"Alternative Facts"

  Trump's been in office for only a short time and already the bullshit is starting to fly. First off, this jackass is claiming that his inauguration drew in a massive audience. This simply isn't true. Obama's 2009 inauguration crowd made Trump's crowd look pathetic. You can see for yourself right here. Trump also claimed that the moment he started speaking, the rain stopped. This is simply another lie or as Kellyanne Conway calls it 'alternative fact'. It would seem that the Ministry of Truth from Orwell's dystopian novel 1984 is alive and well in Trump's America. In addition to the 'alternative facts' being spewed by this piss colored fuckwad and his band of sycophantic morons, we have the interference in the election by the Russians, his refusal to release his tax returns and his insistence on having his sons run his businesses instead of putting them in a blind trust as required by the Constitution. Could this be the reason why Republicans tried to gut the Office of Congressional Ethics?
  Trump is a lying, thin skinned, narcissistic egomaniac worthy only of contempt. He's insulted Mexico, women in general and Megyn Kelly specifically. He mocked disabled reporter Serge Kovaleski and claimed that thousands of New Jersey Muslims celebrated the 9/11 attacks. Some Jersey City Muslims did apparently celebrate 9/11 according to later reports. Unless something happens, we're going to have to deal with Trump for at least the next four years. If something should happen, wannabe theocrat Mike Pence will become president. If that happens will we have gone from bad to worse?

We Are Information

  Information has become the new currency of the 21st century. It seems like everyone is champing at the proverbial bit to gather intel on people. I just read an article about a company that uses sensors to track the movements of GPS enabled smartphones in order to gather information about the habits of the smartphones' owners. The collectors of said data process it and sell it to their clients so they can better sell their products and services. As this technology becomes more ubiquitous, the amount of data gathered about our movements and habits will grow exponentially. The question is how much privacy will we lose as a result of this technology? Big Brother already exists to some degree in our society. However, unlike in Orwell's fictional Oceania, this Big Brother hides in plain sight. Instead of Thought Police, we have Twitter, Facebook, Instagram and the like. And we voluntarily supply information about ourselves to these sights. Couple that with the information surreptitiously gathered via our smartphones, computers and tablets and the amount of information about us that exists on the Web is probably staggering. Data mining has become very lucrative for some companies and unlike precious metals, it won't run dry. This is a double edged sword we're wielding. In the wrong hands, we could end up prisoners in an information driven techno-dictatorship where our movements and information are constantly tracked and collated in order to keep us in line.

Orwellian Zebra Queef Republicans

The ass rapers of the GOP are at it again. These lickers of syphilitic goat taint are denying that they're the ones responsible for the government shutdown despite the fact that 80 of them signed a document stating that they'd do just that if Obamacare wasn't defunded. They're whining on the House floor about how people are being inconvenienced because the panda cam is down and the national parks are closed. Their concern, however, doesn't extend to the poor that are adversely affected by the shutdown. They couldn't care less about them. WIC has been affected by the shutdown, but they show no concern about that. They're way too busy cutting the poor's access to food stamps. It's hard to imagine a group more adept at the Orwellian concepts of doublethink, blackwhite and duckspeak except for the Fox Propaganda Network a.k.a. the Ministry of Truth.

The Information Age and Dictatorships

It used to be that all a dictator had to do to prevent information about atrocities committed in their country from getting out was to control the local media outlets and keep outsiders out. That way only the government's views and opinions were disseminated to the populace. Any information they didn't like was brutally and effectively silenced. Now, with the widespread use of social media like Twitter, Facebook, YouTube etc., it's becoming extremely difficult for them to contain said information. Anybody with a cell phone, computer or tablet can be a reporter and let the world know what's going on in their country. Repressive regimes hate social media because it exists outside their country where they can't control it. They can't send secret police squads to Twitter, Facebook, YouTube etc. and co-opt them or shut them down. In Orwell's book 1984, all information was controlled by the Ministry of Truth. It controlled every form of information and could even alter the historical record to serve its ends. Become an unperson and all record of you and your life gets erased. You not only cease to exist, you never existed in the first place. That's pretty much impossible to do in the real world now. There is no way someone could erase all trace of your existence and make you an unperson. There's also no way anyone can completely contain the flow of information anymore. They can install all the Internet filters they want in order to block searches they don't like. People will just find a way around them. Information wants to be free.