As IF Times

Source: Facebook has a climate-denial problem

Oh oh; my days may be numbered.  But wait! I don’t depend on Facebook to broadcast my views anyways, so we’ll just carry on until they get enough influence to block everyone on the internet.  The way things are going, I figure I have another 4 months at least.

The battle for real information and news keeps getting more intense as the conduits for information join with the information purveyors themselves in steering and shaping the public discourse.  No one will deny the hard slants offered by the majority of the popular news outlets, both print and video media.  But you don’t expect the vehicles you use to access news to be also gatekeepers for content. This is the equivalent of your forks and knives blocking you from eating a rib steak because they feel you should be a vegetarian.  Both Twitter and Facebook have publicly censored conservative speech in favor of egregiously offensive leftist postings.  Apple and Spotify have now joined the fray by censoring those that don’t conform to their corporate worldview.   It is allowing a very small cabal of people to dictate what the masses are allowed to consume.  Free thinkers and libertarians should all have their hair on fire over this.  Unlike what Colonel Nathan Jessup thinks, we can handle the truth.

While this may be cause for celebration by the increasingly irrational left, we can easily see such actions engendering serious deleterious consequences for society as a whole.  It’s not even a matter of right or wrong, it’s a matter of putting a halt to the progress of civilization.  Imagine if Copernicus’ findings were not allowed to be publicly aired because the idea of the Earth orbiting the Sun instead of the then accepted belief of the  opposite, was deemed to be heretical.   Copernicus prevailed because he could demonstrate proof of his theory.   In today’s world, you don’t even need proof of a theory to confer legitimacy.  Just a bunch of Facebook likes and voila, it’s truth! If Twitter had been around in the day, I’m sure Copernicus’ inbox would have been flooded by angry and derisive tweeters calling for a good stoning.

The American Economist and Social Theorist Thomas Sowell wrote that, “Darwinian adaptation to environment applies not only to nature but also to society.  Just as you don’t find eagles living in the ocean or fish living on mountain tops, so you don’t find leftists concentrated where their ideas have to stand the test of performance.”

Thus, when opposing views are not aired and debated on “public” social networks, it paves the way to groupthink, a condition that would put an end to innovation of every kind.  Interestingly, this mindset is a bizarre take on Copernicus’ theory.  It portends that truth revolves around the individual, rather than the actual reality that the individual orbits the truth.

Source: Police look for victim in body-shaming photo taken by Playboy model at L.A. gym – LA Times

It’s as if an entire bloc of people are living in a protected bubble with nary a link to the outside world.  These are people for whom life is lived virtually, where the things that are truly meaningful are linked to what is portrayed of them on the six inch screen.

The proliferation of smart phones, apps and social media platforms has transmogrified western culture into a self indulgent, narcissistic generation of Peter Pans.  If we could only get the ISIS tribe on board this faux world of false praise and paper thin sensibilities, we wouldn’t have to go after them with bullets.  A few well placed insults or provocative selfies and they’d all come undone just like the snowflakes and sensitive flowers that now populate the west.

It may be welcome respite for the police to chase down the sinister crimes of name calling rather than worry about hate groups threatening their lives on a daily basis, but there are some who think this may be a waste of resources.  It parallels worrying about how to get the caramel in a caramilk bar while engaged in a gun battle with thugs. And yet, a segment of the populace thinks that this is a good use of police resources.

It may be worthwhile for the US military to consider using a new tack when dealing with terrorists of all stripes.  Give them cell phones complete with twitter  and facebook accounts.  Then start calling them names and bodyshaming them and display it all as publicly as possible.   In very short order, they’ll abandon the notion of real violence for the more important world of virtual violence.  Mass killings are so impersonal; far better to inflict biting insults and micro-aggressions on your enemies.