The moral abyss which is Mark Zuckerburg was on display the other day when in reaction to the tiniest, tiniest act of moral responsibility on the part of Twitter's Jack Dorsey when he feigned horror at the idea that he might have to take a moral stand against Trump's lies that get thousands and more killed, and declared in the kind of pose that libertarians love, that his Facebook will never be an "arbiter of the truth." It was as if he needed to fall on the fainting couch and have smelling salts wafted under his nose at the thought. That is the ridiculous pose of scrupulosity common among media types when the idea is raised that media has moral responsibility, generally around its responsibility to not lie. That has replaced the cartoon images of blue-hairs fainting at mentions of sex or dirty words in books and it's far more ridiculous than that stock image of b-grade comedy presentations.
Well, it's no shock, morality is not generally healthy for a corporate bottom line, especially a corporation that makes money by selling eye/hours to advertisers, flagrant amorality is what brings in those bucks or why else would our media be so morally degraded. Where your heart is, there will your treasure be and their heart is on money, nothing more deserving of devotion.
Because of that fact media that refuses to be an "arbiter of truth" will inevitably be a shopper of lies which is certainly just fine with the Zuckerberg going on as it has been for Jack Dorsey up till the time when we found out that he has an extremely high threshold of moral responsibility but he has one that will lead to him taking the tiniest of steps. It's clear that the whey-faced slime ball of Facebook doesn't have one and has no intention of developing even the appearance of having one for PR purposes.
It's obvious that democracy, egalitarian democracy conducted to produce maximal possible decency in the lives of People is incompatible with the media we have, especially the "social media" a phrase that should have about the same status as the phrase "social disease" had in my youth. Those were what STDs were called back then, in case there are any younger people reading this.
If Democrats win the election they will have daunting tasks ahead of them, de-Nazifying the federal judiciary one of the most daunting, including the Supreme Court. But as important as that will be to break up the internet based cartels and corporate monsters that are destroying not only democracy but even the very sense of morality and reality - which it is becoming obvious are entirely and intimately interconnected. Without a sense of morality capacious enough to include the idea that truth is good and lies are bad it is clear from the Trump phenomeon, as with the other Murdoch media, Sinclair promoted Republican-fascism that even a knowledge of reality is forfeited and disaster follows on like a wheel behind a draft ox.
That last simile was due to the fact that Zuckerberg has - no doubt for PR purposes, claimed to be an admirer of Buddhism. Or maybe he's sincerely influenced by his wife. He is quoted as calling it "an amazing religion." and was photographed keeling and bowing at a Buddhist shrine. He should read the first verse of the most widely cited and proclaimed text of Buddhism, the Dhammapada.
All that we are is the result of what we have thought: it is founded on our thoughts, it is made up of our thoughts. If a man speaks or acts with an evil thought, pain follows him, as the wheel follows the foot of the ox that draws the carriage.
True, obviously true. And when billions speak and act out of evil thoughts, not least of which by lying and spreading gossip and false witness as on the thing that made him a billionaire, that effect is magnified and destroys everything. And the next of the twin-verses states that if you speak or act morally pain stops as the ox heads in that direction. That is the direction not taken by the "Buddhist" Zuckerberg in his lofty declaration that he will not be "an arbiter of truth."
Democrats are going to need to break up Facebook and Twitter and the rest of it, they are going to have to do one of the hardest things of all, overturn the disastrous decisions of the Supreme Court that allowed lies to be broadcast in the mass media with impunity if democracy and the possibility of a decent life is to continue. That was how we got here from the point where we were almost making progress in the mid-1960s. That went sour almost immediately after those rulings began. I think if they had gone the other way that start at progress towards true egalitarian democracy and a decent life might have continued instead of stalling and then reversing direction. That ox cart got turned around by lies.
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