Let’s chat together — The meme-stream today

In a fit of adaptive ethical enthusiasm regarding Mark Zukerberg’s collusion with Donald Trump, our family decided to move our FamChat conversation from FB Messenger to a new platform, unknown to me at the time, Signal. We felt good about our decision. It worked well. So take that Zuck: We will communicate another way.

Well . . . little did we know that Signal is the communication platform choice of gangsters everywhere, including US defence department chiefs. Signal is a little program on your phone and mine. Ya, it’s encrypted, sure. Ya the US Department of Defence has one of the most sophisticated and secure communication systems in the world. Ya, the system is easily available to defence department officials on at home and on the road. And ya, I wonder how easily a clever 14-year-old could obtain the launch codes using Signal.

These guys (and in this case they proudly identify as male) are not playing in a neighbourhood park sandbox. They are playing with human lives, the destiny of nations, and of the machinations and manifestations of warfare. People die as a consequence of decisions these clowns make. Obviously,  those present on the call require extremely high security to avoid sharing time sensitive information with enemies and others unfriendly to the state. At least, one would think so. Maybe not.

Possibly the information was not classified — not sure if these clowns know how to determine this — likely it was. Jeffrey Goldberg, editor-in-chief of The Atlantic Magazine was “inadvertently” added to the Signal chat. Let us all chant together, “what were they thinking?” And why did no one notice? How stupid is that?

As for Goldberg himself, editor of one of the finest media publications around — and certainly no friend of MAGA types and the White House administration, the best response comes from Pete Hegseth himself: Goldberg is “a deceitful and highly discredited so-called journalist, who has made a profession of peddling hoaxes time and time again: ‘Russia, Russia, Russia’; ‘The fine people on both sides’ hopes, or ‘suckers and losers’ hopes. (These actually sound like Trump soundbites, right Pete? I think you got mixed up here.) “He peddles in garbage, that’s what he does.”

Breathtaking, simply breathtaking.

Anyway, enough chat. Enjoy how the meme-stream has responded.