NEVER Go into the Comments!

 A person- maybe- on a local thread wondered aloud that the us would not survive without billionaires. At first, I laughed. How could someone be so stupid? I've long said that 340 million people in a country allows for millions of idiots and that's just the way it is and must be. It's a maga thing now but always was part of the human condition. You can look it up. History is chockful o' stupid people. 

But on the internet, you never know. They might be trolling. They might be a bot. They might simply be stupid. My first thought was that they were stupid, but I figured it had to be a bot. AI progresses in its fuckery every day. Why not put bots into conversations on extremely local sites? It's all about winning, right? Sure, there are people who will defend Trump on absofuckinglutely  every stupid thing he says or does, and we know from the internet that these people really are out there and have no shame about exposing their ignorance to the world. This is because they believe they are right about Trump being right- about everything- and they want to put themselves out there as knowing something you don't know. You feel sorry for people like that, and you want to help them, but you know you can't. So, you mock 'em and block 'em. Well, that's what I do. You may be different. It's like Maya Angelou may have said, "When someone shows you that they are a pedantic dumbshit- believe them!"

In my early internet education, I noticed that some people would make ridiculous claims and never stand and fight. They'd never defend their position. It reminded me of a fat, old guy who used to come in afternoons at a bar I worked. This guy would regularly blurt out: "...and the Catholic church has a home for pregnant nuns!" He would do this even if he was the only patron at the bar. Who was he trying to provoke? Me? I'm not Catholic. But I was the bartender who would rather have no customers than one weird one. It all paid the same. Thing was, he never elaborated on his statement. It was just something he said- A LOT. Maybe it was just his tic. This particular town, a local resident told me, was for people who were too weird for Chicago. He wasn't lying. 

The internet is often such a town. It's a good place to be weird. You can pretend it's a modern town square, because sometimes it is, but all too often it's a forum for various village idiots to gather to expand their dim horizons without a bartender threatening to cut them off. There is that. Trump long has reminded me of the proverbial drunk at the end of the bar, yet people discount that because he says, "Of course, I don't drink!" OK. You can't believe anything this clown says, but that lie gets a pass? Oh, please....

So, why do we *need* bots when there are so many weirdos doing The Lard's work for free? Got me hanging. Numbers, I guess. Conversation starters- probably. I was pretty certain that the "Chicago Regulars" that rival blogger, Maggie, recently spoke of, might have been 'paid posters'. One of them mentioned to me in private that her only obligation to them was to be there at 7:00 am each morning for the meeting of their Yahoo chat. I asked her to expound on that, and it was like in the movies when someone reveals something accidentally-on-purpose and they walk it back to, "Forget I said that! It was nothing..." OK. But a couple of them would go absolutely bonkers over things like "Shark Week" on The Discovery Channel that made me wonder. 

A world without billionaires? That would be a world with millionaires. And if they are taxed accordingly and contribute to society and capped from expanding into billionaire territory, they'd be fine. They'd live a life of contentment, lacking for nothing. We the people would be better off as well. They aren't doing us any good right now.