Rock the Moat. Don’t Tip the Moat Over

What is an entitlement?

I would argue that the definition of the word has everything to do with what is going in our cities and country right now.
For example. On the week of November 19, 2016, a video went viral of some thoughtless public school teacher yanking the microphone away from a high-functioning autistic boy at a school Thanksgiving program, exactly when he was about to utter the words he had practiced all week long, “Gobble, gobble!” The kid and his parents were devastated. So were reporters and a lot of daytime talk show hosts. As a public school teacher I took it in stride, but my wife at the time was furious.

Only one problem. I’ve never had a wife, and the teachers at the school claim that the family hadn’t shown up to rehearsals all week, and that the kid’s name was never on the printed program, and that they did him a last minute favor by letting him participate in spite of not having the — typical of public school — required permission slip to be in the play. There simply was no way for the teacher to know about any forthcoming “Gobble gobble.”

So: Are you entitled to just skip the following required first sentence by the Society of Professional Journalists Code of Ethics demanding that you “Take responsibility for the accuracy of their work. Verify information before releasing it. Use original sources whenever possible?” In America, if you are moved to tears or outrage by someone who gets their first, apparently so.
As a now official small-time independent journalist, I would get in trouble for inventing the fact that I had a wife, but less so for possibly reporting on an event in the opposite way that it occurred, risking ruining the reputation of a public school staff that wound up doing a family a last minute favor.
Many San Franciscans were refugees from the Bible Belt or the Midwest. I am not. Many Bay Areans were rejecting a rigid and narrow-minded religious upbringing. I am not. I consider myself religious but wish to separate myself from what I call America’s bullshit-libertarian culture, populist-libertarian if you don’t cuss.

San Francisco and Austin to me were refuges from mainstream America and it’s Bullshit Libertarianism. (That doesn’t mean that I think European and other Western democracies are better. They are a trade-off, with stupid hate speech laws.) Nor are college towns perfect. They may may be knee-jerk leftish, but they were wonderfully communal and laid back. Now they have done a 180 and are Bullshit Libertarianism Central.

For those unfamiliar with The 10 Tenets Of Bullshit Libertarianism, here they are:
1 Broken windows and three strikes don’t apply white-collar criminals. We must never kill the golden goose that “creates wealth.” A single government rule is a slippery slope!
2 The Bill of Rights and access to the legal system is for the wealthy only.
If you’re single and you earn under $120,000 a year you can’t afford a private attorney. If you’re married with children you can’t afford one under $500,000 a year. And even then you can work with a $600 an hour attorney to try and get some kind of restorative justice from some business that ripped you off, but you’re probably just not going to get any money; just the satisfaction that you tried. During the Satanic Panic/Daycare Witchhunts, only those with a private attorney stood a chance to beat the false accusations, similarly to guilty celebrities.
3 It’s easier to ask for forgiveness than permission.
Are you so pro-business that you are impressed by “Move fast and break things?” If you did that at your job on your own you’d be fired. Out on the street? You’d be arrested. Not so for CEOs.
4 Freedom means license.
Would you agree to buy something that you knew ahead of time did not go through an evidence based process? I’m talking:
Source. Sample size. Database. Transparent records. Citations. Fact-checking. Verification. Peer review. Independent review. A double-blind study. Replication. Other forms of beta-testing and trial and error. Publication and other biases. Evaluation. And most importantly, suffering some kind of penalty for not doing this.
When editors and publishers have no training or background in ferreting out a fraud until someone from the public points it out months after publication, that’s not freedom. That’s called being cheap.
5 Free speech means fraud.
Why am I alienated from this huge part of the American way? Because I would never agree to purchase an unvetted author’s unverified claim or an uninspected product. And I realize now that the Society for Professional Journalist Code of Ethics are a bunch of randomly enforced suggestions. And that the mass market self-help paperbacks that until recently millions of us believed had real-life application, are about as credible as what comes of out an elephant’s ass. In my case, the “self-help” books that I purchased out of sincere effort to improve all dealt with spurious psychology by so-called experts, and not one of them mentioned my two dopamine and amygdala. (This has changed in the last ten years, but from the 60’s until recently these books were big on nurture and not nature.) Think the publisher vetted some expert’s claim regarding “A woman whom I’ll call Mary came to see me…” Think again.

6 Give a lot of outraged talk with only non-operationalized sentiments for solutions.
“We need to…” “There should be…” If it’s in the Bible or other ancient fables, Shakespeare, Poor Richards Almanac, etc., and quoted a lot, expect anyone on top to do the short term, expedient opposite of any ancient folk wisdom. I will argue in a separate essay that libertarians love fraud while the Bible despises it. The Bible is also extra harsh to those on top, — think Pharaoh, Aaron, Moses, etc.,, while libertarians worship them.
Take any aphorism like “Assume makes an ass out of you and me,” Or “An ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure.” Ever see a CEO practice this? Business books love to cite David Lee Roth’s explanation for section of Van Halen’s concert rider that called for the removing of the brown M&Ms from a bowl. (It was an indicator of whether the concert promoter had actually read the band’s complicated contract, because their stage antics involved all kinds of dangerous stunts.) Know any apocryphal stories of a venture capitalist looking a Social Media start-up brat in the face and asking “So who’s your Urdu translator?” Me neither.
We are constantly citing books like Bowling Alone and yapping about alienation and mental health. Then we create social media companies that grant you no access or explanation for deplatforming you. The anxiety and alienation this creates is real.
7 Claim to be American when in fact, American history is quite harsh on business. Teddy Roosevelt was a trust buster, invoking the Sherman AntiTrust Act — named after late 19th century Christian Republican John Sherman — as were Eisenhower and Nixon. FDR, whether you agree with him or not, got elected so many times he created the 22nd amendment.
8 Ignore the trade-off, the spectrum and the dynamic.
Libertarians like to quote the brilliant economist Thomas Sowell’s edict about “There are no solutions only trade-offs,” which contain hidden costs and unintended consequences.. They also think that only liberals have the luxury of their own beliefs or are subject to memetic thinking, (which only thy see through.)
I learned a lot when I became disabled and went from $60,000 to $32,000 a year. We all have luxury beliefs and have no clue what life is like for those barely scraping by.
9 The enemy of my enemy is my friend.
So much of our thinking these days seem to revolve around this premise.
So if Canada, Australia, the UK etc., have shockingly two-tiered and draconian anti-hate speech laws, then the answer must be that here in the U.S., free speech should be determined by billionaire’s with bodyguards who allow unvetted claims, fake quotes and photos, doxxing, death and rape threats, etc. This excludes many people from social media sites and can place people in legit danger, who would otherwise join. Libertarians like members of the PayPal Mafia, writers for Reason Magazine always claim they’ll permit anything “Except what’s illegal.” Then why do predators and frauds proliferate on these sites? Social media companies worth over $150 billion now operate with barebones staff, justified by the fact that previously, there was government overreach. (And in other industries, dozens of dangerous products are recalled each month.) Want a trust and safety tip? Don’t trust a word of a wealthy libertarian.
10 Pretend you are a friend of the working class.
Then make the burden of proof, time and expense on the working class after they fall victim to a shoddy or downright dangerous product, or get deplatformed.
Because those on top can’t be bothered with the evidence-based process before a product goes to market. Or being reachable on the phone. Or granting access to the social media companies that now govern our lives and livelihoods. This absolute power is justified through the use of more bullshit libertarian phrases, such as “Let the market decide.” “Print anything. I can decide for myself if it’s true.” They’re a private company, they can do whatever they want.” “Rules stifle innovation.” “We don’t want government…” “It’s a slippery slope.” “You’re more likely to trip and fall in a bathtub…”
I call this the moating of America, i.e. the increasing inability of the rest of us to access the corporations and government institutions that govern our lives, as well as the local businesses, stemming from the key decision that since social media didn’t sell hardware, they didn’t need customer service. And these people are concerned about our mental health?

Midnight At The Oasis
Two wrongs do not make right. (Duh.) Pick any institution. We live in a time where people for years or decades complain about excesses, injustices or abuses with the healthcare, the criminal justice system, federal departments, etc., Then after being ignored for years, radicals from each side take control and throw out the baby with the bathwater for all these institutions. This is followed by a backlash to the backlash. It’s an insane way of doing business because most healthy people are at least minimally proactive. “Freedom” leading to inaccessible monopolies is a form of libertarian blackmail and self-serving bullshit, and perfect irony. Right now, for example, we are risking throwing out the baby with the bathwater with USAID if we don’t continue the bona fide much needed medical assistance to impoverished countries. (Democrats are gong to have to learn not to indulge with certain pet projects that Republicans can rhetorically or justifiably be outraged over.)

Finally.
Over a hundred children have died due to these stupid TikTok challenges, and there is no Call Center for parents to contact in order to get these and other dangerous things taken down. Because misinformation overreach and abuse does not mean that the is no dangerous information out there. Doing nothing is just letting perfect be the enemy of the good.
This doublespeak from those on top is not a conspiracy; it is just the nature of the rhetoric of those blowhards on top. And those of on the bottom suffer a great deal from it.

Self policing never works. We’ve traded government monopoly for a tech monopoly. I say these companies have an obligation to employ Americans to weed out dangerous threats and fraud, and that this would go a long way to help the country both economically but also communally.

Rules are set up to form society and protect the weak. Americans on top live under the delusional, self-serving fantasy that you can live in a world without rules. And now we’re throwing out the baby with a bathwater. (Another fundamental public intellectuals talk about, but never do. There are companies that simply make an extra effort like Apple with the Apple Stores, seminars and phone service that try and get things right by adding a human touch. I will use these companies as an examples.)

It’s a dirty job, but someone’s got to do it.

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