I know that many people have stopped using Facebook, often for good reason. I still put this blog on it every day, and scroll through it, responding to friends when they post some accomplishment or disappointment. I also have taken to look at much of what is put on Facebook, whether by bots or real people, to showcase political or sociological positions. In particular, I have trained the Facebook algorithm to think that I must be a right winger or Christian nationalist, so that I can see what the other side is thinking, or what the other side wants you to think they are thinking.

While my Facebook posts only go to my “friends”, the posts that I look at go out to the entire world, and get hundreds or thousands of likes or comments. Here is my own polling analysis: a year ago, these posts would receive overwhelmingly positive comments, agreeing with the post. Now, the comments seem to be by and large the opposite. If my analysis is correct, the right wing has clearly lost its mojo and this should be reflected in November election results.

The current postings seem to emphasize two different trends. One, of course, is to call the Democrats communists and socialists, and radical leftists. We see this not only from Facebook bot posts, but also in the speeches of leading Republican politicians, such as the President and the Speaker of the House. Bizarre, but true.

The other trend is more troubling. That is the declaration that Islam is the cult of Satan, that every Muslim is a terrorist waiting to perform a homicidal act, that Islam is not a religion but a political movement and that the Constitutional protection of the freedom of religion simply does not apply to Islam. That Muslims should not be allowed into the country, that those here should not be allowed to run for public office, that each of those already in public office should not only be impeached and thrown of out their positions, that they all should be deported, that mosques in the United States should all be demolished. That anyone who does not agree with the dangers that all Muslims create for real Americans is just kidding himself.

I do see a lot of posts which purport to praise the Christian religion. They might talk about Jesus as the only route to heaven, or about how you should live by the Bible and ignore anything else. And of course how the United States is a Christian nation. I don’t see many of the pro-Christian posts which are directed against Jews, but in the comments, you tend to see a lot of comments from people who are clearly antisemitic and/or anti-Israel. Some of these comments can be vicious, others just plain silly. But within the comments on these Christian nationalist posts, you also see a lot of philo-semitism from people who just love Jews, or just love Israel. Most leave it at that; I don’t see posts that talk about Israel as a necessary step on the path to the rapture. But when comments mention Muslims, they are all one-sided. No one seems to be philo-Islam; no one that I see.

We live in a country where free speech is considered a right, at least by those who are not rabid supporters of Donald Trump. We also live in a country where some regulation of free speech has long been approved by our Courts, whether it is the false yelling of “Fire!!” in a crowded theater, or putting “obscene” material in front of children. We also live at a time when the question of regulation or self-regulation of sites such as Facebook are continually on the political agenda. There is obviously no easy answer as to what type of speech should be permitted, and what types should be banned. This argument will continue, and go back and forth, probably forever.

Another, related issue is the question of the Constitutional rights of a free press, and whether Donald Trump has violated the rights of MSNOW, CNN and Politico (and the major networks in the recent past as well) by denying them White House access. His actions are presumably unconstitutional, but we will see what our courts, and our biased Supreme Court has to say about this, I am sure.

Trump doesn’t like these venues because they publish “fake news”, which they don’t, and because they don’t agree with virtually anything he says or does. They are the opposition press, and in totalitarian countries, the opposition press is banned, and a free press disregarded. Trump has not banned the opposition press, he has just banned them from access to certain places and has made it impossible for them to ask questions like other outlets can.

The question keeps arising whether news outlets have a responsibility to be balanced, to put forth the position, say, of Trump as well as the position of his opponents without editorializing. But relocate this argument to Nazi Germany: this theory in Nazi Germany would have told a news outlet that it had to say that Hitler says that Jews are vermin, and the local rabbis say they disagree, so you decide, we take no position.

There is no question that MS NOW is anti-Trump. So am I, and I wish that all news organizations were. I don’t want MS NOW to become neutral. CNN tried to become neutral by bringing on Republican apologists like Scott Jennings, to rebut what more liberal pundits were saying, and accomplished two things: in effect, putting on “conservatives” who were backed into corners but felt obliged to spout nonsense, and at the time, convincing me not to watch CNN in order to avoid Scott Jennings (and others, but mainly Scott Jennings). Fox News did it another way, by saying that they were “balanced”, but then ignoring what they were saying, and remaining very pro-GOP; eventually, they solved this conundrum by dropping the word “balanced” from their self-description. Newsmax, the most right wing source with its own cable channel, decided to become the MS NOW of the right. But the only way to do this was to bad mouth and try to make fun of everything that Trump’s opponents said, and glorifying everything that Trump himself said. No objectivity, no attempts to reach truth, just a try to make money off polarization.

Obviously, I look at this with my own political bias. But, guess what. My political bias is based on objectivity – so perhaps it doesn’t even qualify as a bias. Often in today’s America, there is political right and political wrong. And the Trump opposition is virtually always on the side of the political right. That isn’t my opinion; that is fact. But how to make it clear that it is fact, and not opinion?

As Shakespeare would say (and in fact did say) “Aye, there’s the rub”. (Didn’t he?)