I've always rather resented the notion that people like the POTUS get to spew whatever they want on social media platforms with complete impunity.
He gets to make unsubstantiated statements that would get regular peasants like me and you banned, maybe even sued for libel and defamation.
Yet his half-truths and outright lies not only go unchecked, but are also broadcast loudly to the entire world, including many people who've never learned to think critically.
I mean, there are those who actually send money to characters on television who shout gibberish in tongues while pretending to be in a trance.
Social media platforms have appalling excuses for allowing the violation of their own standards and terms of use regarding hate speech, harassment and harmful lies.
Public figures like the POTUS — who, supposedly, are expected to be held to a higher standard than the rough and tumble rank and file — get a free pass.
Facebook and Twitter's fateful decision to for many years allow unfiltered lies to influence the masses were "made in the name of newsworthiness."
Forgive my French, but bull shit.
That's a straight up, bold faced lie.
The vile rhetoric incessantly regurgitated by 45 over the past five years since he started his election campaign by demonizing Mexican immigrants as rapists and drug dealers, was allowed to fester and grow unchecked, distorting millions of people's reality and mutating into the monster before us today.
And it wasn't because anything that man posted on his Twitter account was "newsworthy."
Frankly, a donkey's fart is more newsworthy than whatever hot air the Stable Genius of Great and Unmatched Wisdom — to quote his own Best Words — has to offer.
So newsworthiness had absolutely nothing to do with it.
In short, it was all about the money.
In a few more words, it was an unscrupulous, greedy, manufactured-outrage machine that drove clicks and coveted ratings.
And boy, oh boy, did mango Mussolini drive those ratings.
In turn, the clicks and ratings generate the record revenues that create unprecedented profits. Every click creates data. And data, in the Information Age, is the new black gold. Billions of dollars of profits.
Just ask Zuckerberg and Dorsey, whose digital machinations have opened Pandora's box.
All Zuck and Dorsey had in their eyes were dollar symbols. Same with CNN, NBC, Fox and everything else in between.
There's a massive load of irony lost completely on the MAGA crowd who claim the big, bad mainstream media has been so mean to the so-called president.
When in fact, the major media companies played an indisputable role in propelling the charlatan to power in the first place.
If the media companies were so viciously horrible and treated 45 so terribly, why then, pray tell, would they desperately shower him with billions of dollars in free airtime practically 24-7?
And make no mistake — despite his claims to the contrary, 45 is the kind of man who doesn't believe in bad press.
During the last election campaign, he got more free advertising in the form of nonstop headlines than any of the other presidential contenders, by a wide margin.
The press should supposedly be fair and balanced in their election coverage, giving each candidate equal opportunity to present policy position.
But no, it was pretty much Orange Man constantly dominating the discourse.
All. The. Time.
It was actually quite pathetic how all the media outlets fawned over his every single outrageous lie, eager to report his rhetoric, drooling over the ratings his buffoonery would generate, all while the human race was further dumbed-down and a political wedge driven deeper.
It's the media that created this grotesque beast and enabled it by happily platforming every last random thought that passed through the outgoing president's head.
Unfortunately, his antics don't seem to be abating, and the social media giants are only just now finally pretending to take punitive measures.
Too little, too late.
As he continues to refuse to admit he lost the 2020 election while he riles up his base, we can expect his name to keep making headlines for the foreseeable future.
So yeah, we should be mad at the mainstream media.
But not for the reason the MAGA crowd thinks.
