Donald Trump, Facebook, and social media lies

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Social media is rooted in the belief that open debate and the free flow of ideas are important values, began Nicholas Clegg, president of global affairs for Meta, the parent company of Facebook and Instagram, in a post announced former president Donald J Trump’s return to that same wildly popular service after a two-year exile.

How can that statement be described? A lie that accompanies a mischaracterization feels right.

First the lie. Think about your social media engagement. How much would you describe as open debate? Almost zero, right? Actual debate requires the notion of impartial assessment of verifiable fact. Each side offers arguments supported by factual evidence, we call it middle school debate club. A judge decides whose case is best and thus carries the day. You need to prepare a strong case because you know your opponent will have a logical argument and strong evidence to support their side.

No one debates on social media because no one is open to the possibility that the other side has a point, never mind. And no one judges because everyone has already made up their mind, seeing the living world in a state that often borders on pure delusion accompanied by profound malice. Arguments to the contrary are immediately dismissed with an outburst of contempt.

Which leads us to Cleggs mischaracterization, the free flow of ideas. Sure, ideas flow freely on social media. (And here I’m struggling to find a metaphor that doesn’t involve diarrhea). The unfettered flow is not the problem, the flow is the problem: an endlessly bubbling firehose spewing out every possible unfiltered thought, belief, lie and fantasy.

For example? This week, MAGA-world decided to, well, let them explain:

I believe Damar Hamlin is dead unfortunately. We haven’t seen his actual face yet which looks like a clone, an onlooker revealed.

Or a robot. Or a double body. Died in the field. Of the COVID vaccine. A combined lifetime has been spent arguing about it online this past week. Right wing twitiot Stew Peters asks Hamlin to provide evidence of his continued existence, similar to Trump crying for Obama’s birth certificate: I want to see the video of Damar Hamlin holding a newspaper today the date is visible. When Hamlin interrupted him, Peters taunted the recovering football star. I used to think football players were stubborn. Peters pouted.

Open the debate my foot.

It’s comforting to remember people always argue the most senseless nonsense. You don’t need social media to see Jesus’ face seared into a taco and for thousands to flock to venerate the transubstantiated tortilla. Before the actual miracle of a COVID vaccine became the lunatic’s favorite tetherball, fluoridated water was the classic American conspiracy theory along the lunatic fringe. No social media required.

Fluoride research was conducted right here, by the way, in the 1940s. James Roy Blayney, a scientist at the University of Illinois, spiked Evanston’s water, using Oak Park as a control.

So if your teeth are real and in your mouth, and not false and in a glass on the night table, you can thank Blayney. Or, if you’re perverse, blame him for getting rat poison into our drinking water, a belief unshaken by its safe consumption by billions of people for the better part of a century.

In 1954, Chicago became the first major city to fluoridate its water. But a circus-like City Council hearing is nothing new. Protesters threw holy water before being escorted out by guards. Ald. Reginald DuBois (9th) spoke for 80 minutes, a marathon vocal blast, condemning the measure as an experimental prescription of poison. He worries that fluoride will damage the city’s water pipes. The parallels to the COVID vaccine nuttiness would be funny, if they weren’t so sad.

Don’t blame Facebook. Trump coming back wouldn’t be a problem if the system worked and he was in jail where he belonged. Clegg said there will be guardrails and if Trump recklessly directly incites immediate violence, hell get the heave-ho again. Which is also dishonest, because Trump is cunning enough to simply destroy every American institution and cherished value, from free elections and free speech to the Justice Department and the media, then let his followers do the next step.

The fault, dear reader, to paraphrase Shakespeare, is not in our social media, but in ourselves.

Nick Clegg, president of global affairs for Meta, the parent company of Facebook, seen here in Berlin in 2019. He announced that former president Donald Trump can start posting again on Facebook and Instagram.

Tobias Schwarz/AFP via Getty Images

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