Free speech damage to American democracy and society

Jackson’s 1945 concurrence is still cited today in court decisions asserting that that under First Amendment law, government cannot impose “guardianship of the public mind”. That free speech principle coexists with laws that allow government regulation of certain kinds of speech, primarily fraud and false advertising, defamation (libel and slander), child porn, incitement to imminent lawless action, true threats, fighting words and some crime-related speech. The line between speech that can be regulated and that which can’t is generally fairly clear. In Gertz v. Robert Welch, Inc., 418 U.S. 323 (1974), the supreme court commented that “Under the First Amendment there is no such thing as a false idea,” while distinguishing ideas from false statements of fact. Some false fact assertions can be regulated subject to constitutional limits.

Honest & dishonest speech

Legal speech includes both honest and dishonest speech. A way to define honest speech in the context of politics, democracy and the rule of law is to say it’s good faith speech intended to inform or persuade on the basis of facts, true truths and sound reasoning, with no conscious intent to deceive or irrationally emotionally manipulate, e.g., by fomenting unwarranted emotions or mindsets such as fear, anger, hate, distrust, bigotry, racism, ect.

For better or worse, that vision of honest speech is unavoidably and blindingly complex. For example, there is no highly accurate way to tell if mistakes in a speech or message are honest or lies intended to deceive or emotionally manipulate. Assessing intent in political speech requires either knowledge the speech at least appears to be honest, or fact and/or reputation checking.

For chronic liars, available evidence can make it rational to distrust and disbelieve everything the liar asserts. For example, Trump has a proven track record of constant lying. Analysis of 1,000 assertions found that 75% of assertions were mostly false, false, or pants on fire. The evidence is clear that it is not always honest mistakes. Being a bullshitter (arguably worse than being a just liar) and a chronic liar, falsehoods dominate Trump’s free speech. Obviously, disbelieving bullshitters and chronic liars in politics is rational. So is seeing them as morally rotted. That may be rational, but humans being rational isn’t often the case with politics.

With most Trump supporters, partisan identity, partisanship and other human factors often override inconvenient facts, truths and sound reasoning.

The damage from demagoguery & propaganda

“VOTER FRAUD IS NOT A CONSPIRACY THEORY, IT IS A FACT!!!” — Trump, Dec. 24, 2020

Tens of millions of Americans continue to believe divisive but repeatedly debunked Trump lies, e.g., the 2020 election was stolen, Trump’s 1/6 insurrectionists were patriots and political prisoners (“It was a beautiful day of love …. mostly peaceful”), Biden, Harris and Democrats are socialist/communist radicals, COVID will just disappear like the flu, open borders are driving a massive crime wave, and other debunked whoppers. Apparently, those debunked whoppers are not debunked in the minds of most Trump supporters.

Trump and MAGA’s pervasive, bad‑faith use of dishonest demagogic speech has grievously damaged American democracy and governance. It has torn American society apart, and destroyed lives and families. By relentlessly promoting his lies and authoritarianism, Trump has convinced about one‑third of Americans and about two‑thirds of Republicans that US elections are rigged and dictatorship is a reasonable option. As intended, that erodes confidence in self‑government and democracy itself. Trump’s and MAGA elites’ dishonest speech drives support for deceived or manipulated election deniers, restrictive voting laws, and even Trump’s 1/6 coup attempt. This combination of persistent dishonest speech that has normalized corruption and authoritarianism for tens of millions of Americans arguably constitutes an existential threat to democracy, the rule of law, civil liberties and honest, transparent governance. (link 1, link 2, link 3)

MAGA’s malicious, demagoguery also damages civil society and commerce. It floods the zone with kleptocratic authoritarian lies, slanders, falsehoods and crackpot conspiracy theories. Rational policy and business decisions become hard to impossible. Immigration and the “open borders crime wave” fantasy normalizes cruel, unwarranted discrimination and social conflict. It is clear that persistent dishonest authoritarian Trump and MAGA speech undermines social trust, while imposing large aggregate costs on the global and US economy. (link 4, link 5, link 6)

Q1: Is the damage to American democracy, rule of law and civil liberties, from from dishonest Trump and MAGA propagandist speech not serious (or even not existent), or if it is serious, is it morally justified?

Q2: Is the honest vs dishonest speech conflict mainly between good and evil, truth and lies/bullshit, democracy and authoritarianism, or something else?

The New Karens

 

It seems that the day of 'Karen' fatigue has finally dawned on us. After years of throwing the name about for any middle-aged woman who is rude or angry, Gen Z have apparently replaced it with something else entirely.

Any guesses?

(If you can't guess, the answer is in the article)

https://www.tyla.com/life/true-life/gen-z-karens-new-name-jessica-why-974366-20251226

Generally, according to social media, what makes you a Karen is being rude to service staff, entitled, racist, problematic, as well as a stereotypically short haircut.

Simmering dictatorship concerns

NPR reports about concern about the threat of a Trump dictatorship. The issue is still just simmering quietly. We have not yet reached a point of boiling over and erupting public sentiment. Arguably, too many Americans remain insufficiently concerned to lurch into hair-on-fire mode or something vigorous like that. Of course, we won't know what the level of activity in the soup pot full of frogs amounts to until the 2026 mid-terms. That assumes Trump won't cancel them, or much more likely, subvert them and declare MAGA politicians the winners and Dems the losers.

The NPR article says that Sweden's V-Dem Institute, which monitors global democracy, says the US now is an "electoral autocracy." According to V-Dem, 45 countries are in the process of “autocratizing.” The number of autocracies exceeds democracies. 

Electoral autocracy is a hybrid political system where multiparty elections exist and formally determine who governs, but the playing field is so heavily tilted, and liberal‑democratic safeguards so weakened, that the system is effectively authoritarian. India is an example.

Arguably, the NPR article and the experts it quotes continue to understate the gravity and urgency of the threat. A Trump and MAGA elite-driven authoritarian state arising in the US is the undeniable goal of kleptocratic, bigoted MAGA wealth and power politics. Because of that, Dissident Politics gives this NPR reporting a grade of F.

Politics, racism, and the human condition

Various sources reported (and this) that Trump has nominated Jeremy Carl, a self-described champion of white identity, to lead the State Department’s outreach to international organizations. Carl’s 2024 book, The Unprotected Class: How Anti-White Racism Is Tearing America Apart, argues that white Americans face systematic persecution through civil-rights enforcement, DEI programs, immigration policy, and cultural institutions across education, media, law, business, and government. Stripped of its policy language, the argument is a repackaged appeal to the old fear that white people are being replaced and subjugated by non-white Americans and immigrants. Carl makes the fear explicit by endorsing the Great Replacement theory, calling the Civil Rights Act an anti-white weapon, and dismissing Juneteenth as race hustling and white-shaming. Primal fear is the glue that holds debunked American racist narratives together. Carl’s nomination signals that those narratives now have a seat at the center of US foreign policy. (link 1, link 2)

Whether the Senate confirms Carl’s nomination is unclear. At least one Republican senator is uneasy with Carl and opposes his nomination. A Democratic senator referred to Carl as wildly unqualified for this job. (link 3, link 4, link 5)

Research on the 2024 presidential election indicated that four issues were the main drivers of support for Trump, inflation, immigration, the anti‑woke/DEI/transgender politics cluster, and sexist attitudes toward Harris and women leaders. All of those issues were distorted by ruthless MAGA demagoguery, lies, slanders, and irrational emotional manipulation. MAGA propaganda relied heavily on conspiratorial “white replacement” rhetoric, and false and misleading claims about crime, immigration and Harris herself. The anti‑woke cluster of concerns largely reflected perceived status loss by whites and men in a diversifying, more egalitarian society, arguably making it a subtype of racial and gendered status‑threat politics. However, many Trump supporters sincerely describe their concerns as about speech, merit, or religious freedom, even though the overall pattern of attitudes aligns more with defending existing racial and gender hierarchies than with neutral principles alone. (link 6, link 7, link 8, link 9)

MAGA politics, racism & the human condition

Obviously, racism is not a modern invention or a superficial cultural habit. It is deeply rooted in fundamental features of human social cognition and social behavior. Evolutionary psychology and decades of experimental research show that humans automatically (mostly unconsciously) categorize people into in-groups and out-groups. In-group favoritism is a basic feature of social cooperation that can be exploited to produce hostility toward outsiders. MAGA demagoguery is highly focused on exploiting race to produce hostility toward opposition to Trump and MAGA authoritarianism. Data from several million Americans indicate that about 65% display an automatic pro-White/anti-Black bias. That includes members of third-party racial groups such as Asian and Latino Americans who generally have little personal stake in White–Black relations. (link 10, link 11, link 12, link 13)

When people perceive threats to their group’s status, in-group loyalty intensifies and out-group hostility deepens. That dynamic that is especially potent when the threatened group has historically been dominant. In diverse environments, individuals high in authoritarianism become markedly more racially prejudiced and politically intolerant, while non-authoritarians become less so—meaning diversity itself activates a latent authoritarian disposition in those predisposed to it.

MAGA politics exploits these deep-seated human biases with relentless precision. Trump’s rhetoric systematically dehumanizes immigrants, calling them animals, vermin, and an invading force that will make America no longer recognizable. Scholars see that demagogic language as historically associated with genocide and mass violence. Research data indicates that authoritarianism in the United States is raced, and heavily associated with white people. As long as the perceived, demagoguery-boosted racial threat remains a strong presence if American life, authoritarianism will haunt American democracy. American white supremacists and white nationalists are keeping the illusory racial threat alive. (link 14, link 15)

MAGA’s racist policy tactics and manifestations are concrete. Trump’s racial demagoguery and mass deportation campaign includes military-style ICE raids on homes, schools, and churches, with proposals and guidance that would greatly expand warrantless arrests and make civil‑rights accountability far more difficult Now, ICE agents are encouraged to make warrantless arrests and granted effective but illegal immunity for civil-rights violations. Also, DEI programs across federal agencies have been dismantled by executive order on the first day of Trump’s second term, explicitly reversing policies designed to address systemic racial inequality. States including Georgia and Texas have implemented voter-suppression laws and racial gerrymandering that disproportionately strips Black, Latino, and Asian American voters of political power. For example, black mail-ballot use in Georgia fell from 29% to 5%. (link 16, link 17, link 18)

Q1: Do Trump and MAGA elites cynically play the race card, or are their arguments that what they do is fair, warranted and race-neutral?

Q2: Is Trump a racist, or is he non-racist but cynically playing the race card as part of his personal wealth and power campaign?