I have a suggestion (which will fly right over the heads of most of you ), but unless we see a return to a environment where media of all types have some enforced editorial responsibility, then Trump is just the start of the madness.
So please take your party hats off for one moment and consider the position. Firstly it just so happens that the crazy man is a republican, but his politics are irrelevent to the point I am making. We have the first leader delivered to us in a post FB/twitter world, and it has gone very badly indeed.
So here is my suggestion, everyone has to take responsibilty for what the say, for what they publish, for what they host, and for what they post.
I want an environment where publishing an outright lie will have consequencies, whoever you are, wherever you are.
A newspaper editor has to be able to prove that they had reasonable grounds to believe that a story is true. They will take steps to verify that what they have been told is true before they run a story. If they fail in this they are open to both legal action, and also regulatory action. The same goes for adverts that they print.
So why has this principle been lost online ? Why does FB plough on making enormous sums of money without taking any responsibily for the "news" it distributes. The same applies to twitter, google, youtube etc.
Why can any lying fuck buy a $10 domain, get a cheap host, and create a fake news site ?
Why can any lying fuck declare that his truth is the real truth and the rest is fake.
Why does the mainstream media bother employing journalists and news teams, adhere to common standards, when they are being ridiculed and derided by others with no editorial responsibility whatsoever.
This is not about TRUMP.
He has benefited from the mess, but it could have been anyone.
Unless there is a movement toward an environment where the truth becomes central to any discussion, and we are are responsible for what we say, post, print, or publish. Then Trump could be the worst of our problems. Mob rule is very un pleasant, and mobs are easily manipulated by those with sinister intent. We got Trump but it could have just as easily been a Soros puppet......
Trump is a narcisstic idiot, but it could be worse, much worse.
