As IF Times

Source: Facebook, Texas, China: Your Thursday Briefing – The New York Times

The recent Facebook drama has underscored the most sinister disease afflicting modern society.  E and O.  No, not Errors and Omissions, that boilerplate notice at the bottom of legal documents, I’m referring to Entitlement and Outrage, the drivers of most of the sensationalist news we see today.

A casual check of the day’s headlines will list various stories of someone’s imagined offences against accepted sensibilities, or of some concocted notion of a denied right.  Stories of people actually having their rights taken away, ie by being killed, are far less newsworthy than those concerning the horrific plight of those offended by an unfortunate choice of words.  It’s as if the entire population had been lulled into believing as children do, that fantasy trumps reality.

Look at the highly irrational debate on guns and gun rights.  While this is a topic for another discussion, there exists among many, a highly illogical view of guns.  For example, most of us have seen those decals affixed to the entrance of public buildings indicating no guns allowed on premises.  By implication, this means that the building is safe from guns. If this elegantly simple solution works, why not use the same idea and post “do not rob” signs on banks and 7-Elevens?

The recent outrage de jour is directed at Facebook, because apparently, data collected  from and freely submitted by users has been revealed to have been used for nefarious purposes;  apparently to help elect Donald Trump.  Some of us may recall that when the employment of social media techniques were used during the last president’s campaigns, it was characterized as innovative and brilliant.  But in the current context, people are outraged that their top secret images of cats, kids  and selfies at vacation spots and ‘dear diary’ entries are vulnerable to be used for commercial purposes!  Somehow, rights have been breached!

Let’s be objective and sane for a moment: People get a ‘service’ for free, Zuckerburg becomes a billionaire.  Wonder if there’s a connection there.  It’s like getting sandwiches for free and then complaining about the lack of mustard.

If only there was a way to prevent people’s personal stuff from being be pried into, spied upon and sold for financial gain; if only we could stop posting…if only there was an off button….hmm.   To stop using social media is of course, not an option.  Social media, internet access and NFL Redzone are now seen as rights. People now feel entitled to figuratively stand on their front lawns in their underwear and expect others not to look.  Mark Zuckerburg for his part, has been cowed by the indignant crowd by conceding that Facebook had failed their users.  Apologizing is a popular thing these days, whether genuine or not.  What he should have said was, “What did you expect for free? We’re not in the free lunch business.  If you want security, use paper.”

Source: ‘American people turning against Trump-hating celebrities’ | Daily Mail Online

The day after Donald Trump’s State of the Union address, accolades are being received from many quarters of the public including some heretofore skeptical news outlets such as CBS.  Of course, this excludes that segment of people who have been hard wired to despise anything that Trump does; much like an old weather vane rusted in place to always point south.  The Democratic party will not even pretend that they are on board, choosing to obstruct, regardless of policies that would be benign to their constituents.  That’s expected.

But the most visible, vocal and annoying are the usual cabal of nutters and self important ‘entertainers’ and media personalities who feel that their skewed views should be accepted by a sane public.  Actually, that’s not even correct; there are no values that they support, they’re just protesting anything Trump.  They maintain their program of shrill protests and infantile bleating even as the general working public begins to finally see past their charade of righteousness.  Apparently some of the celebrities are so distressed that they’d require a doll to show where they’ve been hurt.

This phenomenon of self importance is to some degree a function of the industry in which they work.  It’s an industry of delusion and make believe.  They are used to having people fawn over them for their great ‘work’ and confirming their importance to both themselves and to the world.  In an industry having no shortage of egos, they come to believe the accolades heaped upon them.  They believe their own fake reality, convinced that having some fleeting moments of fame endows them with the wisdom to be arbiters of social justice.

The jig may be up.  When the positive effects of the economic and social programs forwarded by the Administration become apparent to the population at large, they will compare what the entertainers bleat versus what they see with their own lyin’ eyes.  At that point, the line between reality and the fake world professed by the nutters will be apparent and hopefully we’ll hear less from them.