Far-Right/Far-Left Social Media Nuttery Certainly the Work of Our Enemies
Not only is our Nation hugely divided by the political extremes, but each is starting to have nutty, eerily similar positions that put our Country at risk. Meanwhile, it has come out that Facebook and Twitter are both compromised and motivated by profits to have few controls. In an era when Liberal Democracy is so popular in the world (and repressive Nationalism so unpopular), why are we letting Russia/China/Iran give us the gun to shoot ourselves in the foot?
Star Trek fans will recall the episode where the alien force gets its energy from pitting the Enterprise Crew and Klingons against each other by staging petty disputes (as if the other Star Trek actors’ anger directed at prima donna William Shatner didn’t already generate enough energy). With recent revelations by Trump cabinet exiles (spurred on by book deals), Facebook and Twitter whistleblowers, it now appears that our righty-lefty disfunction is indeed largely orchestrated by our enemies, who find it frightfully easy to monkey-wrench our open society. This is at a time when these enemies (largely Russia, China, and Iran) are suffering from the weight of a “non-open society” that suppresses education, justice, and even military and economy, giving the West a big advantage if it can ever wake up from this contrived bullshit.
Recent Twitter whistleblower Peiter “Mudge” Zatko revealed what we pretty much already knew about social media, saying “Twitter is exceptionally vulnerable to exploitation by foreign governments in ways that threaten US National Security, and may even have foreign spies currently active on its payroll”. Before that, Facebook (now Meta) whistleblower Frances Haugen stated that in response to allegations of Russian interference in the 2016 election (through Facebook), that the company’s communications official Tucker Bounds allegedly said, “It will be a flash in the pan. Some legislators will get pissy. And then in a few weeks they will move onto something else. Meanwhile we are printing money in the basement, and we are fine.” Trump officials managed to escape culpability during the Mueller Russian-interference investigation, the first Impeachment (over his anti-Ukrainian collusion) and the second(over his plot to stage a Presidential Coup), and how on earth could his bromance with Putin and constant Tweets not be considered Russian meddling? (Fung, 2022),(Timberg, 2021)
Meanwhile, the Chinese and Iranians, not enjoying so much overt support from the former President and others, are forced to be more clever, yet also find it rather easy to divide us, if not muck up the works and spread confusion. Iranian hackers have attacked US banks, casinos, infrastructure (like dams and pipelines), universities, and energy producers. Being Trump and Right-Wing whipping boys, their efforts tend to be more destructive and perhaps also aimed at money/influence (they are linked to ransomware attacks and extortion). In 2022 alone, the Chinese stole from us 97 billion pieces of internet data, and 124 billion pieces of phone data, while blaming our NSA. China has engaged in phishing operations directed against our military, and in Australian social media disinformation, while stealing key intellectual property from the US and Europe. China has also long known of our open-society’s vulnerability to skewed opinion, and planned use it as a weapon. (Bateman, 2022) Of course, these are only the tips of the iceberg, and the magnitude of theft, disruption, extortion, and social media corruptions are hard to measure. (csis.org, 2019),(csis.org, 2022)
At this point, let us survey the damage done to our political system, quite possibly the result of social media disruption. Going in, Democracy and Capitalism have a rather large advantage in practicality and popularity (we are supposed to always be seeing the problems and quickly fixing them via an informed public and mostly honest politicians). But as Vladimir Lenin once said “The Capitalists will sell us the rope with which we will hang them”, which more or less describes the Kompromat they have on complicit/greedy Donald Trump and social media companies. Assuming we wake up and bring our superior technology to bear upon tightened military, financial, and infrastructure cyber security, what is to become of social media pollution into the electorate? With Russia, China, and Iran quickly learning that hyper-nationalistic suppression creates stupidity, discontent, and economic stagnation, they are quickly becoming isolated in the world. The US on the other hand, could enjoy a historic resurgence akin to the post WW II boom (which they’ll need to pay off their debt and continue being the world’s policeman and beacon of democracy) if they simply alert themselves to these enemy-tainted information bases.
The other day, I commented on the Democrats (mostly far-left it turns out) dog-piling on Republicans Crenshaw, Cheney, and Kinzinger for “not being liberal enough” although they were taking a beating standing up to the Trump base in the name of “rule of law” and fair elections. I complained that as a Democratic Moderate, I was sick of the far-left refrain, and that it had a frightful commonality to far-right repetitions, to wit:
1) As Crenshaw said, AOC and M.T. Greene both want to defund law enforcement, the former the police and the latter the FBI.
2) Far left, far right both are fiscally irresponsible and want to print money to buy off their constituencies, not thinking about inflation or impacts of future debt.
3) Both support nutty anti-science things like anti-vax, both float false conspiracy theories.
4) Socialist or Fascist, both favor government overreach a la overly strict business intervention, abortion laws, etc.
5) Both have a kind of anti-immigrant stance, left to protect labor and right to protect racists, yet immigrants do much of the hard work (while sometimes bringing much-needed tech knowledge).
6) Both love to “cancel” people that don’t agree with them.
There is some serious pressure being brought against these breakaway Republicans, and they are taking the heat (for all of us) in the name of fair elections and sensibility. I’m a moderate Dem, but Cheney has already softened on gay marriage and of course is pro-rule of law. If she developed any kind of softer stance on silly abortion bans and global warming, I might even vote for her in a ’24 Presidential bid, just to reward her unique patriotism and bravery (let’s face it, she’s done a better job than the Dems in taking down historically-treasonous Trump). Maybe she could develop a moderate coalition that would finally bring some sense to all this and help us stand up to Russia/China/Iran, straightening out corrupt Social Media and developing a strong and clean jobs economy that truly would make America great, not just some phony jingoist chant (BTW, I got all “thumbs down”, after stating the rather obvious on this left-leaning Yahoo.com site).
The far-left/far-right “debate” has taken on the silly look of Dr. Seuss’ Sneetches, the “break the top of egg vs bottom” dispute in Gulliver’s Travels, or the “tastes great/less filling” Miller Lite Beer Commercial (while moderates Bill Maher, Andrew Yang, Lincoln Project Repubs, Barack Obama/Joe Biden are thinking WTF!). The commonality is that both extremes are looking similarly petty and irrelevant (if not actually saying the same thing). Who in their patriotic right mind, right or left, would espouse weak law enforcement, fiscal irresponsibility, science-denial, Byzantine government overreach, nutty conspiracy theories, oversensitivity to dissent, hard-working immigrant bashing/racism? Who has identified and promoted fiery/divisive constituencies such as Neo-Nazis, Religious Fanatics, New Agers, Alternative Health-Nuts, Internet-Influencers, Wannabee Pseudo-Patriots, Radical Feminist/LGBT and Minority Groups that can needlessly disrupt our culture? OUR ENEMIES, THAT’S WHO…and its been proven that with greedy social media companies, its frightfully easy to coopt weak Western minds (softened by decades of over-entitlement) and set them against each other so as to serve us up on a totalitarian takeover platter (if we’re not careful).
