Congress and Big Tech: Hypocrisy and Blindness all on Sides

https://breakpoint.org/big-tech-families-and-the-role-of-government/

As we've come to expect, Stonestreet is less than helpful in addressing the salient issues. This time it's about families, technology, and the state. It continues to astonish me that parents have so little oversight or influence over their children that they are unable to curtail the problems associated with Smartphones and social media.

One will find the problems and problem scenarios are overwhelmingly dominated by children in the public school system and as such these are children that are already steeped in an anti-Christian environment. Christian parents sending their children to such temples of secularism, materialism, and godlessness are already seriously compromised.

As far as the lost world trying to address these issues – it's a moment when some of the most severe contradictions of liberal and capitalist society come to the fore. Market economics often operate on a utilitarian basis and in many instances the demands of the market are by definition moral. If people want it, they can't be wrong. The vox populi is the vox dei. It's absolutised democracy in action and yet this is one of many cases where it self-destructs. So it is with all the systems of this age and the paradigms of lost and fallen man.

There is no real solution to this. We need not fall back on the fictions of libertarian ideology to be critical of government intervention and yet given the failures of society and the basic institutions of the family – really, what do you expect? Out of desperation people will turn to the authorities for guidance in the form of legislation.

Has Zuckerberg et al. profitted from the manipulation of teens and others? Of course. That's the model. This is nothing new. Capitalism is a lost system that possesses no morality apart from profit. The individual is on their own. Youth culture arose in the post-war context because of the degree of disposal income that was available. The culture developed because businessmen wanted to exploit it. It's nothing new.

This too demonstrates the incongruity of worrying about questions like this and fretting over the role of government even while these same folks (like Stonestreet) are happy to have the government clampdown on drug use or obscenity in the public square. Their thinking is muddled to say the least.

So we can agree that Zuckerberg is evil and the scum of the earth but I had to laugh reading this piece. The Heritage Foundation is going to pretend that it stands for some kind of morality? It's a completely compromised organisation that has long influenced Republican ideology in the realms of economic and foreign policy. To say the Heritage Foundation has blood on its hands would be an understatement. It has no moral standing and possesses no compass of ethical guidance.

And Lindsay Graham? This deceived and evil man has promoted war at every turn. He is a monster, a ghoul, a cannibal that feeds on the suffering of others and is whore for the military industry.

And what of Blackburn? Is she going to pretend that she has some vested moral interest in the state of American society? She's one of the senators that moved to block the DEA from its attempts to curtail the spread of opioid distribution and abuse. To many Americans that have followed the issue, this Right-wing feminist that (like Lindsey Graham) masquerades as a Christian is at least partially responsible for tens of thousands of deaths.

It was hard to get past these points and then take Stonestreet seriously. But then, he's not really a serious person is he?

What this is really about is politics. Don't be fooled by the ridiculous quotes from frauds like Charles Colson. No, this is about the GOP wanted to knock down the tech giants a few pegs. They love billionaires but dislike people like Zuckerberg because they're perceived as being too Left-wing. The irony here is that they're really not. At their core, leaders like Zuckerberg, Bezos, and Cook are capitalists. Their authoritarian streak is motivated not by ideology but by the interests of profit, of controlling markets. The promotion of liberal ideals is in many respects an outworking of the hyper-individualist ethics produced by the economic theory. Or to put it another way, capitalism easily morphs into a self-sustaining and comprehensive worldview. In fact it is many on the Right and especially within the boundaries of the Christian Right that are confused on these issues – often promoting libertarian capitalism while failing to realize it is fundamentally at odds with the kind of authoritarian state they envision and the pedagogic role they wish for the play in society.

As usual Stonestreet fails to differentiate between American society at large and the Church and this deliberate blurring along with the Evangelical calls to influence society have led to this kind of confusion. The Church has under this false and heretical theological paradigm let its guard down and has after a generation become in many day to day respects all but indistinguishable from the larger society and its values concerning money, work, technology, the family, the definition of success, as well as allegiance to the state and so forth.

If these destructive tech habits have entered the Church then blame the spineless hirelings and false shepherds that lead it. And this would include those like Stonestreet that lead influential 'ministries'.

As far as the world... what did you expect? Lost people are by definition mad and if this technology has amplified their immorality and insanity, then what did you think would happen?

To talk about state intervention is not only to confuse the Christian position, it's a waste of time – a case of the blind leading the blind. Let the dead bury their dead. If the state wants to intervene, then fine. What does that have to do with us?

But to approve this move and call for it (in light of the present decadence) as Stonestreet does – what folly, what a misguided sense of Christian calling and duty.

If you want to learn to live like a Christian in this cultural moment one can safely say – don't listen to BreakPoint, or if you do, use it not as a guide but a foil.