The Enemy is Us: Social Media Versus Democracy

Since its birth in ancient Greece Democracy has been a fragile construct of justice for all.

It has to be defended at all times or it'll end up being a wasteland of human rights under a dictatorship.

American democracy has a history of fighting to maintain our freedoms from foreign and domestic enemies. 

Interesting fact. "We have met the enemy and he is us," first appeared on an Earth Day poster in 1970 while I was tramping through the jungle in Vietnam. The quote later appeared in Pogo. But I digress.

Today, once again, the enemy is us... because we're fighting on political social media killing fields where extremists push lies and misinformation without fear of reprisal. 

Social media has cleaved away at any pretense of civility as people attack one another in online forums full of hate and bigotry. 

A prominent NYU professor, Johnathan Haidt who co-authored a book titled, "The Coddling of the American Mind," describes social media as a coliseum where people go to get entertained, or to entertain themselves with conspiracies.

Lies never traveled this fast before. Misinformation flows 24-hours a day on numerous social media platforms. Fact-checkers just can't keep up and by the time they debunk one conspiracy another pops up from the cesspool of the internet depths called the dark web.

Social media is undermining democracy.

It's plain to see. Trump's coup attempt could never have come so close without social media platforms recruiting right-wing militias and extremists of all stripes.

I've heard pundits and scholars argue that there's a lot of good things about social media and how it's brought millions of people together to do good things.

It's the bad things that worry me.

Do the good things balance out the bad things on social media platforms? I don't think so. Our democracy has never been this fragile, even when we had a Civil War and were invaded by the British in 1812.

The only solution to social media pitting us against one another is for all the media platform owners to monitor (and take action) against lies and violence against others.

That'll never happen. The First Amendment will prevent it. America is doomed to wither away on the fields of toxic politics from within.

Alea iacta est... The die has been cast.