My Facebook account has been restricted for 30 days, then 60 days, and now 90 days for memes I shared back in 2016 and 2021. (The 90 day restriction was for the same meme as the 60 day one, shared again 9 months later but both times BEFORE they started enforcing new rules and giving warnings.)
This meme, shared on a page I follow, is based on a character from the movie Office Space.
I commented that if the car didn’t stop I was going to burn the building down. It’s Milton’s threat if he doesn’t get his stapler back, rolodex back, etc. in the movie. I quoted a Milton line about a Milton meme.
Facebook removed the comment and said that if I continue to incite violence offline my account will be restricted or suspended. No actual human being looked at what I posted. Their algorithms determined I was threatening people with physical violence and warned me such threats violate their standards. Actual threats would; but I didn’t make any actual threats to anyone on or offline. Artificial intelligence does not have a sense of humor. Consider Lt. Commander Data from Star Trek for reference. And there is no way to appeal to any actual human beings at Facebook that watch t.v. shows or movies. Cancel culture and I have a hard time getting along. So far WordPress has never warned about anything. I guess this post will test those waters.
Please note that no one was harmed or threatened with harm in this post.
I wrote a couple of paragraphs on what is happening in Afghanistan in the recent Satur-deja Vu. I tried to be brief in explaining the current situation and how we got there. To understand what we were doing in Afghanistan in the 1980’s we really need to go back further.
We were allies with the Soviets during World War II. It was an uncomfortable alliance but the United States, Great Britain, France and the Soviet Union worked together to bring down Nazi Germany and defeat the Third Reich. After WWII the US and USSR never officially fought against each other. For the second half of the 20th century we engaged in what was known as a cold war. We fought against the spread of communism into third world nations without engaging the Soviets or Chinese communist leaders directly. That led to a policy known as containment. The idea was to contain communism to the countries that already had it without letting it spread to other places. There were a few super powers in the world and everything else – third world nations at the time, known today as developing or emerging nations – was up for grabs. The democratic/capitalist nations of the world very much feared the spread of communism around the globe until there was nothing else left. Knowing what we know now, those fears may have been irrational. But of course, we didn’t know then.
Following World War II Korea was divided into two countries along the 38 parallel (line of latitude). North Korea was administered by the Soviet Union and South Korea by the United States. In 1950 North Korea invaded the south and set off the Korean War. We fought to stop the spread of communism. An armistice (ceasefire) was declared when war efforts stalled in 1953. There have never been an official peace treaty between the two countries but there has been progress made, or at least the appearance of it at times, in recent years to prevent North Korea from becoming a nuclear threat. Many South Koreans still hope to see the country united again in the future.
The civil war in Vietnam lasted much longer, from 1955 until 1975. The United States finally pulled out in 1973, and many references have been to the last Americans leaving Saigon in recent weeks. It became impossible to tell who the enemy was. There were sympathizers on both sides for the other and enemy infiltrators were difficult to identify. Vietnam, Laos and Cambodia all became communist when the war ended in 1975.
Which brings us to Afghanistan. US involvement did not begin after 9/11 but dates all the way back to the 1950’s. During the 50’s and 60’s the US and Soviet Union were both investing in infrastructure. The term “third world nation” has fallen out of use since the collapse of the Soviet Union. Following WWII, democracy and capitalism was one world, command economy/communism was the other. Wherever the Soviets tried to spread communism we were there to foster democratic rule and attempt to make allies with the promise of economic prosperity. It was like some global dodgeball match with world superpower team captains choosing players. In the 50’s and 60’s it was infrastructure and in the 70’s the stakes were raised to military expansion. A revolution in 1978 led to the creation of the Democratic Republic of Afghanistan, a misleading title for a Marxist-Leninist government. The US began funneling money toward resistance groups. It started slowly at first and there was not a clearly unified strategy. During a period of civil war two groups, al-Qaeda and the Taliban, were both getting American funds and American guns. After the cold war the Taliban emerged as the dominant power in the mid 90’s.
After 9/11 the United States formally invaded Afghanistan with plans to establish a democratic government and train Afghan military forces, with the goal of of self-rule (and the creation of an ally in the region that can prevent the Taliban from returning to power). After spending 20 years in Afghanistan – there are young men fighting there today that had not been born on September 11, 2001 – the decision was made to pull all Americans out. The intelligence gave various predictions of how long the Afghan government we installed would be able to hold out, from as little as 3 months to as long as 1 or 2 years. When American military forces withdrew in July the Taliban seized control of the capital city… in only 11 days. Some of the Afghan forces we trained simply ran away without even trying to fight. There are now more American military personnel in Afghanistan than before in an effort to evacuate American citizens and Afghan citizens loyal to our cause before the arbitrary deadline of August 31st. The situation is difficult to summarize and cannot be stated simply. It did not start with 9/11 or with Osama bin Laden. We are dealing with the socio-political fallout of cold war era foreign policy. It was about fighting Russia in the middle east and southeast Asia – and in Cuba and South America if necessary – to stop the spread of communism. The chaos created during that conflict is a thorn in our flesh today. And will continue to be as the Taliban seize control of 2,000 military vehicles including Humvee’s and up to 40 aircraft including Black Hawk helicopters and attack drones. Over a 15 year period we supplied Afghan military forces with $28 billion worth of guns, rockets, night vision goggles and drones. Everything that has not been destroyed now belongs to the Taliban.
We are leaving Afghanistan. “It’s time for our troops to come home” sounds like a lofty ideal. But many of the men and women who have invested 20 years on that field do not understand leaving without obtaining our objectives and finishing the mission. The lives lost and time spent away from friends and family seems like a waste if we just give the country back to the extremists we went there to engage. We are leaving… for now. This will not be the end.
Billy Ray Cyrus. Whether you love, hate, follow or ignore Billy Ray you cannot deny that his career cannot be stopped. Consider the three clearly identifiable stages of his professional career and give the man some credit where it’s due.
Achy Breaky Heart, 1992 – I was 16 years old for most of that year. I bought my first car that summer, a 1972 Chevrolet pickup, and the cassette single of Achy Breaky. Continue reading →
It has been a couple of years since I posted to this blog. The most recent post was a rant about Chick-fil-A and prior to that several entries about the newly inaugurated 45th POTUS and a few posts about the upcoming 2016 election. I didn’t want anyone, in this case you, to stumble upon this website for whatever reason and those posts be the first thing you see.
I’ve been having an issue posting links to The Master’s Table, my religion/theology blog. But I can link to this URL, at least for the time being. That may or may not mean anything. Right now it’s one of those things that make you go “hmm…”
Chick-fil-A is advertising more breakfast options. But in order to bring egg white grill to the menu they dropped the spicy chicken biscuit. Just like the way they stopped offering cole slaw when they introduced super food side salad. Chick-fil-A doesn’t add new menu items without taking something away. So you don’t really get “more items” you get “different items.” Because Chick-fil-A doesn’t want more customers, they want different customers.
The ad above, and the marquee sign out front, is pushing their line of English muffin sandwiches. McDonald’s has add the Egg McMuffin for years and recently added the low cal Egg White Delight. Chick-fil-A is copying McD’s menu hoping to attract McD customers. Chick-fil-A was better than McDonald’s but in order to compete has changed their business model to become the same as McDonald’s.
When Kentucky Fried Chicken introduced grilled chicken, to attract a more health conscious customer, they didn’t quit making fried chicken. Chick-fil-A was founded in Atlanta by good ‘ol boy Truett Cathy. Since his passing the powers that be have been slowly transforming the chain into something else. The egg white grill tested well in several markets including Manhattan. It was developed by the same north of the Mason Dixon Line kitchen manager that invented the super food salad; kale and “broccolini” replacing the same coleslaw that had been served by Truett Cathy for decades. Truett built an empire cooking fried chicken. The next generations of Cathy’s are determined to build… something else. And they’re building it out of kale and English muffins because they don’t want more customers, they want different customers. Healthier, snootier, Yankee customers. Because all those families that ate Truett’s food for so many years are no longer good enough.
I questioned the validity of these images when I first saw them but it turns out the crowd on the D.C. mall was somewhat smaller than Obama’s first inauguration in 2009. The images are real but let’s consider what we’re looking at and what it means.
1) Obama’s 2009 inauguration was historic. He was the first African-American president in American history. While many of us were not in DC pretty much the whole nation watched that ceremony.
2) The temps were in the 20’s but it was a bright clear day.
3) The 2009 attendance set a record at 1.8 million. Obama’s second inauguration in 2013 only drew about half that number, roughly 1 million people on the national mall. Obama did not get as many votes in 2012 as he had in 2008, and there was not as much talk about hope and change after his first four years in office either.
4) Trump’s inauguration took place in the rain. A final number of attendees has not been released yet and it will be hard to do without any satellite images available (because of the cloud cover).
AND FINALLY THE MOST SIGNIFICANT FACT:
5) Obama’s inauguration was a historic event attended by Democrats, Republicans and independent voters. 40 Congressional Democrats refused to attend Trump’s inauguration and there were huge crowds of protesters outside the secure mall area. Republicans didn’t do that in 2009. There was a huge crowd in DC for Trump’s inauguration but this picture doesn’t show the thousands of people who were breaking windows, setting fires and trying to cross police lines. There were two crowds in DC on January 20th, only the ones hoping for a brighter future and a better tomorrow are pictured above on the right. The other crowd is committed to seeing American fail, working towards that end, and then saying “See, we told you Trump would fail.”
I’m not saying they should or shouldn’t. I’m just passing through life, in this case my favorite retail giant, noticing things and making comments. This is my two cents worth.Â
On the one hand, I know what this is. A few years ago some of us began using emoticons, regular keyboard punctuation marks combined to look like smiley faces and other images. : -D  As email gave way to texting and social media, the most common emoticons were coded to produce icons or animated graphics. 😀 The steaming pile of poo became an increasingly common way to say that an idea stinks or the person you’re talking to is full of it (to put it mildly). Text message and Facebook comment emojis spread to stickers, t-shirt designs, coffee mugs and now The Emoji Movie is coming August 4, 2017. The plush pillows are a marketing tie in. If there is a dollar to be made somebody will find a way to make it.
On the other hand, you can walk into your local Walmart and buy a pile of crap. Not just any pile of crap, a plush friendly looking one that kids will want because all the characters are made to look cute. This is a real product you can buy, geared toward adolescents and young adults. I think it says something about where we are as a society.
And don’t forget, it’s a pillow.
“Now I lay me down to nap,
place my face upon this crap.
If I die before I wake…”
The Supreme Court ruled in 1989 that burning an American flag was a protected first amendment right of free speech. A proposed amendment in 1990 to criminalize burning the flag fell short.
So what are flag burners protesting? It must obviously be the United States. Burning a nation’s flag seems like a clear sign you hate that nation. But the protesters around Trump Tower are upset about Tuesday’s election results. The same flag would have flown over the White House if Hillary had been elected, and for that matter flies over the Obama White House presently. It’s not Trump’s flag. It’s the American flag, it’s our flag, and it symbolizes the freedoms and liberties that allow us to do things like vote in elections and march in protest. Why desecrate the very symbol of those freedoms? Imagine burning a Russian flag marching through Moscow or ranting about the Communist Party on the Internet from anywhere in China.
If you want to protest Trump, burn a red ballcap. But if you hate America enough to burn the flag it shouldn’t make any difference to you who becomes president. If you burn the flag today I can’t take you seriously the next time you raise the flag because some you like happens.
Billy Ray Cyrus. Whether you love, hate, follow or ignore Billy Ray you cannot deny that his career cannot be stopped. Consider the three clearly identifiable stages of his professional career and give the man some credit where it’s due.
Chick-fil-A
I questioned the validity of these images when I first saw them but it turns out the crowd on the D.C. mall was somewhat smaller than Obama’s first inauguration in 2009. The images are real but let’s consider what we’re looking at and what it means.
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