The Skeeter Daddle Diaries

I heard today our President planned to order troops down to the border, maybe make a human Wall now that Congress won’t fund a concrete or steel one. Yesterday I heard he wanted to force the Washington Post to register as a lobbying group. Two days ago he started a trade war with China. The day before that he called up the Russian president to congratulate him on his Big Win and maybe have him over for a pow-wow at the White House. The week before … well, the list goes on and on, one outrageous act or tweet or threat at a time, each on the heels of the next.

Try to keep up with this guy. You can’t. He’s up in the pre-dawn hours, fingers flying over his device, threatening, bullying, ranting and raving. One day he’s waging war on California, the next he goes ballistic about immigrants, same afternoon he goes after the mainstream media and fake news, a little later he’s attacking somebody or some company he doesn’t like, give him time to catch his breath he’s calling out some Congressman he’s got a derogatory name for, in between he’s firing another cabinet member. It never slows down. It never stops.

Democracy, in order to function properly, demands a bit of respect for opposing opinions. Demonizing the other side, well, that works for creating a dictatorship or a totalitarian regime. We’re right, the others, lock em up! The news media, fake fake fake! Make em register as lobbyists, shut em down, lock them up too!! The political opposition, liars, crooks, lock em up!! The truth, there is no truth other than ours!

Day after day the foundations of our experiment in democracy are under assault, death by a thousand pinpricks and tweets. We get numb to the outrage, we grow weary of what a year or so ago would seem unbelievable, we close our eyes and our ears, overdosed with all these attacks on our institutions. But the water is growing hotter, we just don’t notice the incremental heat being steadily turned up with every lie, with every affront, with every firing, with every personal attack, with every violation of the norms of decency we no longer expect. By the time it’s too late to jump out of the pot, we’ll have no one to blame but ourselves. Dictators don’t always come in with a coup, sometimes they come in with the stew.

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Imagine, all you bazillion readers of this incredibly viral blog on your screen right now, that I start asking you for all your preferences, your inner secrets, your friends’ as well, that I need to gather up your nationalities, your gender, your buying history, that I keep track via GPS on your mobile device all the places you go, who you see, where you work, that I have a database that has every e-mail, phone call, credit card purchase you ever made. All that for free so that you don’t have to subscribe to this addictive and incredibly entertaining blog I post every day of your lives!!

And I promise that your information is protected. Ha ha. You and I both know it’s not protected. I’m not a bank. Not at all, but I would sure like to take your personal information and sell it to folks who could help me get to the bank. Folks who could sell you commodities they figure out from that data you want. Or politicians who could sell you Senators and Presidents based on your preferences. Or unscrupulous actors who could convince you to think democracy and liberty are fictions that need to be tossed on the scrap heap of history.

A guy named Max Schrems, an Austrian privacy activist, decided to ask Facebook for an accounting of what they had for information on him. He received 1000 pages!! That’s a lot of data collecting by any standard you can think of. Today my boy Mark Zuckerberg is testifying before Congress, apologetic as a killer on death row, claiming innocence but contrite while he awaits a pardon from the Governor. He’ll probably get that pardon, along with a slap on the hand.

Most of us in this Future Shocked world don’t care if Mark has collected all that information about us. We want that ‘platform’ he’s offered us for free. We want Google and Amazon and instantaneous algorithmic information and we don’t want to pay for it. What’s the harm if those pop-up ads target us? What have I got to hide? Maybe I wanted those hotel rooms in the country I just googled. Big deal. I can take it or leave it. So what if that item I just checked out on Amazon is now offering me a bargain over on the right of my computer screen? I don’t have to buy it.

So when I start dropping news feeds my Russian bot pals want to ‘share’ with you because they got the info that you prefer Fox to MSNBC or you got hot and bothered about pulling down those Confederate Statues or that you bought a subscription to Ammo Guns and Anarchy, you wouldn’t mind, would you? Course not, you’d rather read faux news than news that upsets your worldview. Life is hard enough without complicating things with facts. Naturally, I’m not talking about you and me — I’m worried about those folks who vote different than us, who think different than us, who are gullible and stupid and deplorable. Lock em up if we could. Lock em up!

No, I’m not talking about us.

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I’m doing my 2017 taxes today, the 1040, the Schedules B, C, and Self Employment. Crossing my fingers, but I’m hoping my quarterly payments cover what I probably owe. If they don’t, I’m trusting that the Trump Tax Cuts will, mostly because of those personal exemptions and because we never itemize. April 15th, the real Black Friday. Or Black Tuesday this year.

So it comes as a shock to read this morning that my neighbor to the south, Amazon.com, is paying less than me this year. Less than you too if you paid anything at all. Their tax bill on 5.2 billion dollars in profits is … well, zero. Zip, zilch, nada. All legal, all sanctioned, all approved by the IRS. Not that I’m picking on Amazon, they got their own problems what with the President Tweet-bullying them daily, mostly because their owner is also the owner of the Washington Post, the newspaper that prints stories unfavorable to Donald, faux news, he yells, fake news, he hollers.

But dammit, it grates to write a check to the IRS knowing that the 4th largest corporation in the world gets off scot-free. I don’t know about you, but I honestly don’t think I should pay more than Amazon. Sure, my little stained glass company is an economic engine here on the South End. And some years I’m even a Job Creator. But I didn’t get a mega tax break to open up my factory here – okay, my glass shack here — and the county didn’t have to woo me from settling up at the North End with property tax moratoriums. No, I just got treated like an ordinary individual, no special treatment.

The Supreme Court ruled that corporations are to be treated like me, like an individual, didn’t they? So why aren’t we individuals treated like corporations? The President won’t show us his taxes so we don’t know if he pays more than you or me. But I think you know he pays proportionally less. He is, after all, the Deal Master. Maybe what he hates about Amazon is they pay less than him even. Gotta grate. Gotta get under his thin skin. For once … and maybe the only time … I hafta agree with him. Meanwhile, I need to finish my taxes. Somebody’s got to pay for America.

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I remember the first grocery store card I ever got, something I resisted at first, until they made it clear those sale items I had in my cart would cost me full price. What are you guyz tracking? I asked. They said my buying habits. How come? I asked. To help bring you better service. Tailor our product to your needs, they said.

You got to love these folks, worried about my needs and all. They’re like the companies on the phone that are recording our conversation. For my protection. From what? I asked. They didn’t know. If they don’t know, who does? I asked.

The nice lady who monetized Facebook is making the talking head rounds the last couple of days. Sheryl Sandberg says she and Mark — she calls Zuckerberg Mark — she and Mark understand the Seriousness of these latest revelations that Facebook has allowed the privacy of their people to be harvested to folks with fairly questionable intent. Sheryl — I guess it’s okay to use her first name, friends and all — was the brains behind the monetization. Facebook users got free access to what Sheryl repeatedly refers to as ‘our products’. In return, like TV, they get ads.

Sheryl Sheryl Sheryl, let me explain a small difference: my TV, at least not yet, doesn’t keep track of my viewing habits, my dietary preferences, my social networks, the movies I watch, my bowel movements, my reading inclinations, my everything in the world preferences and sell them to your advertisers so they can offer me mood lifters when the TV camera senses I’m a bit depressed or laxatives if I haven’t taken a dump in 24 hours. But Facebook does. And worse, they sold that information to political operatives. This isn’t just capitalism run amok, it’s creepy and it’s destabilizing and it’s just plain wrong. That, Sheryl, is what is really ‘Serious’. Not to mention, but I will, the fact that you and Zuck knew this was going on for a few years and didn’t do one damn thing to stop it, not if it meant cutting into your profits. Now that the government is dropping the hammer on you, yeah, you can see the Seriousness and you’ll probably make some cosmetic corrections. And hire plenty of powerhouse lobbyists….

Sheryl, I’m sure you were a whipsmart Harvard bizness grad and all. You certainly helped Mark figure out the money end of the product line. You both may be swell people, bringing the world closer together, shining a light on those dark corners some of us prefer. But I hafta tell ya, friend to friend, you treated us like a dumb bunny addict customers. You sold us lock stock and barrel to the highest bidder. You handed crooks and creeps the keys to our house and said go on in. I’m afraid we have to unfriend you, Sheryl cause you ain’t no friend of mine.

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I seem to be casting stones lately at sinners and hypocrites. Not, of course, that I am without sin. Down here on the wild South End, sin is pretty much a way of life. At least until we find beheaded bodies in the woods. There are limits, yes, even here. And lately we’re treated to a parade of sinners in the national arena who apparently have crossed the line, gone too far, taken liberties beyond the public’s tolerance for shenanigans. Judge Roy Moore jumps to mind. Donald and his extramarital flings with Playboy models. Mark Zuckerberg who wanted to be the Savior of the Digital World and now finds himself under the public microscope himself.

And now Frank Page, the Prez of the largest Protestant group in America, the Southern Baptist Convention, has stepped down over what he calls a ‘personal indiscretion’. No doubt we’ll get the sordid details in a matter of mere minutes. He has, he says, “embarrassed my family, my Lord, myself, and the Kingdom.” Give the holy man credit, at least he still can show embarrassment in an era when Judge Moore and Donald Trump can lie with straight faces. Zuckerberg, he of the whaddaya-got-to- hide philosophy, refused at first to be summoned before congressional investigative tribunals. Until the outcry grew to a thunderous din….

A good Baptist, a good Christian, would gladly forgive the sins of those who ask the Lord for that forgiveness. Confess and be returned to the flock, that’s the way. Pull a Jimmy Swaggart, let the tears flow like the River Jordan, get down on your unscuffed knees and plead for redemption. Go into exile a month or two, then come right back with those requests for tithes. Jim and Tammy Baker, Jimmy S., the thousand clowns climbing out of the VW. Me, not so much. I accept the frailty of the common man, even the President of the United States, but maybe when you present yourself as a role model, THE role model, I think you should be held to a slightly higher standard than a crappy apology and now it’s back to bizness. C’mon, boyz! You pissed your bed with or without Russian prostitutes and now it’s time to pay the Piper. You don’t get to lead the flocks, no way, no how. The Lord can forgive you if She wants, the rest of us want you gone.

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