that presumably is more ingenious than our predator foes.  We can think and evade.  We still do have an inborn resistance to killing our own kind, but it is relatively weak.  When confronted with the option of killing another human being face to face, one on one, or running away, most of us would do the latter.  (The peer pressure of an army is enough to change that equation for most human beings.)  But as the killing distance between us increases, the biological imperative becomes weaker, and killing becomes easier.  Guns allow that distance to exceed our genetic balance, to say nothing of bombs and drones.  So yes, people kill people.  But they kill far more with guns than they ever would with fists or knives.

3)  We need guns to protect ourselves from the bad people out there.
                 Yes, there are bad people out there.  There are angry people, violent psychotic people, violent depressed people and psychopaths.  What would save more lives, arming everyone to the teeth (as we are now,) or removing the vast majority of those weapons from our society.  In 2008 and 2009, 5,740 children and teenagers were killed by guns and 34,387 were wounded.  Those are just the children!   If we live in a world where every single person needs a gun to protect his life from someone else with a gun, then it is a psychotic world we live in.  In the 30 years since statistics were first gathered in 1979, 116,384 children and teenagers were killed by guns, 42.7 times the number in a group of other high income countries!!!  What is wrong with us.?

4)  Gun control wouldn't stop the problem.
                  There is no rational argument for automatic weapons at all.  Self protection, hunting and target shooting, the three reasons that gun advocates have for owning weapons, can all be satisfied with revolver pistols and bolt action rifles.  The only reason to own an automatic, or semi-automatic gun is because "it's fun" or because it kills easier.  Well excuse me, but shooting a rocket propelled grenade may also be fun, but too bad, you can't do it legally.  Buy a Wii.
                    And isn't it a little nuts that you can't drive a car without passing a written test and a driving test, but a 5 year old can use an assault rifle if his parent lets him.

So, what do we do?  There are enough guns in the United States to arm every man, woman and child!  And anyone can get them.  Let's make them illegal.  It might take years.  It may take decades to save 10,000 children.  But what if one of those children were yours?

Please sign my petition and pass it on.  Maybe there is a silent, sleeping majority out there that is as outraged as I am.  Maybe it just takes one voice to wake it up and make it go viral.  And maybe that virus will defeat our e-bola.

Petition by iPetitions

Gun, guns, guns...our we out of our F**King minds?!

Is it possible that we are all just crazy?  Can there be a sane person in this country that doesn't think it madness that any insane or evil person, terrorist or murderer, can lay hands on an automatic weapon as easily as he does a bottle of water?  Can anyone possibly believe that the second amendment continues to give each citizen the right to arm himself with a modern day gun?  Where does it stop?  Should we all carry bazookas, or maybe rocket propelled grenades?  By God, the founding fathers would have insisted that we be permitted to each own a ground to air missile in order to protect ourselves from the tyranny of government, wouldn't they?  What makes us think that home of the free and land of the brave means killing our children with 50 clip magazines?  Why should anyone be permitted to purchase a killing machine with less paper work than it takes to get a park permit?  Psychosis is a loss of contact with reality that includes delusions (false beliefs about what is taking place) or hallucinations (seeing or hearing things that aren't there.)  What is it called when an entire country has lost contact with reality and the people believe they need to arm themselves against a government trying to enslave them?  (Maybe it's called the United States of America.)  It's not guns that kill, it's people, right?  We need to arm ourselves for protection against the crazies.  Well then let's give a handgun to each of our children for his or her fifth birthday, because it looks like they're going to need it. 

Politics as usual

Does it seem as ridiculous to everyone else as it does to me, that our presidential candidates are embroiled over the question of when President Obama declared that our Libyan ambassador was killed by terrorists or by an angry mob?  I was going to ask "who cares?" but obviously there seem to be a lot of people that do.  But why should we care?  Is it really important that we called the killers terrorists?  And what if, in fact, the government messed up with security arrangements in Benghazi?  Someone obviously did, but then again, someone caught a young terrorist (or was he just a crazy madman?) about to blow up the federal reserve in New York, before he did it.  Do we assign blame for everything that goes wrong to the President of the United States but ignore his obvious non-participation in an operation that is successful.  There are at least twenty layers of individuals and divisions at work before any plan actually gets seen by the President.  Probably 90% of those get signed off on before they ever get to him.  Of course he's in charge of the ship and responsible for putting in place the directives for those people, but who in their right mind can believe that every thing will always go perfectly?  There will inevitably be failures, and they will end up, by virtue of their violence, getting all the attention.  But there will hopefully be many more successes, most of which, we will probably never get wind of, no matter who is President of the country.  It is a very short sighted policy to criticize the President for not plugging the security holes in advance, because it is highly unlikely that any President will see out one term without occasional failures of his system.  Someone, well below his pay grade, will ok some stupid plan, like selling guns to Mexico to trace where they go, and have them end up killing Americans.  By the way, who ok'd giving weapons to Osama bin Laden to fight Russia in Afghanistan?  And why is Mr. Romney suggesting giving weapons to rebels in Syria when we're not sure where or to whom they would really be going?  So much rhetoric to convince people there is an easy solution to a nearly impossible problem.  All that we can do is try our best, and expect the worst, for someday it will surely happen somewhere.