Things are trending – This is a VERY bad trend if you ask me.

This stems from my own observations of the world around me and some of the things I read. So a little background first. If something is trending on twitter, it means a lot of people are using that hashtag (#) and talking about it. That could mean people are talking about your account and what you are hash tagging. By definition, an internet trend is a topic, event, picture, video, catch-phrase, app, etc. that is being widely used or discussed and mentioned over social media. NOW most news and social media sites now have ‘trending’ sections where viewers can see the most popular articles and tweets available to read. The hashtag has also become a widely recognized tool on Twitter and now facebook that is used to briefly identify the central topic of a message.

So, what could be wrong with that – what is Smitty going on about now you might be asking? Well let’s take a moment to ponder about social media in general, Facebook, Twitter, Linked-in for the main stream and maybe Pintrest, My Life and meet-up for some of the smaller ones, or Tumblr and the myriad others that are available. It has been my experience that most folks LIE their asses off on social media. I know, and am FB friends with people who are obnoxious asses who are nowhere close to religious but when you spend a few minutes on their page one would think they were literally the second coming of Christ. Most people on social media, with Linked-in leading the way, are image crafting. Folks are attempting to put their best foot forward to make folks believe something that is an exaggeration.

That is all well and good but being able to put ones best foot forward on the interwebs is NOT the same as actually putting ones best foot forward. Social media seems to create a reality where folks could say what they are doing, for all intents and purpose their life is apparently very out in the open. It is a reality where most folks present a greatly exaggerated and near perfect version of their own existence. They kiss babies, believe in Jesus Christ as their savoir and they never swear, are good parents and are always nice to those less fortunate. They are compassionate and empathetic to those who are or have suffered. When folks chime in, their careers and relationships are at their best, folks who are struggling tend not to be as vocal or broadcast their circumstances.

So the perceived reality becomes magnificently skewed from reality. Folks tend to think, wow Mr. Oatmeal has his shit together, sunrises and sunsets and loving on the Bride. In my case I post and share my life as it is, the good the bad and the ugly – you have read me when I was at high points and you read me when I was at very low places. Most folks are not Mr. Oatmeal though, hence the need for me to attempt to demonstrate an absurdity that I have noticed. People who are engaged users of social media could easily fall into the trap that everyone is doing really well. This is a dangerous slope to be on for many reasons but one important one revolves around a person’s self-worth.

Imagine if you will for a moment, someone who grew up with social media, when they see all the lies and mistruths posted on their friends and celebrities feeds, it would be easy to feel a bit of misery. Why isn’t my life going as well as all my friends? Why do they seem to get all the breaks? What a great relationship they have, why can’t I have that? We are in a sense creating a false reality that is self-fulfilling and self-perpetuating. Folks, probably mostly younger folks rather than older, are sucked into bizarro world. An alternative reality is really what it ends up being. I am unsure what this is doing to the psyche of folks, especially the younger folks. I could easily see where a person could be unhappy. At least, they could be feeling a bit frustrated and inadequate.

It seems mostly straightforward to me, if the reality of someone's life is better than they had expected, they're happy. When reality turns out to be worse than the expectations, by comparison to someone else’s posts, they're not as happy. So what does that mean in the context of this blog. My point is that social media is an alternative reality that we created, not unlike Nero created in the First of the new Star Trek Movies. “Nero's very presence has altered the flow of history, beginning with the attack on the USS Kelvin, culminating in the events of today, thereby creating an entire new chain of incidents that cannot be anticipated by either party." An entire new chain of incidents that cannot be anticipated by either party huh? Hummmmm. That seems to me what social media does, only in a false or at a minimum very deceiving way. We do not place our hurts and our pain on facebook or twitter, we just don’t.

So how then can we trust something that is “trending” when that trend is formulated by data mining the shit out of the information we share – especially since that is an incomplete and flawed data set from the beginning. What does it mean that “Is it possible to build a snowboard underwater?” In just this moment I Googled what was trending on twitter, and that was at the top of the list. What possible relation to my life can that information have? Trending, I think we are sucked into areas we don’t belong and I would not be surprised if those are skewed on purpose to divert our attention from more important news bits that would have some relevance in my life. So, I say to you my friends, be wary of news groups or others offering you “what is trending” it could be bullshit, like most of what we read in social media!

September 11th, 2013 - 12 years later - my short view of history

I have sat and pondered 9-11 over of the last few days – I realized that there sure has been a LOT of water under a lot of bridges.  The sting of the shock is gone now, but on the heels of another potential war I just have to think about what the last 12 years have meant, for me, for our country and for those folks in the Middle East. 

So on that fateful day 12 years ago two thousand, nine hundred and ninety six souls were lost; nineteen of those were the terrorists.  I have even thought long and hard about the word terrorist -- what does that really mean?  Terrorism is defined as “the unlawful use or threatened use of force or violence by a person or an organized group against people or property with the intention of intimidating or coercing societies or governments, often for ideological or political reasons”.  That does not say Muslim, it does not say middle easterner, and as a matter of fact it does not say anything about the religion of Islam.  But what is the first thing that comes to your mind when you hear someone say terrorist?  We tend to immediately think in our minds eye, someone who is brown and wears a turban and loose fitting layered clothing.  I am almost ashamed to admit it, but I too am guilty of that picture popping into my head.  

I watched a video on the interwebs yesterday from a show that puts people in odd situations and then records how they react.  I generally don’t like that kind of thing but it mentioned a soldier so I thought I would take a look.  The setup was a man behind the counter of an order-at-the-counter restaurant, decked out as a Muslim and some kid playing this jackass who did not want to be served by him.  The scene played out a number of times and most folks did the right thing and told him to stop or to leave.  Then we come to this Army Sargent who said it best:  he is allowed to be anything he wants to be.  That is why I wear the uniform -  to give him that right.  I suppose we all racially profile in some ways, even if we don’t want to admit it – we do it all the time. 

But when I think back before 9-11, what did terrorist mean then - was it what we feel today?  I don’t think it was.  I think it was Ted Kaczynski, it was Eric Robert Rudolph, it was Tim McVey – terrorists for sure, Rudolph was the Olympic bomber in case you forgot.  Why did these men hate America so much?  Have folks in the middle east always hated us?  Maybe, maybe not.  When we think about the two sovereign nations that we invaded, Iraq and Afghanistan, what was the goal, the governments of those countries were horrible hateful ass wagons and probably deserved to be deposed.  BUT, and I say BUT both of those regimes were regimes we created in sovereign countries.  We funneled billions into Afghanistan when they were engaging the USSR.  We funneled billions more into Iraq when they were engaging Iran.  Then what, they go from ally to foe, overnight.  How many times would it take you getting stabbed in the back and tossed under the bus before you start to think, hey wait minute here…….. there seems to be a trend here – the United States could start to look like a terrorist to the common folks of those countries. 

Sorry, I diverted a bit.  I wanted to say that since 9-11 of 2001 one million seven hundred and forty two thousand five hundred and twenty three souls have perished as a result of the attacks of that date.  1,742,523 dead as a result of the attacks.  That is the equivalent of every man, woman and child in the states of Alaska, North Dakota and Wyoming combined.  Or the cities of Austin TX, or Charlotte NC or the City of Mickey Mouse in Orlando.  This is our legacy folks, we lost 2,977 and we caused the extinguishment of 1.7 million souls in retribution.  That does not include ours or our allies military losses, so the number is probably closer to 1.8 million.  Playing with my calculator that comes out to 604 souls dead for every one of the ones we lost on 9-11.  Talk about kicking some fucking ass - holy shit!  What other analogy could we use where the odds are 604 to 1?  There are no analogies to that because here in the real world NOTHING is that lopsided – 604 to 1 WTF?   

I don’t care who they were, what their nationality was, what their religion was or what color eyes they had.  I, for one, will NEVER be convinced that all of them were combatants of the group Al-Qaeda.  Hell the best estimate are less than 20,000 members total over the 25 year life of the organization.  Even if you added in the Muslim Brotherhood, who have been around since 1928 and Hezbollah and Hamas, we still don’t even get close to the 1.8 million number.  I am in no way advocating that we should have done nothing.  I am only thinking maybe we did not take the correct course of action.  Neither Afghanistan nor Iraq did anything to the United States.  Terrorists called Al-Qaeda did, and I am saying maybe, just maybe, we should have just tracked down offending bad guys, regardless of location and feelings of whatever government that ruled the country they were hiding in and terminated them with extreme prejudice.  Then maybe, just maybe, we would not be in the position we are now, having most of the world hating us and us contemplating yet another crazy fucking boondoggle war. 

We just cannot afford to be engaged in another war.  We cannot afford it financially, we cannot afford it militarily, we cannot afford it politically and we cannot afford to have our reputation tarnished any further internationally.  What is happening in Syria is HORRIBLE, it is freaking HORRIBLE!  There is no doubt about it!  BUT what is our interest there?  I have heard the words humanitarian relief bandied about, due to the women and children, to which I say BULLSHIT!  If we as a country cared about providing humanitarian relief we would have stopped the genocide in Rwanda.  I am sure you remember that, a million men, women and children were slaughtered!  Or maybe Dafur, but there were only 400 thousand who died there.  In both cases, the United States did nothing…… WHY?  I think the why is that there was no oil under those places.  They are located outside the region where our primary oil supply originates.  That has to why we give a shit about the countries of the middle east -- what other reason could there be?     

I was also thinking about a couple interviews I watched with Russian President Vladimir Putin.  It scared the shit out of me when I realized that he was making more sense than my own President.  I am sure you have seen them, but he asked a lot of questions that I don’t think we have answers to yet – hell we are not even asking the questions!  I feel we need those answers before we can make informed decisions.  Our ability to rush to judgement and make important military based decisions has a bad track record since 9-11.  I think we have been so focused on retribution that we may be missing a larger point – we are the United States.  We do not invade foreign nations.  We are, or used to be, the ones who had a moral and ethical base to our national decisionmaking.  I don’t feel that anymore, although some fanatics flew some planes and killed three thousand people, we have turned that around and are responsible for causing the deaths of 1.8 million more – retribution at a whole new level!

I had a string on FB about our potential role in Syria.  It was an interesting string for sure.  I have a couple of old Navy buddies who are now firefighters, so an analogy popped up about putting out fires.  While I agree the fire needs put out in Syria, I argued that I would not expect one of them to drive down from Maine or Massachusetts to put out a fire at my neighbor’s house.  What is happening in Syria is HORRIBLE!  It is, and shouldn’t it be just as horrible to their neighbors.  Why not let those who are better suited and better positioned to lend assistance on that fire? 

This eye for an eye path we have been on has proven to be BULLSHIT!!  What about turning the other cheek, what happened to that.  I think we have more than settled the score.  So, the day after  President Assad of Syria’s birthday I ask – haven’t we done enough, enough killing, enough alienating, enough damage to our reputation, enough harm to our young men and women serving on the Military, enough money wasted abroad that could have been used here, enough erosion of our souls – haven’t we done enough?