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Another of my Facebook friends wrote today that she was going to take a break from Facebook.  She said nobody ever reacted to her  posts and she was tired of it.  There’s no judging, here.  Everybody  relates to this big, weird, public conversation differently.

And I do know how she feels.  A  lot of the stuff I post only gets a comment or two, some stuff gets ignored entirely.  The number of people  who read this blog wouldn’t even be enough to make up a Hillary rally, and I go weeks without seeing  any comments on it.  With the  poetry, I can  write something I think is brilliant and insightful and it gets a like  or two, but  no real response.  If I write something that’s four lines long and has the word fuck in it, the comments thread will quickly   grow to space  elevator length.
Still, my reaction is different than my friend.  If people are listening, if people aren’t listening, I’m  still going to be putting my words down on paper, my rage on the page.  It’s a compulsion.  I think back and wonder what I did before social media.  I wrote the occasional letter to the  editor, but  that was a time consuming process which involved stamps, and waiting, and uncertainty, and probably in the end even less of a response.  The first time I realized I could read a news article and leave comments right away, that  was it for me.  Newspapers were dead.

I suspect that’s why social media has become so popular.  It fulfilled a need we hadn’t even known we had.  The need to weigh in on every topic, to have  an opinion on every subject, to stand on a street corner with tattered clothing and a long, gray beard, screaming at the tall buildings around you.

Now we can do that.  A decade or so ago, we couldn’t.  I, for one, think it’s great.

“Facebook is a social network that contributes to mental disorders in weak minded people and caters to narcissistic ambitions,” one of my Facebook friends wrote today, on Facebook.  I thought that was ironic and funny, even if it is  a little bit true.

Weak minded?  Well, they are certainly there.  Facebook is a tool that pretty much anybody can use.  There is no spelling test.  You will not be penalized for using straw man arguments, non sequiturs, or even just saying things that are blindingly stupid.  So, it’s the nature of the game that there will be some simple minded people there.  Same as real life.  You go into any pub or club or fitness center, some of the people there will be weak minded.

A  social network limited to intelligent people only would have very few members.  First of all, intelligent people are not a majority of the population.  Secondly, not all intelligent people like each other.

Nonetheless, it is something I’d like to see.  The conversations would be sparkling, it  would actually be a learning, self-improving experience every time you log in.  And, in a closed group of people spelling correctly, thinking logically and trading information freely, some new ideas might actually emerge.

Then there’s the narcissistic ambitions part.  Well, that might fit me a bit.  I was on the Metro this morning, without a book, and sometimes I get tired of looking around at all the faces, faces locked in grimness as if smiling and showing happiness were a cultural taboo (it sort of is, here). As the train entered the tunnel, a caught a glimpse of my reflection in the window, which suddenly becomes a mirror and I smiled, because I’m generally a cheerful guy and I know that the guy in the mirror is, too.  I guess that’s just vain and not clinically narcissistic, but I do have narcissistic ambitions.  I would love to write something some day which is so clever and incisive that it gets hundreds of likes, and dozens of shares.

Not holding my breath, though.  Facebook, basically, is a swamp.  There is great potential for life, and growth, but also it’s easy to get sucked in and eaten by alligators.

The Sun is a shining light and it’s been powering the Earth since before human kind existed.  We evolved within it’s nurturing light.  It caused the trees to grow, whose leaves transformed the atmosphere into one we could breathe.  Before electricity, even before James Watt ever made an engine run on steam, solar power was running the economy.  It made the plants grow, and without them, we would have starved.

They Might Be Giants

It’s only for the last hundred and fifty or so years that we’ve even used oil very much.  So, it was with great pleasure that I saw an article today saying that for the last four days, Portugal has been 100% powered by solar energy.  I’m sure people are still driving their cars, but homes, houses, offices, factories, shops and everything on the national power grid was running on solar.

Yes, Portugal’s a sunny country and this is May, but it also happened in Germany recently, and there’ve been days like that in Denmark as well.  They both use solar quite a bit, but wind even more so.  Drive through Germany and Denmark and you see windmills everywhere.  They look kind of cool.  They look like giants.

So, when I contemplate the wretched state of world politics, American politics especially, and it’s just too fucking depressing for words, I tell myself this:  oil is almost dead.  This 150 year interregnum of pumping carbon into the air is almost over, no matter how much they bribe the politicians.

I’ve got my fingers crossed for big  Bernie wins in Oregon and Kentucky.  Meantime, I want  to vent a bit more about the shit that  went  down in Vegas.

The news  coverage is  ridiculous.  I just  watched a thing on the primaries on CNN (CNN Europe, but still)  They talked a lot  about Trump and then they said “And now, on the Democratic side…” and the female  announcer turned and said to the male announcer “Wait a minute, before we get to that, I think we should talk about this hard-hitting new Clinton ad (it  was nothing special, just some of the horrible things Trump’s said about women) and they never actually did cover the Hillary-Sander’s race.  In fact, they did not  mention  Bernie Sanders at  all.  They also didn’t mention the convention in Vegas at all.

Then, I just read the New York Times article on the event, which not only didn’t report it honestly, they reported it pretty much the opposite of honestly.  They reported a story that did not happen.  They quoted Roberta Lange, the  woman who claimed no was yes despite clear audiotape to the contrary, gavelled the convention to a close despite the  rules, and stole about a dozen delegate seats.  She said they had to end the convention early because they were fearful for their safety.  Bullshit.  They closed it down early so they could  steal the votes.

The direct lying, and the denial of Sanders’ existence on the part  of American media is the scariest part of this election, and the greatest reason why I’m not  voting for her no matter what.  A vote for Hillary is a vote the  Democracy doesn’t apply any more.

Then, I’ve been trying all day to post Bernie memes, but can’t access the site.  That may be a conspiracy on the part of the internet people, but it could  also just be because my computer’s too damned slow.

In the wake of the catastrophe that was the Nevada State Democratic Primary, a lot of my Bernie Sanders brothers and sisters, particularly  at a group called Bernie or Bust, are talking about violence.  They say that peaceful methods are not working, it’s time to up the ante, force people to listen.
I understand the rage, I feel it, too, and I have occasionally made comments involving pitchforks and guillotines.  But, talking about violence is not the way to go.  Here are my reasons:

1.  It’s not what Bernie would do.  When he was protesting segregation in the ’60s, he chained himself to a black woman and when the police came to arrest him, he went limp (I’m going by the photo), but he did not punch the policeman.  He did not throw a rock through a window.  When Bernie marched with Martin Luther King, Jr., he marched with Martin Luther King, Jr. – that’s like marching with Gandhi.  A riot is the last thing he wants.
2. This ‘revolution’ rhetoric makes us sound like the teabaggers of the left. Texas is not going to secede and neither are we.  The last time an armed rebellion was attempted in the United States was in 1861.  It did not end well.
3. When there is violence, people can get hurt, and chances are real good they won’t be the people you want to get hurt.
4. While most of this talk is probably just people venting their rage, and some certain percentage are serious, it’s also very possible that some of the people trying to stir up shit are Hillary trolls.  I’m not actually making an accusation, I don’t have inside information or anything, but we know she does hire trolls and we know that’s the kind of thing trolls do.  So, do not give them the satisfaction.  Do not be drawn in.
5. It would be great if huge numbers of people turned up in Philadelphia in favor of Sanders.  I’ve heard 1 million bandied about as the magic number.  That would certainly be hard for the Superdelegates to ignore.  But talk of violence will not add numbers to the crowd.  It will chase them away.  You may get some gangs of angry youth, but mothers with small children, middle aged people with jobs and reputations, and old folks who are just fine at marching but not quite fit enough for a running street battle with the police  will stay home in droves.  It needs to be clear, crystal clear, that this will be a peaceful demonstration.
6. We’ve still got 9 primaries to go.  Let’s win this thing.