Thursday, May 25, 2017

Depression


I was born in 1934, the middle of the Great Depression. The bankers and stockbrokers had had their way with America and the world at large. Everyone but the bankers were suffering.  Depression-suicides were common. We had not yet even begun to foresee the coming trauma of WW II and the Hitler era of world-wide murder. Of late, because of that creature known as Trump, I have begun recounting the presidents I have known. It is an impressive list, filled with the Greats and the not-so-greats.

1933-1945 – Franklin Delano Roosevelt – he had taken over from that wastrel Hoover and led us successfully out of that depression and through the catastrophic war begun by Hitler. When one thinks of great presidents, his name springs to mind. Although I was very young, I actually remember him speaking to us over the radio (remember radios??) in his fireside chats. In addition to overseeing our successful war effort, FDR actually brought us out of the depression by creating the Works Progress Administration which put folks to work on public works projects. He also, remember, created the Social Security system, which our republicans hate mainly because it is successful, people love it and it was created by a democrat.

1945-1953 – Harry S. Truman – from a haberdasher in Missouri to the senate and thence to the vice presidency until FDR passed on, when he became president.  Harry seemed a true man of the people. He helped bring WW II to an end and then saw that Cold War begin. I well remember the Berlin Blockade when the Soviets walled off Berlin, laying claim to the whole of East Germany. My brother-in-law Niels served briefly as a flight surgeon on the Berlin airlift flights traveling from London to berlin to relieve the blockade.

1953-1961 – Dwight D. Eisenhower – The first election in which I participated as a voter (and I have voted in every election since, including that four-year period when we lived abroad in India).  How could you not love Ike? He was a major factor in our winning the war.  I wasn’t yet a committed democrat or republican. Ike ran against Adlai Stevenson, an intellectual who was a handsome candidate, but had no chance overcoming the Ike leadership-glam. Ike created the interstate highway system, which created many jobs but also linked the nation together via a national road system.

1961-1963 – John F. Kennedy – the first election where I really loved the candidate. JFK was so remarkable, and his wife so glamorous and gracious. It was like they were created explicitly to become president and first lady. He was of course also the first president in my lifetime to be assassinated by one of our numerous armed right wing crazies (thank you NRA).  I think I never fully recovered from his assassination.

1963 – 1969 – LB Johnson – Ahhh Lyndon . . . you had a tough job and you committed yourself more than admirably.  Succeeding the killing of JFK, Johnson found himself in a difficult place. JFK was well liked and Johnson was a Texan, better known there than elsewhere. But he actually was a skilled politician, where JFK was an amateur at the game.  In addition to that nasty war in Vietnam, LBJ gave us The Great Society. The Great Society was a set of domestic programs in the United States launched by LBJ in 1964–65. The main goal was the elimination of poverty and racial injustice. President Johnson first used the term "Great Society" during a speech at Ohio University, then unveiled the program in greater detail at an appearance at University of Michigan. New major spending programs that addressed education, medical care, urban problems, rural poverty, and transportation were launched during this period. The program and its initiatives were subsequently promoted by him and fellow Democrats in Congress in the 1960s and years following. The Great Society in scope and sweep resembled the New Deal domestic agenda of Franklin D. Roosevelt. Some Great Society proposals were stalled initiatives from John F. Kennedy's New Frontier. Johnson's success depended on his skills of persuasion, coupled with the Democratic landslide in the 1964 election that brought in many new liberals to Congress, making the House of Representatives in 1965 the most liberal House since 1938. While some of the programs have been eliminated or had their funding reduced, many of them, including Medicare, Medicaid, the Older Americans Act and federal education funding, continue to the present. The Great Society's programs expanded under the administrations of Republican presidents Richard Nixon and Gerald Ford, although republicans later began to hate these programs, again because they were successful, well liked and begun by a Democrat. Republicans do so hate successful programs begun by Democrats. Why don’t they start their own successful programs you might ask? Well, they do. They’re called tax reductions for the wealthy.

1969-1974 -- Richard Milhous Nixon—Tricky Dick. He was the first in a now long line of presidents I voted against.  Nixon was smart, and skilled at the game of international intrigue. He won the election in part by promising to end the war in Vietnam. His plan was simple—bomb the hell out of a formerly neutral nation-Cambodia. Actually his plan was a now classic republican strategy—cut and run when you are tired of the mess you created.  So, we finally cut and ran out of Vietnam with our collective tails between our legs—the first war we actually lost.  Happily Tricky Dick was run out of town on a rail.

1974 – 1977 – Gerald Ford – Ford took over when Dicky fled the scene. His task was hopeless, and he did the best he could under the circumstances.

1977 – 1981 – Jimmy Carter – The best I can say about Jimmy is, he is far and away the best ex-president we have ever had (I expect Barack Obama to challenge that title).  I actually left the worlds of private non-profit research at The Urban Institute to join the government to run an evaluation office in the Department of Health, Education and Welfare.  I enjoyed that change of scenery and loved working with my colleagues there.  I discovered there that the government bureaucrats so despised by republicans are actually, largely a bright and committed group of folks who try to do their best for the people of America.

1981-1989 – St. Ronald of Reagan – Ronnie is a funny dude. He began life as an actor of mediocre standing.  Then he became, of all things, California’s governor. And in almost his first act in that capacity, he began destroying the California school system by reducing the funding allocated to that system. California went from having one of the nation’s finest systems to having one of its most troubled.  Building on that grand republican success story (republicans do so hate an educated public), he ran for and won the Presidency. At the time, I was a member of the government bureaucracy, running an evaluation office in Health and Human Services (Carter had run the Ed unit out of town on a rail). But I had a nice office and great people to work with. Then came Ronnie. He chose as a secretary, Mr.  Richard Schweiker, a failed senator from Pennsylvania.  And then life changed at DHHS. He brought in a new boss for me, who turned out to be the stupidest man I ever worked for or with in my then 25 year working career.  He was supposed to be running evaluation, but knew nothing about the subject and had difficulty carrying on an intelligent conversation on almost any subject. And Secretary Schweiker was best known for falling asleep in his own large meetings. And the Prez? Well what can you say?. He sold arms to a terrorist organization, and then brought chaos into Central America. Oh and he also bombed Lebanon from afar.  Yeah, he was less than great, but repubs loved him then and love him still (well look at his competition). He actually caused me to leave government and rejoin the private sector in my own business, because I was afraid I would go brain-dead working under Reagan.

1989 – 1993 – George H.W. Bush – Poppy Bush. He seems a bit of a cipher. He is perhaps best known for giving us Shrub, arguably one of our worst presidents.

1993 – 2001 – William Jefferson Clinton – Well, Bill was a bit of wild one. But, at bottom, he was very smart. He graduated Phi Beta Kappa, and was a Rhodes Scholar. As Prez, he stood somewhere in the middle. He opposed Sadaam Hussein, put NAFTA into existence, passed a Child health Insurance Act, and tried but failed to enact health care reform legislation. He also put Charter schools into play, for which we should award him black marks, since he may have paved the way for that catastrophic disaster Betsy DeVos.  His impeachment for multitasking in the White House came as no surprise, since he was by all counts a successful president, overseeing one of the longest economic booms in our history, and leaving the country with a budget surplus.

2001 – 2009 – Shrub – Ahhhh, dear Shrub, one of our less well-endowed presidents.  He was a draft dodger as a young man, taking advantage of daddy’s stature to escape Vietnam as a pseudo-pilot in the National Guard.  Oddly, he won the race for Texas gubernatorship, but it is Texas, isn’t it?  He ran sort of against Clinton, since republicans spent much time and money decrying Bill. But our nation had changed, and the rowdies of our world wanted a republican, regardless of his intellectual capacity.  He was a true republican, taking Clinton’s budget surplus and creating one of the largest deficits we had known, rivaling St. Ronald’s deficits (but Reagan believed in the Laffer curve, by which it was theorized, if you reduced the tax rates, you would increase the tax revenues. Unfortunately, like all such doofus-theories, it was a fake and produced very, very large deficits).  But Shrub, like most republicans, loved wars. So he concocted a fake story about Iraq and WMDs and invaded without actual cause, thereby helping to create chaos throughout the Middle East, and at least inspiring the creation of ISIS. Thanks Shrub.

2009 -- 2017 -- Barack Obama – Ahh, how we miss Barack. He actually ran a clean presidency, pretty free of scandal, seemed to have a model marriage and family and was super-bright. And, he was Black, well, he was African-American born in Hawaii, although according to his republican opponents, he was a Muslim terrorist born in Africa and should not have assumed the presidency. But republicans have never been big on facts.  In response to his presidency, a “Birther” movement began, and the Tea Party began (the Tea Party seems to be the KKK wing of the republican party). Movement Birthers kept arguing that Obama was not a natural born citizen, despite all evidence to the contrary—again republicans are not big on those fact things. By all accounts, Obama remained a successful president, and actually succeeded in enacting a health care reform act that provided health care to millions of American formerly uninsured.  Republicans do so hate that kind of thing.  They spent years trying to destroy that system.

2017 -- ??? The Drumpf – and now we come to the reason for my depression. Donald J. Trump, arguably the most potentially catastrophic president in my lifetime.  His buds apparently colluded with both our extreme right wing and the Russians (an odd partnership, since the right wing used to be opposed to most things Russian, especially where Vlad the Impaler Putin is involved) to create a viable opponent to Hillary Clinton.  However much Hillary ran a flawed campaign, she did not deserve (nor did we the American public) such an awful and fact-free opposition. Trump won by, a) lying about almost everything (how can you tell Trump is lying? Well, when his opens his mouth and words come tumbling out, he is lying), and b) by the simple act by many, millions of people not voting.    “Oh, we don’t want to vote for Hillary, because she forgave her flawed husband, oh and she had a private e-mail server.” So, by the simple act of staying at home instead of voting, the Drumpf won the race (not the popular vote, but that’s another subject).

So, now we have a serial liar, a sexual predator, a serial womanizer, a compleat narcissist, a sociopath, and a deeply flawed and unsuccessful business person to be president.  He apparently cannot read, perhaps because of his serious ADHD, so he seems not to know much of anything.  His big book, The Art of the Deal was written by someone else, because he also cannot write beyond those 140 characters he gurgles out at 3:00 AM.

And yet, his loyal troops continue to love and support him. It has been pointed out that all of his many flaws were well known months before the election, so his supporters knew about them but did not care. They voted for him because he gave the country the middle finger almost every time he opened his mouth.  So, facts do not and will not ever enter any conversation with Trump supporters. Their support is based on hatred and anger at the power elites. Arguing facts with them would be akin to arguing facts with a squirrel.

So, all of his many promises about making America great again were patently just lies. He promised to protect Medicare, Medicaid, Social Security, and to create a new health care system that would cover everyone and cost less money. All were lies, as we now know by his first budget proposal.

He continues to cozy with his Russian friends, even to passing on State secrets, yet we sit around sucking our thumbs. The journalists who report his flaws are declared to be fake journalists out to get him. He actually had the nerve to declare that, "Look at the way I've been treated lately, especially by the media. No politician in history — and I say this with great surety — has been treated worse or more unfairly," he said in his commencement address in New London, Connecticut. Really, you bozo? Worse than, say Kennedy, or maybe Lincoln? Worse than Nelson Mandela?? But that is the compleat narcissist speaking. He knows of nothing beyond himself.

But what are we to make of all this? He has even exhausted the comedians who have trouble keeping up with his latest stupidity.   A recent article written by Ken Levy in AlterNet comes closest to informing us about Trump and Trump supporters.

Levy states:

“. . .  even though all the economic data indicate both that the unemployment rate is consistently below 5 percent and that immigrants help to improve the economy, Trumpists are determined to believe just the opposite. Their resistance to the economic facts, then, must be motivated by some deeper, non-economic concern.

The left insists that this deeper concern is cultural: Trumpists love Trump because they share his racism, Islamophobia, anti-semitism, and misogyny. There is much to be said for this hypothesis. Neither Trump nor Trumpists seem to take equality very seriously, even though it is a cardinal principle of the Declaration of Independence and 14th Amendment. Even in 2017, they harbor toxic, hierarchical views of race, ethnicity, nationality, and religion and a pathological need to feel superior to other groups of people. Their worst nightmare was the country almost replacing the first black president with the first female president.



Trumpists feels as though the country “broke up” with them during the Obama era. They felt, and still feel, alienated by the left’s identity politics (“political correctness”), disparaged by the left’s opposition to traditional values (anti-gay rights, anti-abortion, anti-feminism, and religious faith), and weirdly threatened by the left’s view of government as an institution designed to solve problems that capitalism either creates or fails to solve.

All of this, plus the anger and hurt of feeling dumped, explains why Trumpists love Trump: he shares their bitterness and resentment. As long as he keeps giving all those self-righteous, contemptuous “elitists” the finger, a gesture that started with his birtherism, it doesn’t matter what else he says or does, how many lies he tells, how many mistakes he makes, or how many detrimental policies he advocates or enacts. All that matters is that he keep disrupting and subverting the arrogant, oppressive establishment—or “deconstruct[ing] the administrative state,” as Trump’s white nationalist advisor Steve Bannon put it.

Trumpists’ politics are ultimately rooted in raw emotion, not principles or thoughtful ideology. Much credit goes to such macho, anti-intellectual, grievance-stoking propagandists as Alex Jones, Rush Limbaugh, Sean Hannity, and—until his recent termination by Fox News—Bill O’Reilly. Female commentators like Laura Ingraham, Ann Coulter and Sarah Palin have also won their hearts (not minds) by routinely bashing the whiny, controlling, effeminate liberals.

It is not clear whether Democrats can win over these narrow-minded, cultish voters in 2018. They are just not amenable to rational debate about the merits of Obama-era regulations or the dangers of autocratic populism. So Frank Rich is right: Democrats should leave them alone. They should stop feigning empathy or trying to shape their policies around Trumpists’ bigoted worldview. It is a complete waste of candidates’ valuable time and resources.

Yes, Democrats should still advocate progressive policies in all 50 states. But they should also keep in mind that these efforts don’t satisfy Trumpists, don’t alleviate their self-inflicted wounds or quench their thirst for retribution, nearly as effectively as childish insults and petty name-calling. Because Trump will always beat his competitors at these primal diversions, Democrats should concentrate entirely on uniting and motivating the other 65 percent who are already in their camp. That’s more than enough to win most state and federal elections.

One thing is certain: given recent events, Republicans don’t get to yell and scream about national security—or emails, private servers, or Benghazi—ever again. Nor do they get to yell and scream about pretty much anything else. Their ignorant, narcissistic, unprincipled, and unpatriotic standard-bearer has cost them whatever moral high ground they pretended to have for at least a generation.”


So, we really cannot expect to engage the Trumpies in debate, because they seem uninterested in facts, and prefer screaming or middle-fingering to debate.

And what about the republican politicians, the Paul Ryan’s and Mitch McConnell’s of this world?  Since they seem to have no ethical or moral dimension, it will be difficult to debate with them either. They can only be defeated at the polls. They will try to rig the elections by gerrymandering if they can. It’s what they do, given their absence of an ethical dimension. So, we must watch, we must challenge in the courts, and we must, above all else, VOTE.  It is how democracies actually remain democracies. Trump is the alternative.

Monday, May 8, 2017

Wariness is Good


We all know about Fox News, the original Fake News Channel, so fake it is now known widely as the Faux News Channel. Lying, or inventing untrue stories are the hallmark of Fox and its retinue of actors pretending to be journalists.  But in thinking about Brexit in the UK, The US election and the recent French election in which the far right lePen was defeated by a moderate Macron, I am tempted to ask about connections. The similarities were just too striking.  What are the similarities you might ask?

1.      Russia played a role in at least the American and French elections, with the role being to hack and distribute e-mails theoretically damaging to the campaign of a moderate/left wing candidate, Macron, and Clinton. The release of the e-mails, some real and many fake, were intended to embarrass or portray the candidates as flawed, even criminal.  We are uncertain about the British election, simply because nothing has been released about a possible Russian influence, although it seems clear that Vlad the Impaler would certainly have wanted Brexit to occur. He is interested in the destruction of a unified Europe, so Brexit would suit his purposes nicely.

2.       Lying. In each case, the right wing has engaged in such flagrant lying, and inventing tales of horror about the opposition that many potential voters were eventually worn down and they either switched their votes from the left to the right, or they simply did not vote.  Many of course would argue that the Left is as guilty as the right of invention. But in most cases, it seems not to be true.  Whatever hyperbole existed on the left, they largely refrained from making up stuff about the opposition that was pure fabrication.  Now, the lying worked in two directions. First, they invent lies about the opposition--the left candidate/position—or they invent lies about the right wing candidate’s positions on issues, or accomplishments, such that the lies played into the mindset of the voters. In all cases, the voters were worried, even frantic with worry about the economy and its effects on their personal economic well-being. So, the right wing cast the economy is being in the toilet, blamed Obama and Hillary, or Macron in France, and also then blamed immigrants for trashing the economy.

3.       That “vast right wing conspiracy” brought to our attention early on by Hillary and then described in many other publications, including a book by Paul Krugman, The Great Unraveling: Losing Our Way in the New Century. W. W. Norton & Company. . . . In his book, Krugman used the phrase ("Yes, Virginia, there is a vast right-wing conspiracy"[19]) to refer not to a conservative Republican-leaning campaign against Clinton (or Obama), but more generally to "an interlocking set of institutions ultimately answering to a small group of people that collectively reward loyalists and punish dissenters" in the service of "movement conservatism." The network of institutions provide obedient politicians with the resources to win elections, safe havens in the event of defeat, and lucrative career opportunities after they leave office. They guarantee favorable news coverage to politicians who follow the party line, while harassing and undermining opponents. And they support a large standing army of party intellectuals and activists. In Krugman's view, the network of foundations that fund conservative scholarship, the national and regional think tanks and advocacy groups, talk radio media outlets, and conservative law firms through which they pushed their agenda to move the Republican Party to the right, far surpass in funding, size, inter-connectedness or influence anything the democratic party or the American liberal movement have at their disposal. Steve Bannon and his Breitbart “News” may take much of the public’s attention, but they are but the tiny tip of an iceberg of such right wing “think tanks” and pseudo-research institutions.

4.       Even the menu of “things to worry about” if you are a prospective voter is the same, whether you live in France, Britain or Kentucky.  First and foremost, of course, is those nasty immigrants, taking all your jobs, creating Muslim Caliphates in your neighborhood, and threatening to blow up your most sacred institutions.  So, close all the doors, lock up the Muslims in your neighborhood and throw away the keys.  Your world should include only good white Christians born within your borders to families born within your borders.

5.       Government is not the solution, government is the problem, to paraphrase St. Ronald of Reagan. Remember Ronnie? Yeah, he was so cute. He actually believed in that infamous “Laffer Curve”, under which the republican proponents argued that reducing tax rates would always increase tax revenues. Instead, Reagan’s budgets produced the largest deficits in the nation’s history. Republicans who now try to push the issue in the real world might be characterized as “Charge and Spend” proponents, as distinct from their democratic colleagues whom they characterize as “Tax and Spend” Dems.

So, with all these similarities we need to be perhaps more aware that whenever right wing politicians get on one of their hobby horses, we are likely to be enroute to yet another dumpster load of trash talk that will result in even more authoritarian control over our every movement. 

I am not sure whether the United States is unique in regard to right wing takeovers of religion, education and health care. In this country, the republicans, now in charge of everything, seem headed for the elimination of public education, public health care (meaning publically funded and managed) and the imposition of organized (Christian) religion into our everyday affairs.  Thus, education will be privatized, Medicaid, and, if they can manage it, Medicare, will be privatized, Social Security will be turned over to Goldman Sachs, and Christian institutions will be permitted to discriminate against any and all members of the non-church-going public, whenever they feel like it.

Now, if you remain vigilant and call your Congresspersons on issues of importance, you might at least make them aware of the consequences of imposing authoritarian rule. So, stay awake, stop watching Fox News, and do plan to vote in the next election, assuming there are any.

Saturday, May 6, 2017

The End of Communications


I am wondering whether most folks have the same kinds of experiences with “communications” as we are.

1.       I am fairly certain we are not unique regarding postal mail. We now receive a few bills, the odd renewal notice, maybe a magazine, and quite a few commercial pieces. Oh, and lest I forget, we are among the few left on the planet who receive actual Netflix DVDs in the mail.  I know, I know, but we are old, so just chill. Note the complete absence of personal mail.  I am not sure when personal mail stopped, but it has now become a thing of comment. “You received an actual personal letter . . . in the mail? Wow” But that is rare, even for us.

2.       Now, on to the telephone. Remember the telephone?  When I was little, we actually had a “party line” . . . remember those? Yeah, 4-5 other people, not resident in your home, also occupied your telephone line. So, if you picked up the phone to make a call, someone else might be chatting away, and you were expected to hang up . . . after listening discreetly for interesting tidbits of course. Then gradually we enjoyed a private line, all to ourselves.  But folks actually talked to one another on the telephone, especially folks who might not reside in your town—relatives or friends.  I imagine that we would make or receive a dozen or so calls each day.  If you wanted to communicate with someone and it was more urgent than a 2-3 day postal service, you used the telephone. Now, oddly, we still have a telephone, several actually. But now, we virtually never receive an actual personal telephone call.  I am guessing that we receive maybe 1 or 2 personal calls per month on our “landline” service.  That’s generally from people who are as old as we are and don’t understand that we have cellular phones.  Oh, we still get a few calls every day, perhaps 5 or 6. But they are always from someone who wants money from us. So, our landline telephone has virtually ceased being a useful communications device.

3.      Then there is that cellular thingie. Everyone has at least one cell (now known as “smart”) phone.  And they were really hot stuff when they first came out.  I originally had what was called a “bag-phone”.  Remember them? They came out in the 1980s sometime, and you could actually take it in your car, so as to be totally distracted by an in-motion phone call.

Gradually, the bag phone gave way to just a cellular phone, which then proceeded to shrink in size (aren’t we clever?) as the engineers discovered how to miniaturize the electronics.  And we then used these devices to communicate with one another.  For a while, these cell phones battled with landline phones for primacy. The cell phones were used “on the road”, that is, when we were away from our landlines.  Then little by little, the cell phone became the main telephone. But throughout this phase, real people still largely communicated by one or the other of these communications devices.

4.       Then, also during the mid 1980s, that personal computer came on the market. I still remember my first in 1985—an IBM PCXT with a 10 megabyte hard drive. Wow, what ever would you do with that amount of storage? And a firm called Compuserve offered a communications service – CIS-- that allowed chat forums and a form of e-mail.  Slowly, but surely, that e-mail approach, using PCs, began to dominate our communications. We still used telephones, both landlines and cell phones, but it seemed clear that this e-mail type of communication would begin to dominate.  Slowly, most folks began acquiring PCs and began using some form of e-mail for personal communication.  And the telephone became last year’s device, which is a phone in which you actually spoke with a real person using this device known as a phone.  People communicated by e-mail.  Now, we still receive personal calls on our cell phones. But out of perhaps 10 calls per day, maybe 3-4 are personal, i.e., calls from a colleague, friend or relative. The remaining are now from people who want to sell you something, or want you to give them money. These latter have become so frequent that I have now stopped answering any call on either our landline or our cell phone unless the call is identified by a person’s name and that name is known to us. Otherwise, we let the call go until it stops. And it almost always stops short of our voicemail service.  This has become so frequent and so annoying that I now check each call with a “reverse lookup” service. I type in the number and the service tells me whether it is a real person’s phone, or it is a “scam” or marketing caller. When I discover that is what it is, I then use an app in my phone to block all calls from that number. I now have perhaps 75 blocked numbers on my phone.  And that e-mail replacement system? Well, I still receive between 75 and 100 e-mails per day. But I think I receive 1 or 2 personal e-mails per week, that is, e-mails from real people I know as friends or relatives.  All of the rest of my e-mails are either news outlets (the New York Times, or the Manchester Guardian, for example) or commercial messages.  So, however useful is e-mail, it no longer serves as a personal communications system among friends and family.

5.       So, as my telephone and my e-mail slowly fade away as communications devices, and they are fading away, what is taking their place? Well, apparently social media is replacing the phone and e-mail.  Now, the phone may still be used for that purpose because cell phones are now just tiny personal computers, but it is no longer an actual person-to-person communication. Oh, I should note that a thing called “texting”, or “messaging” is one of those media, but texting is not a broadcast medium, but rather a personal communications approach.  To Text, or Message, one types a message into a keyboard on the “smart phone” and sends that message to one or more real people.  It’s a sort of personal teletype system. I guess texting is still personal, but no voices are involved.  Still, it’s faster than the US postal Service can manage.

6.       But other forms of “communication” are also operating, Facebook, SnapChat, Linkdin, and a dozen or so other similar group forums allow one to send messages to our “friends”, i.e., people we know who are listed as ok to receive our messages.  But these forums are increasingly confused by both commercial messages, and by newsie messages—indeed social media is now one of the dominant forums by which people receive actual (and also fake) news.  And as more people use these social media systems, fewer people use the telephone for either actual voice calls, or even texting/messaging.  So, even though our list of “friends” has grown substantially, the number of actual in-person communications has shrunk dramatically. I note also that these various social media systems are also self-segregating by age I think. Our kids still sometimes use Facebook for example, but our grandkids rarely. They use other forums.

7.       So, I now find myself wondering how/whether we will continue to communicate with one another. Maybe personal communication is a thing of a past generation. We may remember fondly those days when we used to actually talk with one another, but it may pass from memory, as the use of actual letters has passed.

8.       So what comes next? If we stop talking with one another, will conflict cease, or is it likely to increase?  I think perhaps the latter. I see our nation and perhaps all nations, as slowly fracturing along lines created by big business, big money, and big religion. I see racism increasing, rather than disappearing. I see groups now beginning to act with violence toward other groups. And, without actual communication among and between the groups and the individuals, I see no way to reduce the disparities.

9.       Maybe we need to move away from corporate sponsored communications and return somehow to personal systems. And if you figure out how to do that, you may well replace Apple, et al as the future owners of the universe.