ZUCK YOU: The Excesses of Corporate Media Giants...

I have ocasionally in past expressed my extreme distaste for both Mark Zuckerface and his FACEPLANT/META social media empire. As an admitted 'optimistic pessimist' (a la Arthur Schopenhauer and A.A. Milne's 'Eeyore'), this has often gained me if not downright criticism, then blank looks of utter indifference from acquaintances to whom I have addressed this severe personal disapprobation.

They all, naturally, use FACEPLANT, and like the Titanic steaming full-speed ahead towards what appears to be an insignificant little iceberg that may be casually brushed aside, they continue to see only the very tips of their noses (that are otherwise stuck in a FACEPLANT-stare rictus, of course). It doesn't take three active brain cells to understand that the many (superficial) benefits of that wretched den of narcissistic vanity (Faceplant and the other large social media venues) may be useful but they completely fail to understand that ANY commercial activity of the scope, popularity and size of the FACEPLANT/META platform will ultimately become the very poster-child of mega-corporate control and power over the 'common people'.

Thus it is with any super-sized corporation you can possibly think of, including STARF**KS, all corporate financial institutions, most high-profile charity causes such as Wounded Warriors, the Shriners Hospital Foundation, AARP, Microsoft, and even DAV (Disabled American Veterans). The list of these powerful monster corporations constantly wheedling money from you these days is endless, but FACEPLANT/META is perhaps among the most egregious in terms of what it does to vulnerable, susceptible young minds.

The absolute power and influence of these organisations over all of us 'little people' is truly mind-boggling, if anyone would refrain from their 'consume mass quantities' spending habits long enough to realise that they are hopelessly fettered captives of a massive, cancerous exploitation scheme, whose unearthly 'sucking noises' from all the hard-sell marketing are the loudest detectable sounds within the human dynamic hearing range. If only human beings would exercise their inherent critical thinking potentials to figure all this out for themselves!

Alas, most can't, and it's not always due to a lack of intelligence, either. Humanity has been a mindless flock of two-footed sheep since the dawn of recorded history (and far before even that) and it's this fact that human beings are a bipolar mix of great humane potentials and utterly base, subhuman depravity, that continually enables the smartest among us to prey on everyone else.

No amount of religious goody-gooding, charitable behavior, altruistic good works or kindly intentions will ever...emphasis EVER...change this basic nature of our fellow erstwhile 'highest evolved' sentient creatures. When one combines masses of extremely poor people together with widespread levels of marginal intelligence, the result is exactly what we have today in America: roughly 98% of the nation's population utterly dominated by a small handful of smart cookies (too many of them with JDs) that are so obscenely wealthy that even their tiniest farts smell like fragrant, expensive Parisian perfume.

This near-obscene wealth is the case with the Zuck and his doctor-wife, whose aggregate collective net wealth is estimated at roughly USD$ 120 billion. According to reliable sources, Zuck is now the 7th wealthiest person in the entire world. [Ms. Chan, regardless of any pre-nups she may have agreed to, likely stands to gain roughly half of that, should they ever end their marital association; I am sure Zuck pays millions (perhaps well over 100 mil) in legal fees each year to see to it that his fortune is protected from all potential comers (including divorce proceedings, as well)].

And how exactly has the Zuck become so obscene wealthy? By preying on the narcissism, vanity and gullibility of you and I, who simple-mindedly use FACEPLANT/META as we would any other addicting substance…without a thought as to its possible greater liabilities and consequences. Of course, there are other ‘players’ out there who pose an even greater threat than Zuck’s FACEPLANT/META empire, namely the Chinese mega-giants (including Tik-tok, which is ‘only’ #6 on a list of the 10 largest!)and Bill Gates Microsoft empire

The 10 largest social media companies in the world, and what they do:

• #1. Meta Platforms – $115.6 Billion Annual Revenue (2021) ...

• #2. YouTube – $28.8 Billion Annual Revenue (2021) ...

• #3. WeChat –17 Billion Annual Revenue (2021) ... (Chinese)

• #4. LinkedIn –$10 Billion Annual Revenue (2021) ...

• #5. Twitter –$5 Billion Annual Revenue (2021) ...

• #6. TikTok – $4.6 Billion Annual Revenue (2021) ... (Chinese)

• #7. Snap Inc. – $4.12 Billion Annual Revenue (2021) ...

• #8. Pinterest – $2.578 Billion Annual Revenue (2021) ...

OK. It’s pretty clear (even to the least mindful among us) that the larger the platform, the more wealth, power and control a corporation has over our lives and the more of our money ends up in the pockets of the major stockholders. Money that in Zuckerface’s case, is helping him and his amassed personal fortune to construct an almost unimaginably huge Hawai’ian ‘retreat’ on the island of Kauai (1,700 acres of prime coast/beachfront) that it has been estimated will end up costing the Zuck in excess of $270 million!

Needless to relate, the Kauai'ians weren't exactly thrilled by all this activity on Kauai's Northeast Shore (just as the Molokai'ians weren't thrilled with anti-virus software giant John McAfee's activities on that island's luxuriously secluded East End, back in 2007 or so), until they suddenly became well-aware that money speaks rather loudly, albeit sweetly.

Perhaps you’ll recall an article I wrote well over a year ago about the immense property development that ex-president Barack Obama and his wealthy sports buddy, Marty Nesbitt, built on Oahu at the site of the former ‘Magnum P.I.’ mansion at Waimanalo (after tearing down and demolishing the historic estate’s famous old residence). Anyone who still thinks that politicians (of any ilk) work for simple Congressionally approved salaries has to be a simpleton, of course, since high political office in America works like a fulcrum to jack up personal gain to generally unpublicized levels. E.g. Joe Biden (and his son Hunter), Barrack Obama, Nancy Pelosi, Vermont Senator Bernie Saunders (who was literally penniless and sleeping on friends’ couches before he became a career pol, and who now owns over three huge and costly estates), etc., etc., etc.

The story about Obama co-purchasing a huge chunk of Hawai’ian real estate was irritating enough to learn of, but this latest operation by the Zuckface to develop 1,700 acres of prime Kauwai’an turf (in a protected area on the island's northest coastcoast) for his own personal use transcends the Obama story of wretched excess by an order of magnitude.

As someone who has had former ‘living experience’ on Moloka’i, back in the early 2000s, this news vastly disturbs me well beyond the sheer indignation that Big Money (which typically sweeps-in and rapes Hawai'ian lands after a small army of attorneys establishes a beachhead first) may evoke. This rapacious exploitation of Hawai'i has, of course, been going on since the mid-1700s but that doesn't make it any the less intolerable or justifiable. Think 'white settlers taking over and occupying Indigneous People's traditional lands', if you need a basis for comparison. At least the American Indians are today getting a bit more compensation for their losses; not so at all for luckless Native Hawai'ians.

I strongly suggest you take a few minutes to read some of the material at the end of this piece yourself that relates to all this and come to your own conclusions about the limits of wealth, power and control (especially those of you who still regard FACEPLANT as merely an inocuous way to find out where an ex-GF is now living or a means of collecting ‘likes’ from your social peers that it facilitates).

While America is clearly today under an ominous threat from the neo-Marxism that imposes the Marxist/Marcusian ideologies of the brain-dead ‘Woke’ on us all, what most fail to understand is that an almost equally dire threat is posed by the wealthy 3% of our nation whose arbitrary dictates utterly control and manipulate us (the ‘hoi polloi’ consumers and slaves of material exploitation).

To say that distracting the common people with cheap trinkets is a classic scheme used by the powerful throughout the centuries to divert the masses and keep them from rebelling (Rome’s ‘bread & circuses’) should be too obvious a trick to even warrant a reiteration. If you've studied history at all, that is, which most haven't.

Exploitation, whether by Marxist intellectuals, black power proponents and/or ‘Critical Theory’ advocates, or super-wealthy & powerful Wall Street Capitalists, is a not-so-subtle form of slavery of the will and subjugation of the thought & sensory processes when it emerges and proliferates in a supposedly ‘free society’, such as ours.

Read the articles referenced below and see if they don’t make you at LEAST a bit indignant, if not upset enough to get off the pot and stop supporting these super-wealthy economic ‘dictators’ with your clicks and tweets…

OH, and as for those who say, “Yes, but the Zuck (and all other powerful ‘corporations’) annually make charitable donations in the hundreds of millions!”, get real! Those ‘charitable’ funds are merely a convenient legal dodge to absolve or alleviate the burden of Federal taxes and penalties on income that would otherwise accrue on their extreme wealth.

There’s no such thing, after all, as ‘pure’ philanthropy; that’s merely a popularly encouraged myth held by the feeble-minded. Such shenanigans to dodge taxes has been a standard  ploy of the super-wealthy since immediate post-Uncivil War days! And in the face of a politically 'weaponised' Federal justice system, the only recourse we have (e.g. prudent financial legal advice) is far too costly for the ordinary person to avail.

In summary, obscene wealth, despite all its sugary frosting, is just that, obscene, and it saddens me to think that Zuckerface’s wife (a genetic inheritor of the wisdoms and sagacity of the Chinese sages that founded China’s ancient civilisation), appears to tacitly condone another ancient Chinese traditional custom…the unbounded, unconstrained acquisition of immense power, wealth and privilege by one's hubby. I would have expected better from a Doctor of Medicine (as Hippocrites reminded us, "First, do no harm", and harm can have a rather wide interpretative latitude)!

[In all fairness, one could make the argument that Ms. Chan at least helps to ameliorate and somewhat modulate her hubby's more Tycoonish ambitions, of course, but it's hard to have $115 BB+ at immediate hand without being somewhat pleasurably affected and/or influenced by all that moolah!...]

As former president Harry S. Truman observed, back in the 50s: “Show me a man who becomes wealthy by being a politician [or powerful socio-economic celebrity] and I’ll show you a crook!” Such observations richly deserve to be etched in stone, if not in our minds!

[Keep in mind that no mention has here been made of Oracle's founder, Larry Ellison, who in 2021 paid about USD $300 MM for essentially almost the entire island of Lanai. That's a whole different major story of wealthly excess and extravagance!]

Here are the articles in reference:

The Obama/Nesbitt Oahu land grab.

The $200 BB Zuckerface Kauai ‘retreat’