ANALYSIS/OPINION:

So, apparently, Facebook has morphed from a social media giant into a major news gathering and publishing house. First order of business: Shut down conspiracy theorist Alex Jones.

Good luck with that, Zuckerpeople.

Guess that means that all the rest of the millions and millions of crazy posts that remain on Facebook have been vetted, verified and endorsed by company executives.

Hello, slippery slope.

Life is so much easier just sticking with the First Amendment and declaring free speech as the great antiseptic of society. Better than sunlight.

Anybody is free to step out onto the street corner and say the craziest, most vile and offensive things they want. The civilized world either ignores the blithering madman or takes note and carries on.

Eventually, the madman grows tired or loses his voice or simply goes home, grievances aired.

Why on earth would Facebook or anybody else want to step in and declare themselves the thought police, the arbiters of truth? The Soviet Union had Pravda. America has Facebook.

But the funny thing is that Facebook is taking on an even greater responsibility than the actual news gathering and publishing operations do.

While Facebook is busy muting “hate speech” and thwarting “fake news” online, the real media is in an orgiastic frenzy to promote any assembly they can find of neo-Nazis, white supremacists or racists. Literally, these “news” organizations are running out of bullhorns to hand out to these crackpots.

Endless, wall-to-wall coverage of some racist rally in Washington comes just one year after the media did the same thing in Charlottesville, where they whipped up so much attention and rattled so many nerves that one innocent woman got killed, along with two state troopers trying to keep the peace.

In sane, civilized society, everyone knows that nasty, rude, hateful people are simply to be ignored. Not elevated and magnified and analyzed.

You know the only thing more tedious than listening to some rambling madman spew racist nonsense? Listening to a couple of sheltered snowflakes working for National People’s Radio analyze some rambling madman spewing racist nonsense.

Literally, you can feel yourself getting dumber as they speak. And there is no getting those brain cells back.

Meanwhile, Sen. Kamala Harris, a California Democrat and 2020 White House hopeful, delivered a speech last week celebrating the widespread use of “identity politics” that Democrats hope to use to win back the House and Senate.

“Identity politics” is the tactic of dividing people into “identity” groups such as black, white, Hispanic, Asian, female, Muslim or whatever. Once divided into their various labeled train cars, the voters in each car are fed a political message tailored to their specific race, religion or gender.

In the good old days, there was another term for this. It was called “racism.” And good people everywhere in civilized society rejected it.

Of course the media is too absorbed covering the latest irrelevant Klan rally to give the appropriate attention to a sitting United States senator publicly defending racist political tactics on her march to the White House.

Maybe Facebook will shut down her website. But I wouldn’t bet on it.

• Contact Charles Hurt at [email protected] or on Twitter @charleshurt.

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