CONTINUED TERRIFIED

Today a few of the bigwigs that own our lives are testifying, virtually (interesting double meaning for this word, here), before Congress. 

We know they will dance rings around our representatives. This is partly because most Congress members are hapless. Certainly there are good ones, but really? How can they know and argue about all the issues that they need to watch out for on our behalf? The bigshots themselves are well-versed in defenses, with billions to hire apologists, and their main concern is to keep what they have. Far different from Congress, which should try to protect us, and help us thrive. Conflict? Good for fiction, less so for this unfair battle.

I have a little hope. Maybe the public, hearing what they have to say will become more alert.  

As it turned out, Congress was better prepared and made a good showing. The CEOs tried the AW SHUCKS defense, and no one took it seriously. Still, what was accomplished? Not sure, maybe only to warn CEOs to better defend themselves.

BACK TO THE GUARDIAN

The article, titled IF YOU'RE NOT terrified about Facebook you haven't been paying attention, by Carole Cadwalladr on Sunday's Opinion page (July 26), said many interesting and terrifying things. 

About BREXIT, however, it stopped me cold. She wrote that if it weren't for Facebook we wouldn't have Brexit at all. As she put it, "The future of our country [GB]--our island nation with its 1,000 years of continuous history of which we're so proud--has been set on its course by a foreign company [American] that proved itself beyond the rule of Parliament." And no attempt has been made in Britain to investigate, to the supposed astonishment of the intelligence and security committee to whom these findings were reported in great and powerful detail. 

Details are provided and proof available, yet it seems we/they don't care, and Brexit is happening at the behest of?

AND HERE COMES OUR ELECTION.

SO MANY THINGS TO BE TERRIFIED OF...

 AMERICAN CATASTROPHE THROUGH GERMAN EYES

 SATURDAY'S OPINION BY ROGER COHEN https://www.nytimes.com/2020/07/24/opinion/trump-germany.html

I sent a link to a Guardian piece to a few friends about FaceBook and how it manipulated past elections and is poised to do so again. It's somehow scarier because of perceived British reticence (yes I know about their tabloids). www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2020/jul/26/with-facebook-we-are-already-through-the-looking-glass

One friend, with whom I have been close since we met in Logic at Hunter College (Mihi cura futuri), each of us occasionally toting our toddler sons to class because we never knew if classes would be held, answered my text saying, "I have too many things to be terrified about." Back to that in a minute.

The reason we never knew if classes were on is that it was height of "revolution" and administration buildings were being "occupied" on colleges across our land. Being in a midtown skyscraper--
 
well, a short one, 19 stories--made those kinds of seizures impossible. Not to be daunted, opponents of the war in Vietnam and the bland accepting of the middle class lifestyle decided to shut down academic life in a Manhattan way: they occupied the elevators. At nearby Columbia, we went and heard famous agitators agitate. It was an exciting time, a time when many of us felt that things could be different, fairer, better, and we were the ones who could do it. Meanwhile, we studied philosophy and literature in the interstices of life as a mother, good time gal and hippy--though I did no drugs.

All the time I heard those supposedly more connected that I talk revolution, intimating violence, and sometimes more than intimating, I thought, 'Do they know that means blood?' I was never anywhere that violence actually occurred, but I worried, and was grateful to the Beatles for their song stating my misgivings. That was 1968.

(to be continued)