TheWiseOldFart

  Op-ed by TheWiseOldFart Inciting anger, hatred, and violence. Dividing a nation’s people. Brainwashing the uninformed. Ending intelligent conversation. Winning elections based on lies and misinformation. Foreign nations deciding the outcome of elections. The former situations are used every day around the world. Misnamed “social media:” Facebook,” “Twitter,” now known as “X,” and the most misleading of all, “Truth Social,’ are some of the tools used by desperate politicians and other despicable groups to control the minds and therefore the actions of subscribers. ALL GREAT INVENTIONS/CREATIONS ARE EVENTUALLY ABUSED AND MISUSED The telephone, the automobile, television, wireless phones, computers, the internet: these are a few of the greatest inventions of the 20 th century. However, all of them have been abused and misused. Each is a tool used every day for unintended and negative use more often than for the reasons they were created for the masses. One undeniable fact is that t...

I love my wife more than I could ever tell her. She is a worrier. All too often she believes what she reads on the internet, not realizing that as much as 95 percent of everything we read on the misinformation highway is propaganda designed to frighten the average person, and designed to prevent them from telling or learning the truth. I often rely on the wisdom and honesty offered by one of the greatest men in the history of the world. “A man dies when he refuses to stand up for that which is right. A man dies when he refuses to stand up for justice. A man dies when he refuses to take a stand for that which is true.” Martin Luther King, Jr. The most important human right guaranteed by the Constitution is the combination of free thought and free speech. The Constitution and our system of government encourage honest dissent. Nothing works in Washington without intelligent deliberation and compromise. This works just as well in the private sector. This is of greater importance in the 21 ...