Friday, January 6, 2017

Donald Trump Is A Fascist and a Fraud and Should NOT Be Normalized or Even Tolerated--Starting Now

Don't Refrain or Defer: Trump's a Fascist. Call Him One.
Steven Harper, of The Belly of the Beast, recently put into words what has been on my mind since  the daylight-heist of yet another presidential election:   "...A frustrated plurality who never wanted a President Trump now say, 'I feel helpless. What can I do?' Help is on the way, but it won’t be an easy or quick fight. The winning strategy will test a people whose attention span is short and whose need for instant gratification is profound (emphasis mine). Only an organized, systematic effort can combat the chaos that President Trump is already inflicting from Trump Tower…"
There is a rise in the topography within the Oceti Sakowin camp at Standing Rock (the overflow camp on the floodplain where most people like myself ended up camping) dubbed "Facebook Hill". It was dubbed that because that's where you could usually get cellphone reception that was illusive at best in most other places in and around the camp. Cellphone reception, for better or worse, is now part of our 21st century DNA. It's critical, in fact, to counter the narrative of lies and omissions that corporate news depends on for its continued existence in this 21st century world (don't you love irony?!)
But, as PeeWee Herman once said, "Everyone's got a big 'but'", and mine's this: Mark Zuckerberg is not our friend. This should not be news to anyone, but there is a tendency to give these gizmo-creating techies a pass, because gizmo-worship is so ubiquitous now, and to use these "tools" like Facebook as if they're benign, which they most certainly are not. To be clear, I agree with the analogy of Facebook being a "tool". Of course it is, but it's certainly not "nothing but a tool". A hammer is a tool, and a useful one, too. But try dreaming about someone's sexy selfie while you're swinging one and see where it gets your thumb. There's a much more multi-faceted, and darker side to Facebook than there is to a hammer. We've evolved that much anyway, which proves that we do evolve, if there was any doubt in the first place about that, and I think there has been. It's merely the fate of us humans, I believe, to choose which way we want go with that natural law.

So, Facebook….Below is a Facebook screenshot from journalist Kevin Sessum's Facebook page. He's a mainstream author who seems to specialize in covering celebrities, so he's not someone who you'd think would be tarred as a "threat" by corporate media (which Facebook is a main organ of, like it or not).

Nevertheless, Mr. Sessum was blackballed by Facebook, for a day, for calling Trump a fascist. Facebook told him he had violated their "community standards" policy. In other words, calling a fascist a fascist isn't OK with Zuckerberg now that he's going to have to curry favor with a fascist president and on and on…you know the song and here's the link
https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2016/dec/30/facebook-temporary-ban-kevin-sessums-trump-supporters  

Mr. Sessum's response was to post the below picture and message--on Facebook--and request that others do so. I did, and a day later, Zuckerberg backed down. Nice of him, huh?

I fully agree with Steven Harper's statement that "Only an organized, systematic effort can combat the chaos that President Trump is already inflicting from Trump Tower…" I would, once again, point to the doings at Standing Rock and the deep movement those doings represent as Exhibit A for that flavor of activism. Hundreds, thousands of such doings will be required now, have been required in fact but, due to our collective "short attention span" and "profound instant-gratification need" have not been realized and so we have a lot catch-up to do n'est pas?

Be mindful, then, of these new tools you use. They represent profound technological changes happening within our lifetimes, maybe as profound as the evolutionary development of hammers into weapons. Act wisely and forcefully, and know how to effectively protest within the confines of these new gizmo-infested mediums. 

Post this screenshot on your Facebook page. Keep doing it. Make 'em back down. They won't--can't--do it otherwise.

You're the change you've been looking for. Evolve--toward the light, please.

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