Account of 2016 Election as a cautionary tale and cause for individuals to rise up and exercise their democratic rights as the 2020 election approaches.

1. The Great White Hack. Trump is the "White Hat" Hacker of US Democracy
March 10th, 2019
By: E.B. Holmes
So-called "White Hat" hackers get paid to expose flaws in networked computer systems. I
would like to generalize the term to include democratic institutions, Corporate-owned Mass
Media, and "Social Surveillance" which is my term for "Social Media" (eg FaceBook).
"White Hats" use their hacker skills that otherwise could be concealed and maliciously
employed to expose security risks to the customers that hire them. Little did we know in the Fall
of 2016, that together with Steven K. Bannon, billionaire donors, and further aided by
commercialized social surveillance systems willfully prepared for exploit by Mark Zuckerberg
(Facebook), that America's democracy itself was about to be exposed to one of the most
uncontrolled and interesting experiments in her short history -- a public hacking of democratic
institutions in full public view, exposing some of the flaws of our human nature, Politics, Mass
Media and our Democratic systems. The unexpected 2016 presidential result in particular
required a mixture of at least 3 ingredients which, while predictable, were not being discussed by
our Mass Media, possibly because they themselves were major beneficiaries:
(1) The US Pay-to-Play Political system.
(2) The "Corporate Media Machine" co-opted for entertainment.
(3) Unchecked exploitation of Social Surveillance (ie Facebook)
The above ingredients explosively combined and propelled a perhaps unwilling administration to
the US Presidency. Let's begin with the pay-to-play political system. In 2016 there was a
groundswell of support for an authentic grassroots effort to displace the status-quo in
Washington. The backdrop consisted of disillusionment with Obama following two terms in
which "Change" didn't materialize for wide swathes of the US that continued to de-industrialize
in absence or real support from Washington. Backers of Bernie Sanders organized and
challenged the well established Clinton camp in a foreshadowing, but ultimately unsuccessful
bid for the Democratic nomination. At the Democratic Party convention, Clinton was nominated
based on SuperDelegates, an opaque and biased element of the Party apparatus that favored
Clinton based on pay-to-play politics, and that ultimately backfired on Clinton in the General
Election.
At the same time that the Democratic Party was being cleaved in twain, the Republican party
was attempting to nominate a traditional establishment candidate along the lines of Cruz, Rubio
or Bush. During this time what I refer to as the "Corporate Media Machine" (along the lines
defined by Chomsky in Manufacturing Consent) was ramping up Media coverage of long-shot
candidate Trump in exchange for massive commercial gain due to boosted ratings. This
candidate was known to the public from decades of scandal, countless interviews including
public musings of a presidential bid, and a run of reality TV programming. The candidate was
both well aware of the hypocrisy of the media and also of how to benefit from it. In fact, at
almost every turn, during grassroots rallies and TV interviews, he spoke directly to Media
executives about the ratings that he was providing for them in a blatant quid pro quo. In

2. summary, the candidate was already well positioned to exploit ingredients (1) and (2). The
trigger of this explosive combination of ingredients was provided by the Alt Right figure of
Stephen K. Bannon, aided by ingredient (3): the unchecked exploitation of Social Media which I
redefine here as Social Surveillance (eg Facebook).
Social Surveillance (eg FaceBook) had greatly aided campaigns before -- just take a look at
Obama's back-to-back successes utilizing the enormous platform. In the 2008 and 2012
elections, the $800M and $1B cash pile that the campaign brought in was provisioned to leverage
systematic targeting and influencing of voters. Looking outside of the US, the platform was
widely lauded for toppling regimes in Egypt and Tunisia during the Arab Spring. Little thought
was given at the time at the implications of the technology on our home shores. Anyone who
doubts how surveillance-oriented FaceBook is should read comments by NSA figures and those
who actually designed and implemented the software -- without a doubt it was and is intended to
vacuum up, store and distribute it's users personal information, usually unbeknownst to them, for
the purposes of monetizing it. The fact that the data was "weaponized" was coincidental. The
practice continues to this day until the public decides to leave the platform en-masse.
Much more can and should be said about the three ingredients above which combined
explosively to unwittingly propel a narcissist property developer to the US presidency. What is
important is that "White Hat Hack" occurred out in the open and in public exposing deep flaws
in our human nature, our corporate and media systems and pay-to-play political process that fails
to support truly democratically elected candidates such as Sanders. What is left for us to do now
is to impose checks on our human nature, our technology (as is done more widely in Europe
today) and our Politics, Corporations and Mass Media. In the case of November 2016, and the
ensuing years the phenomena has been laid bare in a way that I hope will harden our democracy's
defenses and prepare my generation to see the pros and cons of our connected world and our ever
tribal tendencies.
I would like to hear your thoughts on this brief article in the comments section below.
Image: https://www.perthnow.com.au/business/ceos/republicans-ted-cruz-and-john-kasich-team-
up-in-stop-trump-deal-ng-66a20154f4b478bf6e677a6db10c9e66