As Yogi Berra once quipped (sort of), it is deja vu all over again. The other evening, I got a message from Facebook that I had violated something about their esoteric community standards … their foundational rules and regulations. In some ways, this is familiar territory for me … being punished by Facebook.

But first, some context. On a whim, I once again tried to overcome my third lifetime ban by getting back on Facebook a few weeks ago. As I recall, this was sometime in early May and I’m not sure why I even bothered. I suppose I am a stubborn cuss after all.

Amazingly, it worked. Moreover, all had been going quite well. I was on the precipice of adding my 4,000th new follower when disaster struck. At least I thought it was disaster. Such messages proved disastrous in the past.

Facebook told me that I had posted sonething that was offensive to, or exploitive of, children. Then, they warned me that they took such offenses seriously. As a consequence, that particular post had been eliminated and my continued use of Facebook would be restricted.

My immediate reaction was here we go again. In fact, I started this series of blogs a while back when I thought my Facebook career was at a final end. I had received my third lifetime ban. At the time, I thought any further returns would prove futile so perhaps developing an alternative venue for self expression was in order.

Perhaps this would be the final, final end of my FB career. Perhaps there would be no evasion of this ban though some of their prior banishments had been touted as such … FOREVER! Believe me, I am not that clever but still managed to find ways around that forever part in the past.

I was floored by this latest warning. What could I possibly have posted that would harm children. Okay, some of my posts would upset Donald Trump had he read them, and he is estimated to possess the mental capacity of a nine or ten year old. Could that be my sin?

I was confused. For the life of me, I could think of nothing that might apply. And, of course, their system is utterly useless. You (I) cannot get anything helpful from them, not even the identity of the alleged offending post. At least I couldn’t.

My pessimistic, or should I say cynical, response to my most recent punishment imposed by the lords of social networking is based on a long and frustrating relationship with Facebook’s ‘thought police.’ Perhaps this will be good practice if the MAGA crowd is successful in creating a domestic Gestapo.

That history led me to conclude that their so-called community standards initiative had initially been designed, and was now being administered, by a cabal of  cognitively challenged toddlers. I was convinced that, as opposed to firing unproductive employees, Facebook officials gave their worst reprobates a raise and shifted them to this policing function within the organization.

Now, I have no dispute with the difficulty of this undertaking. The task of ensuring that social media does not descend into a forum of abuse and exploitation is an immensely critical and complex undertaking. I am also aware of just how difficult it might be given the size of these social media platforms. My beef has always been that Facebook didn’t seem to have a clue about how to pursue this objective, nor any real interest in learning the necessary skills to do so.

Why do I say that? Perhaps my negativity is based on the fact that I had been subject to three previous lifetime bans by Facebook. Got that … three lifetime bans! These so-called final banishments typically came at the end of several earlier penalties of increasing severity. Apparently, I was a notorious serial offender. The problem was that their rehabilitation program was pretty much useless  … I could never figure out what I had done wrong. If they can’t help you with that, you are flying blind. It is only a matter of time before they drop the big one. And drop they did.

These draconian punishments were executed despite my popularity on the platform. My first came down when I had accumulated some 30,000 followers and was adding about another 100 each and every day. Getting back on (and restarting from scratch), I quickly was back up to 7,000 before the hammer fell again. I found a way to get started a third time (again from scratch). This time, I soon reached 5,000 followers before I was deemed unsuitable by those protecting Facebook’s integrity and so-called standards.

Such a record would suggest that I must be some kind of depraved sociopath who should not be permitted to walk about in society without an ankle monitor. From the feedback I have received from others, however, I am generally considered to be an amiable, even amusing guy who is kind to animals and who is rather obsessive about closely following society’s rules. Really, I used to have quibbles with my former tax guy because he always was pushing me to bend the IRS rules … in my favor of course. I, however, insisted on following the tax rules to the letter (most of the time at least).

Sure, I always have posted a lot of political stuff. And true, I think that Trump is a pathological narcissistic and socio-path, but who doesn’t. Virtually all my political posts were merely regurgitated offerings I first found on Facebook itself. There you have it. I am little more than a content redistributor, not some provocateur, agitator, or wild anarchist.

But here’s the most frustrating thing. I could never understand what I was doing wrong. I had the hardest time figuring out why the FB authorities considered me so wicked and deplorable. You know, how about trying a declarative sentence or two, just for kicks. Something like: You could do better by …(fill in the blank).

For example, I almost never could unravel which post was deemed offensive. And forget about determining why it was deemed evil. The feedback given by their automated system involved little more than boilerplate jargon, ambiguous generalizations likely prepared by attorneys that could support any decision they wanted to make. It struck me as little more than universal niceties like be kind to one another. I never got a response that specifically told me what I had done and why it was unacceptable.

I do recall one past offensive post that got me banned (for life). I used a well traveled picture of the iconic black American athlete Jesse Owens receiving one of his four gold medals during the 1936 Olympic games in Berlin. At the time, I focused on this one since someone had criticized President Roosevelt for failing to invite Jesse, the hero of these games, to the White House … an invitation that other white athletes had received. While I agreed this was an egregious oversight, I thought some context would help. I simply pointed out that FDR was in a difficult political position. In order to pass his legislative agenda to get the country out of a global depression, Roosevelt needed the support of Southern, but racist, Democrats. Being President is not easy unless, of course, you are a dimwit like Donald Trump. Then, it is little more than a fortuitous opportunity for some easy cons.

I pondered long and hard about what could be offensive in this post featuring Jesse. Then, it hit me. There was a third athlete in the frame. He was white and giving the standard Nazi salute of that era. Perhaps the Facebook algorithms were structured to automatically determine that any post containing that particular image automatically promoted Fascism. Who knows? They easily could do something that stupid. 

I am 95 percent certain that this white athlete was the German who actually helped Jesse with tips during the Olympic long jump competition. He and the black American athlete became good friends during the competition, continuing to write one another after the games. And despite his Nazi salute on the awards podium, this man was no supporter of the regime. In fact, he later was sent to the front in Italy … an assignment designed to punish his obvious lack of enthusiasm for the Fuhrer. It worked for the regime, he was killed in battle.

Back in the day, many of my followers were as perplexed as I regarding how Facebook treated me. My political posts were quite liberal but well within the bounds of propiety and surely very much in the mainstream. My humor was well received if a bit on the sarcastic side. I still can recall one post that got me into trouble. I posted it about a week before an election. It went something like the following: All Democrats will vote next Tuesday and all Republicans will vote the following day, Wednesday.

Come on, this was obviously a joke. No one would, or should, take it seriously. Did they really think I was trying to interfere with an election? If so, they have a much lower estimation of the prevailing intelligence levels among conservatives than I do. Then, again, perhaps they are on to something.

The most common hypothesis among my throng of followers was that I was a victim of political repression. After all, Zuckerberg is one of the tech bros who is in good standing with the MAGA cult, including the Donald himself. On the last inauguration day, wasn’t Mark standing proudly just a few feet away from our wannabe dictator.

Admittedly, political persecution is a possibility. The problem with that is … I am not that special. Many others are more extreme and more dedicated than I, both to progressive thought and to related policies. Many express their passions with more force and purpose. If anything, I tend to be driven by data and by reason. While I am not above moments of outrage and anger, my entire professional career was oriented toward understanding, not scoring political points. As a university professor teaching the policy arts, I stressed to my students that they should come to their own conclusions about right and wrong. I didn’t want them to simply follow my lead. I wanted them to think for themselves. My job was to help them think analytically, and perhaps with some clarity.

As a policy wonk, I worked on both sides of the aisle, which still was possible in my day. I sought compromise if that approach  proved essential to progress. Nor did I demonize those on the other side as long as they approached issues with a minimal level of fidelity. Then again, I was a policy wonk, not a political animal.

The bottom line is that I never did understand what I was doing wrong on FB. I would be going along fine and suddenly, while changing nothing in my posts, get hit with another penalty. It all seemed so subjective and arbitrary. Or, perhaps as many thought, someone really was out to get me.

That possibility would remain a mystery. After all, their feedback was hard to obtain and, if secured, totally useless. Their help remained remarkably opaque and so general that it proved absent of any merit. But that works well when the intent is to eliminate those you don’t like as opposed to helping your audience to improve their behaviors.

Perhaps it was to my personal disadvantage to be semi- accommodating and humorous. Perhaps those qualities made me a greater threat, that my light approach was considered more of a danger in the end. After all, such a soft approach might prove more effective and appealing to others.

No matter. When I got yet another ‘punishment’ the other night, I thought that this was, once again, the end. Would I soon be banished for a fourth time. If so, would I possibly have the energy to find still another way back from yet another banishment to an FB gulag. Could I possibly recreate myself on Facebook for a fifth time. I’m not that clever. Besides, it took some time and energy to accumulate some 4,500 new followers over the past 10 to 12 weeks of my most recent tour of the Facebook world.

Then, as mysterious as my punishment began, it ended. Without notice nor fanfare, all was well once more. While I did immediately appeal their decision to temporarily restricted my FB access, they never acknowledged my appeal nor did they respond to it in any way. As with my long and tortured prior history with their  community standards program, I was left utterly and completely confused. It was as if this part of the Facebook empire had been put in the hands of tenth graders who had only gotten this far with the assistance of gratuitous social promotions.

Only time will tell which will come first … my final passing from my mortal journey through life or my 4th lifetime ban. Wish me luck.

It took me a while, but I found the Pic I used in that infamous post. The German athlete on the right is Luz Long. He and Jesse became friends.

Oh, I am pleased with one thing today. This submission is of a reasonable length. Good for me!