Sunday, February 25, 2018

Still Stirring The Pot

By Sniffles

It's unclear to us cats if Mark Zuckerberg and the folks over at Facebook are true-blue Americans or Russian sympathizers. But before we got too umbrage-y about it, we always reminded ourselves that we were on Twitter — which may not be any better.

Then Twitter started cleaning up Russian bots, prompting the right-wing nutcases to complain about "censorship," and we thought, okay — that's a point for their side. (We also wondered why right wingers would worry about the First Amendment rights of Russian-origin accounts that weren't even human, but never mind.)

But Russia hasn't given up. The bots sprang up in droves in defense of the NRA after the Parkland, Florida, Valentine's Day massacre, further reminding us that A, they're still at it, and B, the NRA is in danger of being unmasked as a bunch of Russia-loving traitors. But let's save B for later. We need to deal with A right now, and here's what they're doing:

Allegedly "progressive" Russian bots are popping up to take the place of the banned accounts, with the purpose of sowing further discord among Democrats. We cats haven't seen any of them in our own threads (yet), but others whom we follow have. Vladimir Putin obviously knows that it's still worthwhile to pit Bernie Bros against Hillary supporters, because 2018 is shaping up to be a terrible year for Republicans and he must protect his investment in Donald Trump. It's only one tactic, mind you, but it's happening.

We don't pretend to be Twitter experts, but if you run into any of these jerks trying to pick internecine fights, here's what you do:

1. Block them.
2. Don't fall for Democrat-versus-Democrat squabbles. Don't engage. Mute or block.
3. Stay positive and concentrate on promoting our party's core values: equality, diversity, inclusion and opportunity.

Last but not least, stick together and spread the word. We cats PURR.

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