I have long noted that the one of the major changes in our society over the last decade has been the incredible empowerment of the stupid, the ill informed and the mentally disturbed. And these often crazed individuals have been weaponized to terrorize and troll the enemies of various right wing figures including one former President.

And here is a good example. This single individual using an ID blocker so he could call repeatedly, called various members of Congress more than twelve thousand times with dire threats and apparently in an obvious rage. What concerns me and concerns me a lot is “Did it take that many calls for him to be arrested?” Do misbehaving loons get a couple of hundred of these harassing phone calls with no action being taken?

But there are other implications. How do you expect people to work in congressional offices, to run for office or even participate in a public forum with these kinds of depraved loons running about. How many other phone calls did he make? And how many of his brethren are out there busy dialing up new people to make miserable? It is not every human being who has a thick enough skin to take phone calls from crazy people. And these harassing phone calls are crimes but how seriously does law enforcement take them?

This is where technology has brought us?? To make stupid people powerful?? To take the demented fools out of the bars and the institutions and give them an electronic tool kit to pervert the course of government??

We as a society need to think about this. We cannot have a functioning society with a large number of people devoted to making sure things don’t work – and there are a lot of them out there right now.

Democracy depends on participation by a learned and intelligent citizenry. But those voices can be drowned out by the deranged and the conspiracy minded. The most basic adherence to morality and ethics demands that we place limits on how much harassment and just plain lunacy interferes with the process of our lives.

We were promised an electronic paradise and what we got was a dystopian nightmare where the most pitiful crazed among us rule. We can and must do better. For when those who are unwilling to subject themselves to the misery and pain of our current public life flee, who will remain to govern us?

James Alan Pilant

https://www.yahoo.com/news/man-pleads-guilty-making-more-223803596.html