Appearing Presidential: Problem Here

I recently came across a post on Facebook from the Moderates for Bernie community, criticizing the way he presented himself at the most recent debate: (Click here for the full article.)

Bernie Sanders committed 2 back-to-back blunders at the beginning of Saturday’s Democratic debate. First, after paying lip service to the Paris attacks in his opening statement, he pivoted to stump speech rhetoric about economic inequality. In contrast, Clinton and O’Malley both focused exclusively on terrorism in their opening statements. [...] Make no mistake, these are bad politics. Both messages appeal to Bernie’s base, but debates provide a unique opportunity to expand the base. And these two answers did not make him seem presidential to voters still on the fence, especially directly after the Paris attacks.

 I commented "The trouble with trying to appear presidential is the sacrifice of intellect. He's not willing to do that."

I still beam with pride over the subtlety of my trolling. But is it really trolling? I got no responses but I did manage to eek out one 'like' so far.

Not many get what I say or write. The example here is that I'm commenting on the author's expectations. The author is correct, but is it really wrong that Bernie wouldn't sacrifice what he knows deep in his heart, just to appeal to under-informed voters? It would be deceptive to do so and it would come back to haunt him later,

He would need to make overgeneralized, inaccurate statements to appear presidential, because as Jon Stewart said: "The problem isn't that Bernie Sanders is a crazy-pants Cuckoo Bird. It's that we've all become so accustomed to stage-managed, focus-group driven candidates that his authenticity comes across as lunacy."

It goes even beyond that. our entire culture has been conditioned to accept as facts not only false information, but inaccuracies, expired time-sensitive data, and short-term conclusions instead of more hazardous long-term conclusions.

Bernie Sanders was roundly criticized for linking climate change to terrorism during the debate, but afterward, fact-checkers found evidence confirming his conclusions.

His unwillingness to sacrifice his integrity to simply appeal to under-informed voters may be his undoing, and it's a very sad situation for our country.

Unfriending on Facebook

I was checking my privacy settings on Facebook this morning and discovered to my dismay that a very long-time personal friend was blocked. I couldn't remember why she was in my block list. Our families have been friends for two generations and we always got along. I just unblocked her, but now I'm wondering why nothing was ever said about it by anyone else when it happened. But I digress.

I accepted the friendship of a few new people. I never met them before and they weren't mutual friends with anyone else I knew on Facebook, and disturbing of all was how attractive they are. It continued to bother me. I assumed they saw something I posted at an AP article, or some other major news post on Facebook, but that I wasn't absolutely certain.

I looked at their profiles and found no mutual friends, and not really anything else either. The major dilemma I have is that once someone brand new on your list of friends gets through your privacy by becoming a friend, they then can see your family and friends, unless you further restrict your privacy settings, rendering yourself almost invisible to even your closest friends.

Facebook should have a multi-tiered friend privacy setting where if you meet someone brand new, you can keep them quarantined for a while by tagging them as an "acquaintance" or if they are friends you want to keep for reasons you don't want to share with family, you might have them in a seprate "network" you can pop in and out of without leaving Facebook.

Unfortunately for now I had to unfriend some people who might have been perfectly fine, or were planning on infiltrating my family to steal identities. I have no clue.