Friday, August 28, 2020

I'm old enough to remember....


When the Great Orange Satan and Baby Blue were markers for the rise of "Progressive America."

Whatever happened to that?  Other than everybody quitting Blogger to go to this new thing, "Twitter"?  And now I hear all the "kids" are on TikTok? (Instagram and Shapchat are SO last year!)

You have to give him credit:  when Nixon identified the "silent majority," he went on 3 years later to win the Presidency by probably the most decisive electoral college victory in history (49 states), although many think he was fortunate in his opponent and, besides, he was a wartime President.  "Don't switch dicks in mid-screw" was the opposition argument, because even the opposition saw it coming.  But Nixon's "silent majority" didn't have Facebook; and they didn't want Nixon 2 years after that landslide.  Ford's pardon of Nixon meant he never had a chance in '76.

So now those people have a "voice" and that voice is social media and all of a sudden we're supposed to be afraid?  Just because you can hear them without having to leave the comfy confines of NYC?  Color me unimpressed.  Facebook is known as the place companies put their "websites" (especially the companies that don't want to update their websites, and the genius of that is that you assume the world is registered on Facebook.  I spent an hour last night trying to determine if a local Houston business was still open during covid.  Their website hadn't been updated since March, I couldn't get to their Facebook page (equally antiquated when I finally got a glimpse of it), and I had to piece together the latest word from their Instagram account.  I'm not registered on either of those sites, and this is a 90 year old company that assumes everybody is on Facebook and Instagram.  But if you aren't....  Facebook, by reputation at least, is dominated by people my age (grandparents, IOW).  I don't know who's still on Instagram, but political Twitter is dominated by extremists on either end (at least American political Twitter is).  I assume the same is true of Facebook.

But I don't assume Facebook represents a previously undiscovered country in the heart of America.  Any more, that is, than the real truth is abandoned Wal-Marts are storage centers for black helicopters which are connected by a series of tunnels to all the other Wal-Marts in the country, and the tunnels house billions of aliens (illegal or extraterrestrial) waiting to pour forth like ants and take away our guns.  Or invade our basements with pedophile rings.

I mean, honestly:  I'm more worried about the influence of QAnon on our politics, than about the "silent majority" mouthing off (so, are they "silent" anymore?) on Facebook.  Somebody is keeping FoxNews on the air, too; but I guess we've reconciled to the presence of those people among us.  It is a little scary to think people live among us who still "chat" on Facebook.  But I'm not sure they're alien invaders, either.
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