Farewell to Facebook

In case you don't remember in 2004, in a conversation with a friend at Harvard, Mark Zuckerberg had this conversation:

Zuck: Yeah so if you ever need info about anyone at Harvard

Zuck: Just ask.

Zuck: I have over 4,000 emails, pictures, addresses, SNS

(redacted friend's name): What?  How'd you manage that one?

Zuck:  People just submitted it.

Zuck: I don't know why

Zuck: they "trust me."

Zuck: Dumbf***s.

-India Today Tech 

New Delhi

March 22, 2018

While he was young then, only nineteen, it does still reveal something about his character, a callous arrogance.  When that conversation hit the news, I immediately closed my Facebook account.  To my disbelief, when I submitted "yes" to close the account the words on the screen read, "You'll be back."  Wow.  I couldn't believe the irreverence, the gall.  But you know what?  I did go back a few years later deluding myself that I needed it to promote my business.  I pushed down my personal pride and gave the website another try.  

In the past few years that I've been using Facebook, I have tried to keep to a moral code.  First, no bragging.  I asked myself before submitting each post, will this offend someone?  Will this make someone feel jealous or otherwise bad about herself?  Secondly I asked, is this meaningful?  Will it make someone smile or contemplate in a positive way?  And the third rule was to stay away from politics.  I wanted Facebook to be a safe space to share pictures with friends and family and to promote my books and artwork.  

Over the years, the political bit of my moral code became increasingly more difficult to follow as my feed became inundated with anti-Trump, anti-conservative rhetoric.  Slowly I began unfollowing friends, colleagues, family members whose posts left me feeling personally attacked, judged and criticized.  Then the pandemic hit and it was like everyone completely lost their filters.  I mean everyone.  People of Facebook, members of the media, politicians and Social Media itself all finger pointing, name calling, fact checking, and then finally censoring.  

I'll give you an example of censoring.  A few months ago when the Democrats unrolled the plan to promote mail in ballots across the country, I shared a popular quote that read something like, "If you can stand in line at Wal-Mart you can stand in line to vote."  A relative of mine replied with an article explaining how mail-in ballots were the same thing as absentee ballots and that many states use the terms interchangeably.  While this is true to some degree, it is only true that all absentee ballots can be mail-in ballots, but all mail-in ballots are not absentee ballots.  This is because for it to be an absentee ballot, a voter must request it.  This is a huge distinction because along with it come many implications.  Facebook would not allow me to post those words.  Every time I tried to send the reply, I got a notice saying something really vague about not being able to send at that time.  It allowed me to say all kinds of other things at that time, but not that.  

Whether you are a Republican, Democrat or Independent, this should give you pause.  I understand that many people have a strong visceral response to Donald Trump and I feel bad about that.  I know what it's like to have no respect for your president.  It's hard.  But I don't understand the obsession with hating him.  I see these news reporters who are supposed to be objective journalists acting like emotional basket cases.  Michelle Obama said, "Let's remember that tens of millions of people voted for the status quo, even when it meant supporting lies, hate, chaos and division." (USA today.com)  What?  Does she know what status quo means?  If anything is status quo, it's voting for a lifetime politician.  And lies?  Hate?  Whether you want to admit it or not, the same rhetoric is easily true about the other side.  

Whoopi Goldberg shouts on the view that Republicans should suck it up!  and says about the election results, "How DARE you question it?"  Well, this is still a democracy republic.  Any candidate is welcome to challenge election results or simply ask for investigations into them and any person interested in liberty and free and fair elections should embrace that about our system.  Stacy Abrams filed lawsuits in the Georgia Governor's race.  Democrats had no problem with that and have exalted her as a victim of the system and the rightful symbolic winner of that contest.  After the 2016 election, the Washington Post headline read, "'I would be your president': Clinton blames Russia, FBI Chief for 2016." And of course everyone knows the story of Al Gore and Florida.  

So let's all please stop pretending that the Republican response to this election is unprecedented because it's not.  The only thing that is unprecedented is the number of mail in ballots cast, and given this is the first time we've voted this way as a nation, it's not too much to ask that we get it right.  Another thing that is completely new to our time is media bias which brings me back to Facebook.  I tried to keep my Facebook experience free of politics until Facebook made it about politics.  Now, you can't get through any feed without propaganda links explaining how Joe Biden won the presidency.  Next it will be about your social duty to wear face masks, then to get vaccinated and then...what else?  I promise more will come because it is the nature of power.  

So the conservative response to things like this is not to burn buildings, topple statues or spit in peoples' faces.  It is to break the monopoly.  There have been other social platforms waiting to get a piece of the market share for years and we've all been too comfortable and complacent to go to the trouble of giving them a try.  Well I'm no longer comfortable or complacent and I will not be complicit in allowing the flow of information to the people to become stifled by big tech and their agenda.  

Above all else, since I am leaving Facebook and may not have a chance to express this to as many people as I can in this moment, to my friends and family who are Democrats,  I love you.  I think that you are smart and kind and have integrity and I am sorry that you have disliked our president so intensely.  I ask you to please consider what is happening in the media and become a voice against it.  Our media cannot become a series of propaganda machines as we have seen what's happened on Facebook.  You can think for yourselves and don't need the entire power of every celebrity and television network behind you.  The name calling has got to stop on both sides.  It is ugly and undignified.  We are better than this.  We are all so much better than this.  

So I will say farewell to Facebook and hello to any other non-biased platforms who want to join the ranks of social media.  And to Mr. Zuckerberg, I assure you, this time I will not be back.  

Protect Me From Tyranny Not the Coronavirus

Many Americans are willing to step into the post Covid 19 world. We believe the only path to its end is through it.  The vast disconnect between us and the ones who prefer to hide from it indefinitely demonstrates one core value, self-responsibility, a value that also marks a major difference between conservative and liberal ideals.  

Conservatives believe that the people tell government what to do.  Liberals believe that the government should tell the people what to do.  Conservatives believe that the people support the government.  Liberals believe that the government should support the people.  So in the case of protection, likewise, while conservatives are scrambling to protect the constitution during this government free-for-all of mandates, the liberals are looking to the government to protect them from getting sick.    

So who's right?  Who's wrong?  I suggest in this situation that once again, self-responsibility tips the scale.  In the case of the Coronavirus, we have the luxury to constantly take in education and updates regarding its spread worldwide, nationally and locally.  We know how to protect ourselves from it and how to treat it.  If I don't want to get Coronavirus I can choose to stay home.  I can order groceries online.  I can shop at odd hours when the stores aren't busy.  I can always wear a mask when I go out.  I can even wear a mask when someone comes to the door.  I can wash my hands incessantly especially when I've been outside my home.  I can be more mindful about surfaces I touch when I leave my house.  I can avoid friends and family members who I know are going out and living their lives carefree.  It is hard to imagine, but I can even avoid them in my own home and if they're grown and they choose to put me at risk, I can insist that they find somewhere else to live.  If they aren't grown, then they live under my house by my rules, so that's pretty simple.  If they are unpredictable teens, you can bet I'm keeping my physical distance from them.  If  I'm really serious about protecting myself, I might even start exercising and eating right.  Gosh, I'll even spring for vitamin supplements.  These are just some of the many ways that I can avoid dying from Coronavirus.  

In the case of Tyranny, it's not so simple.  When the government tells me I can't leave my house, can't shop in select stores of its choosing, go to work, open my business, attend church services, have a surgery I've needed for some time, attend school, send my children to a playground, ride around in my own boat...what am I to do?  When the government tells me if I don't wear a mask covering my nose and mouth everywhere in public, I will be educated and punished, what is my reprisal?  

When the government prevents my child from attending school while promising a great enriching online experience that by the way they have failed to produce, what am I to do?  I sent letters to every single person who voted.  I answered every survey they sent.  I'm aware that over seventy percent of parents surveyed said they wanted their children to go back to school in spite of the epidemic.  My twelve year old also sent a pleading message to the Superintendent Ann Levett.  She did not reply.  The few responses we received from board members aired on the side of safety, safety in a vacuum because it completely disregards all of the detrimental truths about confining children to screens in homes alone while their parents try to earn a living to provide for their families.    

Trauma from a pandemic has opened the gate for tyranny to invade our country in the guise of protecting the people, veiled in platitudes like Safety First, Follow the Science and Kindness Matters.  Anyone who dissents is labeled heartless, cruel, selfish and unenlightened.  So where then lies the self-responsibility conservatives hold so dear?  How do we retaliate as our breath is being crushed from us, our posts deleted and constantly censored, people we don't even know weighing in on every single thing we say in various forms of social media using group think terms like, "It's obvious you..."  "what kind of idiot..."  "How stupid..."  "ridiculous..." and my new personal favorite, an emojee face laughing hysterically, these all coming from the harbingers of kindness.    

Do we wait until the next election and hope that someone better runs for county commissioner?  For mayor?  For public school superintendent?  For school board members?  That's a big hope and November is far away.  Or do we get in the mix, fight back, get outside our comfort zones and sound the alarms, because right now everything Matters but us.  

There is tyranny and there is self-responsibility.  In one paradigm, a select few win.  The few who make the most noise, point many fingers and accuse instead of seek to understand.  To the person who chooses safety over freedom, your victory will be short lived because Tyranny does not stop when the tragedy fades, when the natural disaster has long been cleaned up and life resumes.  It takes hold and grows.  It is a living thing and it will eventually attack something you hold dear and when it does, just as conservatives feel today, you will be powerless to stop it. 

In the realm of self-responsibility, we protect ourselves.  Oh we are happy to protect others as well and eager to do so, but not because we've been forced to, but because it is the right thing to do.  People are given the choice to wear a mask or not to wear a mask.  If it suits the greater good, people are highly encouraged to wear masks.  Private businesses can help by requiring masks in their buildings or at their venues as well as social distancing like making aisles bigger, seating people further apart...the possibilities are vast especially when equipping the private sector.  We are free to avoid people not wearing masks and you can even think bad thoughts about them if you want.  Just don't harass them!

We can make virtual learning available to all the students and teachers who aren't comfortable going back to school in person.  Goodness knows we're already in deep with this program "It's Learning" and I don't even want to know what it cost.  This will reduce the overall in person class sizes and allow children to have the proper education they deserve.  When people take responsibility for themselves, everyone wins.  All of these things help us to inch closer to a herd immunity that will never come if we continue to hide away.  Eventually we may even get a vaccine that helps quell numbers each season.  

This is America.  We are Americans, whether your family has been here since the first boat arrived or like most of us, your people trickled in through out her history, it wasn't easy to get here.  Every American is either a fighter or born from fighters where freedom was the prize.  Don't give it away for the comfort of wellness.  Something else will get you eventually, I promise.  That's how life works.  But freedom, this freedom did not come easy and if you preserve it, it will last long after your death for your children and grandchildren.  Just as it takes years to build a skyscraper and seconds to bring it down, freedom will disappear like a vapor in the streets.