The world is shifting all over, not only in America. But, Americans are seeing the shift at home. It doesn’t make headlines, but then again it is “trending”, which makes headlines: Facebook is in peril. Zuckerberg overreached. While user privacy is one important topic, so is politically biased censorship.
It’s legal to express one’s political ideals, but it’s also legal for Leftist-controlled companies to ban opposition views, citing “community” standards and guidelines as the excuse for censored speech. China does it and it’s wrong in the Western mind, but what if Facebook and Twitter do it? Well, that’s a different story, somehow.
Facebook and Twitter are publicly traded companies, thus regulated by the FTC. An argument could be made for publicly traded companies to be heavily fined—and the directors, executives, and operators fired—for censoring speech. But, this opens another debate. What about “hateful” religions that cultivate hate without actually crossing the line of “dangerous” hate speech?
The “giantness” of social media is a backlash against the “giant” media oldschool. But, social media giants are creating a backlash of their own. FTC-regulated free speech isn’t the solution to the implosion of social media giants. Instead, Facebook is doing a favor to its contenders. By being unfriendly, they are naturally encouraging their “customers” to shop elsewhere. This will have a far-reaching cascade effect and could make a swarm of new billionaires that eclipse Mark Zuckerberg, Elon Musk, and Jeff Bezos.
The self-destructive establishmentarians are imploding the FBI from the helm and Facebook is run by kids who don’t know what they’re doing.
For decades the FBI was considered above reproach, but not anymore. Raiding a private attorney’s office and private residence stoops to new lows after an investigation has only proven less and less likely to find a problem. It proved more unlikely after this raid. The real purpose of the raid was to punish Cohen for being Trump’s attorney to discourage others from working with the president who is draining the establishment’s swamp. Now, that swamp is making it evident why it must be drained.
Trump should not fire Mueller; he should suspend his work and his team while a special council is hired to investigate what went on in a special counsel investigation team that hasn’t found anything since it was commissioned.
Facebook’s kids at the helm understand computer code and know how to make software, but like the kids running most app companies, they don’t have the scruples to guide their software to make just and fair decisions for their users. We see the child-like culture in Zuckerberg’s apology to the public and how he pleads with the Senate committee members like a child asking to keep the keys to his car.
The best explanation of Comey is fear that Clinton would get elected and retaliate if he tried to harm her or didn’t help her before her election. He expected her election, which holds bearing on his decisions. This “higher road” approach is often used by politically-oriented and otherwise incompetent leaders who appear pious as they refuse to pursue justice against those who harm others. He didn’t want to be “the torture guy” and he didn’t want to go after Clinton; nice guys don’t do those things, after all.
America is unquestionably in a culture war. The two Black ladies, Diamond and Silk, are “unsafe to the community” according to Facebook. That might have been the last straw. Many people in America love those two women and will take Facebook’s opinion personally. It does have logical implications: If you like someone who is “unsafe to the community” then it stands to reason that you too are “unsafe”. After all, if you want to see Diamond and Silk videos in your feed then Facebook disagrees with you.
But, that’s not where it stopped.
Tony Robins, a pioneer in his field of encouraging people with self-motivation, has helped many people make better lives for themselves. He commented that using a hashtag on Twitter to feel good merely uses a drug called “significance”. People who clean up their lives have already come to teach themselves that being famous and harming someone else offer no improvement for quality of life. And, indeed, the “womens rights” movement is no exception—just like Christianity—in having been abused by people who just want to feel good by way of fame. Tony Robins did not disrespect the “MeToo” movement, but only called-out the human habit of using good things for an alternative purpose.
Then, a woman in the audience proved his point for him by contorting his defense of personal responsibility into something it was not.
False alarms diminish the value of the alarm. America needs an uprising of people who will not stay quiet in the face of abuse. Tony Robins identified a new, niche form of abuse as a warning against crying “victim” in excess. Alienating Tony will not hurt Tony, it will hurt the groupies who commandeered the genuine, real call to end degradation of women.
With a march on the way to the border and the military being called into question, America faces turbulence, but these things will not overcome the nation; they will purge the problems and make the nation stronger.
David Hogg is right, but the Hollywood Left is trying to exploit him. Baby Boomers have failed to manage their Democracy, along with their kids, and however that generational chain works its way into the students currently in school. Clear backpacks are, best put, “stupid”. Showing girls’ tampons in the hallway and letting all students spy in each other’s bags doesn’t stop a gunman from hurting people. But, that comes from common sense, not the 1st Amendment.
The 2nd Amendment is David Hogg’s best friend. The best way to restrict guns in America is to deny them to everyone who has not completed the Constitutional mandate for all-citizen militia training. Hogg doesn’t care about scrapping it nor about Left or Right politics, though the Left capitalizes on him and his friends. That, too, could backfire.
In all this, David Hogg and his classmates are doing the country a great and wonderful favor: They are getting involved in politics as they should be. One does not need to be a Constitutional expert, we just need to be involved, even with much yet to learn. Bravo, David! Had high school students been so concerned 20 years ago we would not have the problems we do today.
But, we can’t say the same for the Leftist “snatch the guns” reactors. They don’t see the real issue, Trump does: China.
With an irresponsibly depleted military, the last remaining reason China has not invaded the United States is all the guns at large throughout the country. The 2nd Amendment’s militia training of all citizens would solve our gun violence problem, but it’s still not satisfactory for national defense. We need a stronger military.
This terrible omnibus budget that Congress sent to Trump makes a mockery of Congress, not Trump. Trump signed it because of its military budget that would make Reagan proud. It’s the largest military budget in US history.
Signing the budget will not hurt Trump’s changes of re-election. There will be unpopularity for a while, but this showed his “presidential sensibility” and he will have plenty of time to turn this against the dissenters in Congress with them leaving for the 2018 campaign trail. Trump’s base will understand him. International threats from a decade of military neglect is the bigger problem we face. Trumpists will blame Congress and many of those laughing at Trump now could find themselves fired in November.
Symphony has long said that mid terms on new presidents often flop as they likely will in 2018. But, mid-term losses will bring out the Conservative vote in 2020 and more voter turnout altogether.
In the economy, Facebook is in trouble, but it will survive better than the media would have us think. It’s a good time to buy Facebook stock since it’s low—that is with the “buy low, sell high” principle. The company was also founded and headed by a kid with little experience. Manipulating news feeds, suspending accounts, and not planning better for sneaky operations like Cambridge Analytica—they were bound for “brat” troubles. But, Facebook is too important for society to let it slide. The bigger debate yet to come will be over AI research “big” money that will want terabytes of user data to make an AI seem like it has a soul, as part of the AI cult that thinks Star Trek the Motion Picture is reality. A takeover by the public under a combination of stock market status and public utility laws will be the miraculous solution we will be told to think was the brilliant answer no one else thought of.
In another sector of society and politics, manufacturing is coming back to America. This will humble and strengthen the United States as it should. The US will no longer be a “service economy” where all the other [implied-to-be] “lesser” nations do the manufacturing and Americans merely oversee work that is “beneath” them. By having an equal playing field, Americans will come down off their pedestal and start doing hard, skilled labor just like every other nation needs to do. The two younger hard working generations are returning not only to political involvement, but also entrepreneurship and good, old fashioned hard work.
General Michael Flynn has earned a purple heart. The corruption against him indicated by text messages is scandalous. The public will rally to his defense more and more.
Trump allows Mueller to continue, indicating strength not weakness. Trump is letting Mueller proverbially “hang himself”, or to be “Biblical”, build his own Haman scaffold. Lashing out at Mueller on Twitter comes from Trump’s “social nose” telling him to wait for public support so that when—not if—Trump fies Mueller, the public demands more investigations of the draining swamp, which still will not satisfy the public outcry against corruption.
By not yet taking so much action as demanded, Trump opponents will see him as moderate and his support could even increase in the 2020 election—already likely to increase since the normal mid-term losses long predicted by Symphony will only rouse Trumpists to get out the vote even more.
The Facebook scandal involving the said-to-be-dubious research group Cambridge Analytica neither indites Democrats nor Republicans since the group is likened to “mercenaries” who will work for anyone’s pay. It does raise questions about Facebook’s inside baseball, though at most Facebook’s involvement seems to have been not caring enough or not having policies prepared to handle what Cambridge Analytica was doing, but we’ll have to wait and see. Nonetheless, Facebook will end up being more regulated by Congress, something quite easily done through FTC regulations—Facebook is a company with publicly traded stock. We could see legislation imposing a kind of “fairness and privacy doctrine” on public social media companies. Facebook is becoming a de facto utility, a status clearly proven by how important it was to Cambridge Analytica.
The STOP, School Violence Act of 2018 sponsored by Orrin Hatch has due bipartisan support. It also contains provisions for training, something suggested by Symphony just after the Florida Valentine’s Day Massacre. Democrats naturally want more, but are supportive.
This week was incredibly calm in Asia. China has some non-defined goals of grandeur, though some voices in the Western press cast their usual doubts. China’s big obstacle with becoming a tech leader is two-fold: 1. lack of measurable methods and 2. social media.
Westerners use Facebook and Google to communicate with friends, family, and associates. By blocking Facebook, China is blocking Westerners as well as leading technology. By definition, “global” methods can’t merely involve competitor social media unique to China. Whether China has good reason to block the social media giants is a separate question altogether. If China wants to become a leader, it must have a measurable, defined way forward in its tech and trade ambitions, which must include how to involve people and markets that it has blocked by proxy.
Korea was also unusually quiet. The saber rattling took a hiatus over the holiday pre-week. On Christmas, North Korea was sure to puff its chest out, but that’s about all. It is entirely possible that the problems in Korea will magically and abruptly vanish, Korea will be united, and both the Communists and the Westerners will just go home. But, that would never have happened without the mounting pressure from both sides.
Whatever reconciliation comes at the end of this Korean “situation”, we will have both North Korea and the US military presence to thank for it. Should whatever new Korea emerges snub the US for providing the pressure to resolve a conflict no one else could, Korea’s best days would thus be in the past. Keeping friendship during times of peace is vital to keeping that peace. Lasting peace in Korea means lasting peace among Koreans as well as its friends and neighbors. Should there be a bloodless peace in Korea and America troops just up and leave, the US will probably beef-up its presence with Taiwan. That would be the other shift.
