Rant alert!

Trigger warning: I’m about to RANT!

It won’t take long, so if you’re sensitive, skip ahead to the next section.

Ready?

Here goes: What the HECK! A left-wing New York Times columnist late last month sort of agreed with a right-wing senator!

And they’re both WRONG!

Pant, pant, pant.

All right, I’m calming down. What both of these people were thinking might be a good idea was a ban on young people using social media. Does this sound even remotely possible?

Obviously not. It’s like promoting sexual abstinence instead of education. Not gonna happen.

I’m not saying that overdosing on Instagram or Facebook (or unprotected sex) can’t be harmful. The stats are there. Social media use and mental problems do seem to be linked. You can argue causation or correlation, but the numbers are there.

But banning users won’t solve the problem. We need to regulate suppliers.

Here’s my favorite villain: the ironically named section 230 of the Communications Decency Act that protects internet platforms from liability for indecent user posts.

(Side note to comic book fans: Yes, this law does sound like something from Bizarro World where everything is supposed to be the opposite of what it is in our world. Have you ever wondered why you don’t see competent, honest politicians in Bizarro World comics? It would make sense.)

If internet platforms were responsible for what goes out — the same way that newspapers and radio and TV are responsible — they might actually pay some attention to what’s going on and do something about it.

Until that happens, young internet dabblers must be taught to use screen-sized condoms on their devices and always get consent before viewing others’ posts.

Rant over. Now on to a less controversial topic...

Election denial. At last there may be a way to persuade stubbornly deluded people who believe elections are stolen and the government is coming to eat their children.

Well, maybe it’s not a perfect solution. But there’s at least a starting point for sanity.

This occurred to me after reading about Shasta County, California, canceling its contract with Dominion Voting, the modern, efficient vote-counting company, to instead revert to hand-counting ballots.

I have no idea why they wanted to do this since the conservatives running the county won their elections. Maybe they couldn’t believe they won?

So what happens when they hand count the ballots and get the same result? Might that not be a clue that the election wasn’t rigged? Will they claim that left hands doing the counting were corrupted by Chinese implants?

I say let them hand count all they want (as long as we watch them do it). Let them enjoy finding the dead people who stuffed ballot boxes. Pay for the video cameras at ballot dropbox sites.

Maybe, just maybe, a touch of reality will dawn. I’m not counting on it, but it’s worth a shot.

Meanwhile, point out that their children haven’t been eaten yet.

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