I post on Facebook and Twitter. I've been on Facebook for years, but I've only been active on Twitter for a few months. I used to post in response to articles on MSN.com, but the folks there don't allow you to post anymore.
The only reason I was on Facebook was to see images my daughter posted of our grandchildren. I kept up a bit with friends, but had it not been for Jess, I wouldn't have started there.
I began posting about politics on FB when Obama was running for his second term. I would see these hateful posts and bullshit stories regarding Obama and that got me started. I have trouble sitting on the sidelines and watching racists spread their hatred.
Prior to social media, I was a prolific writer of letters to the editors and op ed pieces. I also appeared in a lot of news stories and did radio and TV interviews and testified at a lot of local and state legislative hearings. I was a licensed professional advocating on healthcare and social service issues.
I began posting on MSN during the last election cycle. MSN was like the wild West. FB was really family and friends. MSN was the world. The world intruded on FB but only if someone on your Friends list posted or reposted something they discovered somewhere.
I was amazed at the hatred on FB. All the more so because I knew the people propagating it. I tended to avoid head on clashes with friends on FB. I have 67 friends on FB. So, I took a more circuitous route.
The emergence of Trump during the campaign made me crazy. Trump should have been a character in a grade b movie like "Plan 9 From Outer Space", but he was campaigning and winning primaries. The mainstream media loved to write about him. He sold copy.
I think the MSM folks loved to report on Trump because it was so entertaining and they didn't think he had a snowball's chance in Hell of actually getting elected. I never found it entertaining. I found it terrifying. I also knew that if he ended up on the ballot he had a 50-50 chance of winning and that was unthinkable for me.
I don't gamble. For those who do I would suggest not gambling what you can't afford to lose. In this case, a lot of gamblers were gambling with our country.
Let's face it. Our country was a crazy mishmash of political ideologies from the very beginning. I mean we talked about liberty and slavery was legal and women were disenfranchised. Women were denied the vote. Actually women were property too.
We've also tried killing ourselves during the Civil War. We have an ongoing history of tearing ourselves apart in all kinds of violent clashes in our own hometowns. We seemed to be hell-bent on destroying ourselves except when we weren't.
I was a young man during the Vietnam and Civil Rights Eras. I witnessed a lot of Americans beating, maiming and killing other Americans locally, regionally and nationally.
As an adult I was active in my profession and experienced all kinds of trauma (being fired) several times for attempting to just perform my duties ethically. Go figure.
When Trump actually got elected I was about as traumatized as I have ever been. It was much like suffering from PTSD. When I started this blog on January 1 of this year it was my way of railing against the craziness that had taken over our country. I was inspired.
Writing is therapeutic.
And then I found Twitter. I had never found a use for Twitter and had no interest in it beyond Jess. My first Tweet was last November and it was a knee jerk reaction to something Trump had said. My second Tweet was last December and I was playing with Jess.
The third time really is a charm. In January I used Twitter to promote my blog. It was just one Tweet but it was the beginning of a journey into Wonderland.
My next Tweet wasn't until the end of May. After that I was Tweeting daily. What can I say? Go ask Alice what the dormouse said.
The readership of my blog expanded slowly on Twitter. Along the way I learned about what Russia did before, during and ever since the elections. I learned details about Trump's criminal activities. I learned how truly fucked up things are.
I know my limitations. I know I will never play for the NBA. I know I am a senior citizen. I know things change all the time. I even know about political and professional firefights. I know I am a risk taker.
FB and Twitter are battlefields. They are different than traditional battlefields in that you never know who is who. Cyber battlefields are frenetic. I guess real battlefields are too, but you usually know you are on a real battlefield. Cyber battlefields are all about cyber terrorism.
Some of the warriors on cyber battlefields are easy to spot. They wear cyber uniforms and their posts are clearly cyber barrages. And then there are trolls.
Trolls are people, as opposed to bots who are not real people. Trolls come at you gratuitously. They slit your throat, rob you, rape you and then move on. It is not always clear what their intentions are.
Some trolls are the equivalent of serial killers taking advantage of a war to mask their killings. Some are soldiers in cyber armies. Some are marauders and raiders.
My experience with trolls is that they tend to run in packs - kind of like U-boats preying on convoys or pirates descending on a family at sea in a pleasure craft.
The thing about trolls is that they can't hurt you directly. They "weaponize" you or your computer. After that they might turn you on yourself or your family or your friends or you community or your country or whatever.
The goal here is to turn you into a weapon that can be used to hurt something or someone. Coordinated teams of trolls weaponized a lot of us in an effort to hurt Hillary Clinton and tear our democracy to shreds. They were very good at that and they succeeded beyond their wildest expectations.
Welcome to battlefield United States. Proceed at your own risk. We might all be better off avoiding social media all together. I like to see pictures of my grandchildren, but that's not what is going on 24/7. War is going on 24/7.
People did not just venture out on the battlefields of World Wars I and II to have family reunions and picnics.
Last night a group of trolls invested hours in mind fucking me. I don't have a better way of describing it. I don't even know what their agenda was. I'm not sure they do, but that's the rub.
I think everybody takes actions to attain outcomes. What outcomes did the trolls who descended on me last night want? Darned if I know, but they worked so hard at it.
Their methodology was about as sophisticated as spam from a Nigerian bank telling me that I have $1,500,000 dollars waiting for me. The thing is, I know the Nigerian bank spammers want to defraud me.
I need to really limit myself on Twitter. I have already done so on FB. Unless you have a clearly defined outcome that is reality based, I suggest you do the same. If you want to save the world, tilting at windmills won't do it.
I'm not sure where I go from here. I've been to Zork. I'm in Wonderland. My grandsons are watching Sarah & Duck right now. I think I'll join them for a bit. Cheerio.
Holy Moly!
Yes, this is the 2 Fer part of this post.
I'm not sure how to proceed from here. When we set out to build our house I had 2 reputable builders give me an estimate for the exact same house. The bids came in $100,000 apart. I had no idea how to resolve it.
So I did what anybody would do under the circumstances. I built it. I was my own general contractor and Kathy and I actually did a portion of the work. That worked and saved us money to boot. We have a great house.
I realize I can no longer discern between what is real and what isn't on Twitter. I am not about to launch on an information quest that will consume me and leave me in no better place than I am now.
So I am going to back off from Twitter and end this blog for the foreseeable future. Never say never. But first a list of what I learned in Wonderland - actually I knew all this all along, it just got reinforced in Wonderland.
I
We're in deep doo doo. Yep, our president is a criminal and most of the people around him are criminals. That goes for Congress as well.
II
Corruption is the rule in Washington and most everyplace else. Greed is rampant and it's taking us all down.
III
Evangelical Christians are whacked - along with a lot of NRA members - and a good many other organized folk.
IV
Hatred, racism and bigotry are all thriving in America.
V
Republicans are much crazier than Democrats and Hillary Clinton would have made a great President. We blew it big time in the last election and Third Party candidates should be avoided like the plague.
VI
The wealthy people are in control.
VII
We need to get rid of the Electoral College, stop political gerrymandering and enact meaningful campaign finance reforms.
VIII
Healthcare and education should be available to everyone and affordable.
IX
We have a serious substance abuse problem that is getting worse.
X
Organized crime is rampant and Russian criminals are peaking.
Holy Moly!
I remember sitting down with a cup of tea and turning on CNN. Smoke was coming from one of the World Trade Center buildings and the news commentary was confused.
There was speculation about what had happened. News people were talking to each other and nothing informative was being said. I watched and then I saw a plane come into view and turn into the second tower.
I knew immediately that something horrific and deliberate was happening. I didn't have to listen to the audio. I knew.
I remained rooted to the TV all day. I never got out of my pjs. I watched the towers come down. I saw the people jumping to avoid the flames. I saw the people running and covered in ashes.
Until that moment, the most traumatic news moment in my lifetime was the assassination of JFK. That changed things. Government was never the same after that. It was hard to trust the government and Nixon made that painfully clear.
I wasn't alive for Pearl Harbor. I can only imagine what is was like, but I can only imagine what it was like after experiencing 9/11. I never felt totally vulnerable before.
I had lost trust in the government and was cynical. I had disdain for politicians. I saw political corruption as the norm. When George W. took us into Iraq it just reinforced my disdain. When the economy crumbled, I thought we might be witnessing the end of the United States as I knew it growing up.
Obama changed all that for me. He brought hope and optimism. It was like we were given a reprieve. I began to feel confidence and trust in our government.
My hope and optimism lasted 2 years. After the midterm elections, the Republican Party came back with a vengeance. Congress literally stopped functioning and we experienced 6 years of congressional sabotage.
Despite all that, Obama managed to lift the country from the verge of economic depression to economic recovery and stability. The auto industry was saved. The housing market was revived. The financial industry was solvent.
Obama got nothing from Congress. What he did, he did by strength of character and intelligence. He was not a panacea for everything that was wrong. He was hamstrung and some things went terribly wrong in our foreign policy.
Syria turned the Middle East into a hellish nightmare that went far beyond the stupidity of W's invasion of Iraq. The invasion of Iraq had destabilized the Middle East and Syria was the ultimate catastrophe resulting from that destabilization.
Iran also thrived after the destabilization of Iraq. It rose almost unopposed in political and military power. Something was rising out of the ashes of the Middle East. The invasion of Iraq let loose a demon that had been contained and restrained since World War II.
While the United States was traumatized and fumbling to find its way, Russia was taken over by a criminal enterprise headed by Vladimir Putin. Russia is no longer a political state. Russia is organized crime elevated to an unprecedented international level and operating under the guise of a sovereign nation.
Putin invested in the chaos in the Middle East and in our chaos in the United States. Putin's agents were everywhere sowing chaos and confusion and violence. Putin was buying opportunists across the globe. Putin was buying people who were willing to betray their countries in exchange for profit.
Putin was playing the long game. It takes time to infiltrate a political economic entity like the United States. It takes years and years. You have to find and cultivate traitors. You have to compromise them and bring them under your control.
Putin worked to destabilize Europe. NATO was and is a thorn in his side and the only way to neutralize NATO is to break up Europe. We saw the beginnings of that with Brexit.
On the home front we saw the infiltration and eventual takeover of the Republican Party by an alliance of political opportunists, racists, religious zealots, political action groups, and traitors.
To a much lesser extent we saw an infiltration of the Democratic Party that has manifested itself in extreme leftists who have mobilized under the rubric of the Antifa.
9/11 was the opening act either by design or happenstance for the rise of an international Russian criminal organization headed up by Vladimir Putin.
Putin needs to dismantle the EU to dismantle NATO. He needs to destroy the United States as a cogent, coherent political force because the United States is the most powerful country in the world and it has repeatedly stopped fascist, totalitarian states dead in their tracks.
We are in the midst of total war with Russia. Russia has won all the opening battles. Russia contaminated our elections. Russia has perfected the dissemination of disinformation and false news. Russia has seized control of our Executive Branch and much of the GOP leadership. Russia is our enemy and Russia has been having its way with us.
Our allies seem to be faring better with Russia. At the moment they have brought Russia's infiltration of Europe to a halt and are slowly expunging Russian influence from European politics.
We have a lot of ground to reclaim and a lot of catching up to do. Our fate seems to be in the capable hands of Robert Muller and Eric Schneiderman. They represent our front line in confronting Putin's criminal Russian enterprise.
We are a nation of laws. If we cannot defeat Putin with our own laws we are a nation no more. The battle is engaged and Muller and Schneiderman are facing off with Putin's prefect, his proxy here in the United Sates.
Holy Moly!
