The Skeeter Daddle Diaries

I’m sure smart boyz like Mark Zuckerberg think the internet will create a shining new day for Democracy, one where knowledge is a couple of key clicks away and ignorance is banished to the shadows of the bad old 20th Century. The Truth will set us free, isn’t that the adage? Privacy and ignorance will be a thing of the past and we’ll all celebrate in the public square of social media. We’ll vote from our laptops and smartphones with confidence that our virtual ballot not only counts, it’s based on public information available to every citizen. The Greeks could only wish …

Well, here we are barely begun in that next experiment in governance, one that Lincoln said tested whether that nation, or any nation so conceived and so dedicated, can long endure. Lincoln, of course, was fighting the Civil War, and we’re 7 score and 7 years hence, still one country supposedly, embarked now in a new social experiment, one conceived in liberty and dedicated to the proposition that all facts are probably suspect.

It wasn’t meant to be this way, Mark would surely say, it was meant to bind us all in an ever-tightening circle of knowledge, a kind of future religious connectivity . We could share our innermost thoughts moment by moment, send photos instantly, watch together kittens play with balls of twine in hilarious videos. The database would grow exponentially and the algorithms would sort it out in nano-seconds. One family, one nation. Cue the violins. Open the curtains. Let the sunlight play on our upturned faces.

Like most religions, Fakebook was based on flawed faith, just another Truth that stands in opposition to all the other Truths. My God is the True God, yours is an idiot, an infidel, an illiterate. If you don’t believe it, check my God’s LIKES. Impressive, aren’t they? Count em up, the truth is in the numbers. Just like democracy. The voters can’t be wrong.

The Russians haven’t hacked our election. They didn’t create bots that sent viral ‘facts’ to millions of Fakebook believers. They wouldn’t do that, would they? But … what does it matter if it was the commies or the alt-right or Breitbart or Fox News or some sad little man in a basement somewhere? Or the current President of the United States? We’ve made truth relative. We’ve made knowledge bankrupt. We’ve made a mockery of democracy.

What would Honest Abe say to this? Would he be photoshopping now? Instagramming? Would he tweet to this nation of social media: believe what you want, it’s all good? I think he would understand we are met on a great battle field once again and that we need to dedicate ourselves to the proposition that this government, of the people, by the people, for the people, shall not perish from the earth. LOL.

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