Government, that supposedly necessary evil, is very hard to get rid of. You’re allowed to vote for the lesser of two evils. But it seems We are never allowed to vote for no evil at all.

It would be very easy to get rid of some unnecessary evils, among them? Facebook!

We can’t vote Mark Zuckerberg out of an office he was never elected to serve in any capacity. However, he is trying very hard to assume a position of Decider of our thoughts by making everybody fear the open expression of thought and the proper use of our God Given Right of Free Speech.

However, we can decide we don’t “like” him – or his digital authoritarianism – and we can stop using the mechanism by which he was acquired so much power over us. It’s the most powerful form of voting there is, and at least for now, we have this franchise and would be fools not to use it while there is still time.

We are in a position analogous to the moment which existed before the 16th Amendment or the passage of the equally odious “Patriot” Act – Better positioned, because this time, our fate is directly in our own hands.

We can get rid of Facebook, or we can at least put it in its proper place, if only we will act …..

It is hard to avoid dealing with Facebook, certainly.

The thing has weirdly and probably not coincidentally penetrated almost every nook and cranny of our lives. It is interesting to speculate how it came to be that so many modern transactions demand — though they still lack the power to require – “signing up” on Facebook in order to proceed. Even dating apps try to make you “sign in” via Facebook, though they are separate businesses and have no other connection with Facebook.

How did it get to be Mark Zuckerberg’s business whom we are interested in romantically?

The supermarket wants you to “sign up.” My dentists’ office asks that patients “like” his practice on Facebook. The local middle school has a digital billboard encouraging those interested to “look them up” on you-know-where.

It’s as if Facebook is interested in knowing everything about us and profiting from the knowledge, whether financially or – as is becoming increasingly and frighteningly obvious – politically.

Knowledge is indeed power. And Facebook is beginning to flex it.

Imagine having to “sign up” on Facebook before you’re allowed to vote for the lesser of two evils – as decided by Mark Zuckerberg.

This is not a postulation to be laughed at.

Zuckerberg is already using Facebook to punish those whose views – not specified, precisely – are, as he styles it, “hateful.” No one knows exactly what this means except that Mark Zuckerberg does not like the views being expressed.

We are to intuit his preferences ….. or else.

This unelected kid is becoming the arbiter of what we’re allowed to say by making us afraid to say what we’d like to say by making us fear that we might say something “hateful” or “dangerous”, that is to say, something Mark Zuckerberg considers “hateful” or “dangerous”… whatever that means.

It will probably soon be decreed “dangerous” and “hateful” to not “like” Facebook!

He is erecting something functionally analogous to the social credit/social shaming scheme that the Chinese communists are using to Thought Police their people, not with bayonets this time but by crippling their ability to function economically.

This creepy kid wants to do the same here, and he is doing it; but with the complicity of the people who continue to freely sanction it by continuing to invite Mark Zuckerberg into their lives. It is like the vampire who cannot drain your blood unless you invite him into your home.

And there’s the key!

We can simply decide to not invite the information vampire Zuckerberg into our homes and our lives via the simple expedient of not “signing up,” “liking” or posting anything on Facebook.

Just stop going there. Delete the app. Tell merchants/businesses who ask you to “sign up” that you won’t, and then tell them why.

Then tell your friends you wont be “friending” them anymore, but that they are still very much your friends.

We had friends before we “friended” them on Facebook, and we will have them if Facebook ceased to exist tomorrow. There are myriad other ways to “keep in touch”, including modern ways that do not require Mark Zuckerberg as a middleman or Mark Zuckerberg’s permission.

This kid has somehow become a kind of digital dictator who has no real authority except that which we have given him and can rescind any time we wish.

Americans had better exert their own power in the markets and through Congress, and we’d better exercise it soon, before this kid acquires new powers that make it impossible to transact any business without first signing up to Facebook, or to “like” Facebook. Cash or deposit checks. Apply for loans. Buy groceries.

Before we’re allowed to do anything, possibly even use the bathroom in our own home –imagine a small touchscreen adjacent to the door requiring you to “sign up” before it will open.

If you have been deemed “hateful” or “dangerous,” it’s the outhouse for you.

It’s time to unfriend Zuckerberg and the rest of the digital panopticon being erected with almost unreal effrontery, right in front of our faces. Tell Muther Zucker to meet You out back for a can of Whoop Ass, and then tell MutherZucker to “GO TO HELL”.

We can be forgiven for having been Zuckered ….. at first.

Facebook, a sophomorically named thing, seemed innocuous initially; a “cool” way to keep in touch with people, to reconnect with people and to connect with more people, but that bait has been switched.

And, if we continue to nibble at it, we’ll have no one to blame but ourselves when the trap snaps closed. ~ Eric Peters

Editor’s NOTE: In the 1944 Warner Bros. film, ‘The Mask of Dimitrios‘ starring Zachary Scott, Peter Lorre and Sydney Greenstreet (and Faye Emerson, FDR’s daughter in law). The Greenstreet character’s name was ‘Mr. Peters,’ who’s most famous line in the film was, “There’s not enough kindness in the world.” Did the “author” of the above intentionally use this name to make his point? ~ JB

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