By Laura Ainsworth

With Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg making high-blown pronouncements on his expanded mission of helping us all find purpose and meaning in our lives and his desire to “rewrite the social contract” between us and our government, this is a good time to check out a great satirical film called THE CIRCLE.

It came and went from theaters pretty fast earlier this year, with curiously little promotion --- especially since it starred Tom Hanks and Emma Watson --- but should not be missed. Stream it.

The story is told from the perspective of a young woman who takes a job with a corporation that could be Google or Facebook, run by a CEO (Tom Hanks) who aspires to link us all into a global community, connect us socially, destroy our privacy and any desire for such, ensure conformity, monitor our existence (for our own convenience, of course!), and generally shape society to his own ends. In other words, it’s a horror movie.

Social media does serve valuable functions –- it keeps us in touch with actual friends and helps us find lost loved ones, among other things --- but this movie should serve as a cautionary tale about where we’re being taken. It’s no exaggeration to say we’re heading into an Orwellian world in which cameras can be on us virtually 24/7 and our every keystroke and turn of the steering wheel adds to our personal permanent record. We’re expected to check our phones every 30 seconds or so. Of course, many of us are now so addicted that we live on them, anyway. We measure our popularity by the number of followers and “likes” we have. Is that how Mark Zuckerberg suggests we find meaning in our lives?

Anyway, see the movie. And remember it whenever some revolutionary, “progressive” but, hey, downright practical idea for bettering ourselves comes out of Silicon Valley.

PLEASE LEAVE LAURA A COMMENT BELOW.  SHE READS THEM!

Laura Ainsworth is a fantastic retro jazz singer and comedy writer whose always-tasteful parody songs were heard on “The Mike Huckabee Show.” This summer, she’s releasing her third CD “New Vintage” and a best-of vinyl LP and making her NYC debut Aug. 24th at the Metropolitan Room.  For tickets and more, visit https://www.facebook.com/lauraainsworthsings

By Mike Huckabee

Three of the most liberal state leaders in America (from California, New York and Virginia) are refusing to turn over all “publicly-available voter roll data” to President Trump’s bipartisan Election Integrity Commission. They claim they will not help perpetuate the “myth” of widespread voter fraud by showing the commission the records that, if they are correct, would disprove that there’s widespread voter fraud. Ooooookay. Sounds about as convincing as buying a used car from a particular dealer because he calls himself “Honest John.”

More details at the link on why people who care about honest elections should be outraged that anyone wants to see the voter records to verify that.

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