We Once Loved the Birth of the Internet.

We LOVED the text-based Internet.

"Information is free!" "Community, not capitalism!"

We weren't socialists, or communists, or anything but Humanitarian and purveyors of elevating humanity, education and enhancing everyone's understanding of the world around us. Many were of positions that allowed them access from higher levels, universities, research groups and so on as the Internet was disseminated on a larger and larger scope in pushing it out to every more people. Until people with not the best of intent gained access and we started to notice a downside.

People in newsgroups back in the late 80s and early 90s got run off, if not off of being online, our of newsgroups for trying to monetize OUR Internet. Our, being what we were cultivating in its best orientation for all, not just those with money, or those with military intent.

That was the deal. That was the culture. It was a positive thing, for the masses.

Around the same time, on C-SPAN, Newt Gingrich was giving fiery speeches to an empty chamber, knowing the camera only showed him, not the empty seats. Theater, not debate. A lie, not truth. Weaponizing what was for everyone, for only the few, his few.

Anything goes, once you decide you're done losing. That's where our toxic politics really got its legs.

Then the internet grew up, and it turned out to be the perfect stage for exactly that kind of theater, at scale. Gingrich-style scorched earth built the audience. Russian disinformation operations later found that same audience ready-made and went to work on it. 

I spent decades studying KGB influence tactics, going back to my Air Force years in the late 1970s. By the 90s I started seeing the same playbook show up in GOP messaging, and it floored me that almost nobody else in public was saying so out loud. 

Not until about the 2010s when people started realizing it and saying aloud what they had not that long ago claimed I was crazy for saying. It was relieving, rewarding, and irritating for the two decades of abuse, or worse, being discounted. Ignored. Looked at like I was a fool, while I watched most of us acting like exactly that. 

Especially in one political party in particular. One that finally saw it's desired fruition in electing someone like Donald Trump. Twice. Now regretting that. 

Except for those making the most money under his mob boss tutelage. 

I started noticing in the early 90s how Soviet/KGB subversive efforts against America, against the West were being picked up and used by the American Right, the Republican Party, people like Newt Gingrich. Lies sold as truth. Spin was the rule of the day, they broke that barrier and pushed that spin by the Left were lies, and lies by the Right, were Truth. Now we have what?

Truth Social, perhaps the biggest lie of them all but our biggest liar ever.

The internet still gave us real things. More community. More connection, for more people who never had it before.

But capitalism got in anyway. And got in the way, as we knew it would. We watched out dream die on the vine.

And it won. Toxic politics and toxic capitalism ended up feeding each other, each one making the other more profitable.

Now we've got broken social media, engagement over humanity, platform owners emboldened by both.

An AI now able to weaponize it ALL. Against US, We The People. For THEM. Those who own most of the money while we all are struggling.

We tried. We failed. But all is not lost--yet. Only if we let it be.

Better leaders. Better products. Dynamics that pull us together, not apart. They are out there, asking for our votes, rather than for those whose only and best interests are not for us, but for them.

They merely say it is for us, but their actions prove otherwise, constantly, incessantly. Sadly. Sadly, for us as they grow ever stronger in wealth and power. But we are waking. Slowly, sick of the abuse.

Truth over spin. Over lies. Reality over performance.

We are the People. Never forget that.

Cheers! Sláinte! Na zdravie!