Faking the News

IN RETROSPECT, it seems inevitable that the current explosion of fake news would proliferate sufficiently to attract enough attention to, at long last, widely be considered a problem. How could anyone expect that the internet, then the advent of social media, followed by participation by millions of people, many of them Americans, have any other result? Fake news, like the internet itself, is a drug, a means to escape reality, the latest in a long line of escape mechanisms which have made human life a bit more bearable for thousands of years. Life is tough, always has been, and we have always wanted our palliatives. Like any other drug, social media magnifies what is already there; often, anger and hatred. Sober minded people always step up to combat the drugs, and they always fail, as they will this time. Facebook has finally seen its way clear to offer token resistance; fact checkers will be employed, members will be urged to report suspicious activity, which, when enough red flags are raised, will trigger fact checking and deletion. And guess who vehemently, strenuously objects to the Facebook initiative? Why, the very people who most dwell in the realm of the made up, the same folks who brought you Hillary Clinton's imaginary scandals, President Obama's Kenyan birth, Michelle Obama's transgenderism, and Donald Trump's fantasy fabricated election campaign; the hard core conservative right. Every conservative website in America and abroad is up in arms about the new resistance to fake news. Why? Because they are the creators of it, that'w why. Hillary Clinton was selling state department secrets to America's enemies, and profiting personally from charitable contributions to the Clinton foundation, and planning to socialize the entire economy; Donald Trump's real life real time scandals were considered quite enough unto themselves by the liberal press, which waited, and is still waiting, for his dues to be paid. Angry, hallucinatory, far right extremism is sweeping across Europe and the United States, and with it, a complete world of the imagination. Combating fake news will result in censorship, and control of the internet by a biased liberal viewpoint, seems to be the raison d'tre. In truth, if the right wing onslaught which brought Donald Trump to power is to be sustained, the truth must not be. So, from the point of view of the conservative community, its better to read about Hillary Clinton killing babies and the Pope endorsing Donald Trump than the purge our lives of such garbage. After all, freedom of expression is at stake.