U.S. Politics

[Lance Payette]

Those under 30 in this country have lived lives online and in social media.  They are isolated and exposed to all manner of disinformation and hate speech.  The loon who assassinated Kirk is a product of that environment.  He was likely convinced that Kirk was a Nazi and he would be a hero for his act.  Instead he will spend the rest of his life in prison.  Maybe face the death penalty.  The propaganda or whatever is going on with the social media algorithms are having an impact on the younger crowd.  They are certainly not getting any smarter as standardized test score are hitting rock bottom but they are also experiencing higher levels of mental health issues and anger.  Not a good combination.

This is a truth that I have been preaching for at least two decades. With all of the benefits that the internet and cellphones have brought to life, I believe the net effect has been FANTASTICALLY negative. If I may name drop, I remember Dick Kleindienst shaking his head way back in 1995 and saying, "People have no idea what they are unleashing." Brains are physically being altered, patterns of thinking are being altered, opportunities for those with mental illnesses and sociopathic tendencies to bond and vent are everywhere. I am not someone who typically thinks in terms of "demons," but it almost seems supernatural.

I was in high school and college throughout the turbulent sixties. Yes, there was anger and violence, but NOTHING like we see today. I didn't spend one minute in fear for my safety or wondering if someone around me was dangerous. I had plinking guns in my dorm room and no one gave it a second thought. There has literally been an explosion that I can only attribute to the internet and the rise of social media. I have never had a Facebook, Twitter, Instagram or Anything Else account, but I have seen those things destroy relationships in my own family as members become obsessed with their like-thinking social media "friends" at the expense of real relationships.

Take the transgender phenomenon. I spent at least the first 60 years of my life without ever encountering someone confused about his or her gender. I lived in dorms, worked in journalism, practiced law. I had a couple of very good gay friends. But I never heard ONE WORD about gender confusion. I believe the entire "transgender" phenomenon is an artificial construct, almost entirely a product of the internet and social media (and, of course, an educational system that bears no relationship to the one in which I was educated for 19 years). And that's just one example.

[Lance Payette]

Dear Lance,

Aren't all Trump "haters" foaming-at-the-mouth in your humble opinion?

Regardless, how can you not despise a man who makes fun of handicapped people, started laundering money for the Russian Mafia in 1984, and sexually assaults women in department store changing rooms?

-- Tom

If I were in the grip of the sort of mania that possesses you, I could probably find reasons to despise every President in my lifetime. Because I'm not, I don't despise any of them. Tom's problem is Tom, not Donald Trump. Your KGB Bogeyman mania seems to have reached a near-pathological level, to the extent that you are compelled to drag Trump into the web even though it's patently absurd. Would I be shocked if The Donald had dealings with Russian "businessmen" 41 years ago? Hell, no, nor would I care. Do I think he was knowingly "laundering money for the Russian Mafia" 41 years ago or is doing the bidding of Vladimir Putin today because the tentacles of the KGB are everywhere? Uh, no. These are the sorts of things people who need help go around saying.

[Tom Graves]

This is a truth that I have been preaching for at least two decades. With all of the benefits that the internet and cellphones have brought to life, I believe the net effect has been FANTASTICALLY negative. If I may name drop, I remember Dick Kleindienst shaking his head way back in 1995 and saying, "People have no idea what they are unleashing." Brains are physically being altered, patterns of thinking are being altered, opportunities for those with mental illnesses and sociopathic tendencies to bond and vent are everywhere. I am not someone who typically thinks in terms of "demons," but it almost seems supernatural.

I was in high school and college throughout the turbulent sixties. Yes, there was anger and violence, but NOTHING like we see today. I didn't spend one minute in fear for my safety or wondering if someone around me was dangerous. I had plinking guns in my dorm room and no one gave it a second thought. There has literally been an explosion that I can only attribute to the internet and the rise of social media. I have never had a Facebook, Twitter, Instagram or Anything Else account, but I have seen those things destroy relationships in my own family as members become obsessed with their like-thinking social media "friends" at the expense of real relationships.

Take the transgender phenomenon. I spent at least the first 60 years of my life without ever encountering someone confused about his or her gender. I lived in dorms, worked in journalism, practiced law. I had a couple of very good gay friends. But I never heard ONE WORD about gender confusion. I believe the entire "transgender" phenomenon is an artificial construct, almost entirely a product of the internet and social media (and, of course, an educational system that bears no relationship to the one in which I was educated for 19 years). And that's just one example.

In the 1920s, the Kremlin ran a very successful deception operation known as The Trust (look it up), incorporating such elements as Lenin's bogus "New Economic Policy," against the West for six years.

It ran other big deception operations, like "Sindikat-2," and in the early 1950s it ran a highly successful large-scale operation against Poland called "WiN" -- Wolnosc i Niezawislosc, ("Freedom and Independence") -- the Polish resistance organization that was commandeered by the Soviets.

In 1959, the Kremlin, realizing that the USSR and the Warsaw Pact couldn't defeat the U.S. and NATO militarily, decided to reinstitute Sun Tzu's tactics and get us to defeat ourselves (sound familiar?) by waging disinformation, "active measures," and mole-based strategic deception counterintelligence operations against us and our NATO allies. To do so, it set up top-secret Department D in the First Chief Directorate (today's SVR). General Oleg Gribanov, not to be outdone, set up his own deception-based Department 14 in his Second Chief Directorate (today's FSB) and, as soon as CIA's spy Oleg Penkovsky was arrested in such a way that wouldn't incriminate the mole in U.S. or British Intelligence who had betrayed him within two weeks of his April 1961 recruitment, sent GRU Lt. Col. Dmitry Polyakov and KGB Major Aleksei Kulak to the FBI's NYC field office to volunteer to spy for it at the U.N. Polyakov left the U.S. in late 1962, but Kulak (J. Edgar Hoover's shielded-from-CIA FEDORA, duped the Bureau for fifteen years and almost certainly formed CIA-controlling feedback loops with probable "moles" Bruce Solie and Leonard V. McCoy. Six months later, Gribanov sent putative KGB staff officer Yuri Nosenko to the CIA in Geneva to discredit what a recent true defector, KGB Major Anatoliy Golitsyn, was telling James Angleton about possible KGB penetrations (there were many) of the CIA, the FBI, and the intelligence services of our NATO allies. In late January 1964, Nosenko reappeared to the CIA in Geneva, claiming to have been Lee Harvey Oswald's case officer in the USSR. Less than five years later, a probable "mole" by the name of Bruce Solie "cleared" Nosenko, and a short time later he was teaching "counterintelligence" to the CIA's and the FBI's new recruits.

"Former" KGB counterintelligence officer Vladimir Putin, who joined the KGB in 1975, learned all of the Sun Tzu's tricks I alluded to, above, and he's still employing them against us -- especially the disinformation and "active measures" aspects. "Social Media" has helped him immensely in this regard.

To wit: His professional St. Petersburg trolls were largely responsible for his successful installation of the "useful idiot" (or worse) known as The Traitorous Orange Bird (rhymes with "Xxxx") as our "president" on 20 January 2017.

[Steve M. Galbraith]

This is a truth that I have been preaching for at least two decades. With all of the benefits that the internet and cellphones have brought to life, I believe the net effect has been FANTASTICALLY negative. If I may name drop, I remember Dick Kleindienst shaking his head way back in 1995 and saying, "People have no idea what they are unleashing." Brains are physically being altered, patterns of thinking are being altered, opportunities for those with mental illnesses and sociopathic tendencies to bond and vent are everywhere. I am not someone who typically thinks in terms of "demons," but it almost seems supernatural.

I was in high school and college throughout the turbulent sixties. Yes, there was anger and violence, but NOTHING like we see today. I didn't spend one minute in fear for my safety or wondering if someone around me was dangerous. I had plinking guns in my dorm room and no one gave it a second thought. There has literally been an explosion that I can only attribute to the internet and the rise of social media. I have never had a Facebook, Twitter, Instagram or Anything Else account, but I have seen those things destroy relationships in my own family as members become obsessed with their like-thinking social media "friends" at the expense of real relationships.

Take the transgender phenomenon. I spent at least the first 60 years of my life without ever encountering someone confused about his or her gender. I lived in dorms, worked in journalism, practiced law. I had a couple of very good gay friends. But I never heard ONE WORD about gender confusion. I believe the entire "transgender" phenomenon is an artificial construct, almost entirely a product of the internet and social media (and, of course, an educational system that bears no relationship to the one in which I was educated for 19 years). And that's just one example.

These are self-radicalized/social media influenced lone nuts (to borrow a phrase). They're not members of any group, they're loners, mostly young white men. It's brain rot not ideology (although the latter fills in for the rot) that's the problem. Lee Harvey Oswald anyone? (although his ideology was more fixed and authentic).

Isn't the real problem the one Richard pointed to? And what you acknowledged? That social media presents a distorted image of America, of Americans? If you spend all of your time on it you'll get a view of America that is simply not real. Of the two sides viewing each other as not wrong but evil. Is that what most Americans think? Or even a significant minority? I don't think so.

How about this, the JFK assassination, as an example? The vast, vast majority of Americans simply don't think about it. It's something well in the past, something they don't even consider anymore. But here we are obsessed (to a degree) about it. If you only came here you'd get an idea that Americans are obsessed with it. But they aren't. And the people over at that awful forum who post day-after-day-after-day the same conspiracy craziness are themselves an example of how you can get detached from reality, get swallowed up. They're a perfect example of how social media can remove you from reality.

As to violence. During the Sixties and Seventies - and then in Nineties - it looked like we were coming apart crime-wise. Enormous increases. Add RFK and King being murdered, race riots, cities in flames, war protests ('68 Chicago/Dem convention), campuses locked down, bombings every week, the Weather Underground, organized terror groups. Just awful.

Then crime and the violence peaked and declined. I think we're a far less violent, dangerous country now then during those times. Yes, it's bad now since I don't know how we get out of this, what changes we can make. We can't get our heads around what's happened. Tell people to turn off social media? I think this is just a bad "blip" in our history and not much more. Maybe it is but it's too early to tell.

[Jack Nessan]

This is a truth that I have been preaching for at least two decades. With all of the benefits that the internet and cellphones have brought to life, I believe the net effect has been FANTASTICALLY negative. If I may name drop, I remember Dick Kleindienst shaking his head way back in 1995 and saying, "People have no idea what they are unleashing." Brains are physically being altered, patterns of thinking are being altered, opportunities for those with mental illnesses and sociopathic tendencies to bond and vent are everywhere. I am not someone who typically thinks in terms of "demons," but it almost seems supernatural.

I was in high school and college throughout the turbulent sixties. Yes, there was anger and violence, but NOTHING like we see today. I didn't spend one minute in fear for my safety or wondering if someone around me was dangerous. I had plinking guns in my dorm room and no one gave it a second thought. There has literally been an explosion that I can only attribute to the internet and the rise of social media. I have never had a Facebook, Twitter, Instagram or Anything Else account, but I have seen those things destroy relationships in my own family as members become obsessed with their like-thinking social media "friends" at the expense of real relationships.

Take the transgender phenomenon. I spent at least the first 60 years of my life without ever encountering someone confused about his or her gender. I lived in dorms, worked in journalism, practiced law. I had a couple of very good gay friends. But I never heard ONE WORD about gender confusion. I believe the entire "transgender" phenomenon is an artificial construct, almost entirely a product of the internet and social media (and, of course, an educational system that bears no relationship to the one in which I was educated for 19 years). And that's just one example.

 

This is an interesting subject. 

These things have always been there. Nazi death camps were not an internet invention. All the European countries disliked the Jews and immigrants leading up to WW II. The perfect storm brought it all to a head. We just were never looking for all this hate in our own society and maybe we should be.   

Transgender? Look no farther than Bruce Jenner or Dr Renee Richards. Both products of the 60's and 70's. Another individual I know comes to mind, was married with children, waits until he is in his sixties to become a female and now is a homosexual married to a different woman. He was not a product of the internet.

My friend was a Border Patrol Agent in San Diego in the late 80’s and 90’s They had cells just for the transgenders coming from Mexico. Six were in the cell while I was there.

Disaffected people tend to find each other. How else do you explain Neo Nazis and the like still functioning today. They formed way before the internet. The internet is a problem but not as moral numbing as video games promoting violence. If memory serves during Janet Reno’s time, she tried to reign in violent video games with no success. 

The sin of the internet and cell phones seems to be removing personal interaction to the point that people do not know how to speak to or interact with each other. If anything, the youth do not seem to be able to see the American dream anymore and instead want to blame someone or everyone else.

[Jarrett Smith]

Dear Schicklgruber, I mean Smith,

What's wrong with despising someone?

It's better than hating them, right?

Haven't you ever despised anyone -- or have you just "disagreed with his (or her) conduct"?

It would take me a long time to tell you all the reasons I despise The Traitorous Orange Bird (rhymes with "Xxxx").

Let this suffice for starters.

(Sorry it's from a news source you hate, I mean despise.)

What "misinformation" have I posted here, Schicklgruber, I mean Smith?

-- Tom

[Tom Graves]

If I were in the grip of the sort of mania that possesses you, I could probably find reasons to despise every President in my lifetime. Because I'm not, I don't despise any of them. Tom's problem is Tom, not Donald Trump. Your KGB Bogeyman mania seems to have reached a near-pathological level, to the extent that you are compelled to drag Trump into the web even though it's patently absurd. Would I be shocked if The Donald had dealings with Russian "businessmen" 41 years ago? Hell, no, nor would I care. Do I think he was knowingly "laundering money for the Russian Mafia" 41 years ago or is doing the bidding of Vladimir Putin today because the tentacles of the KGB are everywhere? Uh, no. These are the sorts of things people who need help go around saying.

Dear Lance,

Funny you didn't mention The Traitorous Orange Bird's (rhymes with "Xxxx's") making fun of the handicapped journalist during the 2016 campaign.

Do you believe his statement that he wasn't making fun of him but just pantomiming the act of "groveling"?

If not, do you still adore him because what he did was no worse than "Sleepy Joe's" calling someone a "son of a [you-know-what]"?

-- Tom