Regarding internet trolls

 

Troll tactic #5: ad hominem attack

Internet trolls are very bad for democracy and truth, to say the least. Lying, slandering, insulting, crackpotting (flawed reasoning), and fomenting irrational emotional responses are standard tactics for internet trolls doing politics. That applies to demagoguery from Trump, and MAGA elites generally. Facts, truths and good faith reasoning almost always contradict troll mind poisoning lies, slanders, manipulations, etc.

Some honest, good faith info about trolls and how they poison minds seems appropriate for election day.

Description of a troll

An internet troll can be generally described as someone who deliberately provokes, antagonizes, or derails online political discussion as a way to provoke anger, get attention, or create division instead of a good-faith exchange of ideas. The troll’s defining feature is deliberate provocation, not simply disagreement or strong, good faith criticism. It’s mostly bad faith and ill-will. Common troll tactics include insults, inflammatory claims, misleading posts, logic flaws (straw man argument, false dilemma argument, etc.), and pretending to engage sincerely while baiting others into futile arguments the troll has no intention of dealing with respectfully and sincerely. Some trolls act independently. Others participate in organized campaigns to spread propaganda or poison political opinion.

Troll Politics — For the majority of the twentieth century, trolls gradually became more and more tame in the face of vanishing cultural heritage. Still, they have gained strength in the last few decades due to the Internet, essentially reincarnated as online trolls.

Political trolls adapt, create material to deceive and confuse the public

And then there’s science!

Troll story: The dark tetrad and online trolling revisited with a glance at humor — Internet trolling is considered a negative form of online interaction that can have detrimental effects on people’s well-being. (comment: Duh. Can have detrimental effects? Trolls do have detrimental effects)

New research finds that many Internet trolls are ’everyday sadists’ — Conclusion: Those who rated highest on the scales for narcissism, psychopathology, Machiavellianism and sadism — highest of all for the trait of sadism — were the same people who were trolls.

Q1: Are there any trolls who routinely participate in any online politics you are aware of, and if so, do you believe that they are, in general, they more harmful than helpful?

Q2: Is it likely that research indicating some degree of mental illness or abnormality is common among internet trolls doing politics is true?

Regarding the Democratic Party

 

There always seems to be at least one or two nominally Democratic politicians in congress who manage to torpedo or significantly weaken the party or its agenda. Joe Lieberman, Joe Manchin, Kyrsten Sinema, the lunatic Fetterman, and most recently the idiot Haley Stevens of Michigan come to mind. By contrast, the MAGA party doesn’t have much major internal dissent that manifests as serious damage to what the MAGAs want to do. Years of RINO hunting have either shut up or got rid of most internal dissention in the MAGA party. Even alleged “moderates” like Susan Collins, despite their hand wringing and other pointless virtue signaling, are rarely significant in terms of meaningful dissenting impact.

For context, the sometimes allegedly dissenter mavericks (or whatever dumb label is applied) Lisa Murkowski, Susan Collins, and Rand Paul are staunch MAGA supporters no matter what they or the idiot MSM says to the contrary. Murkowski votes for Trump 90% of the time and Collins votes for him 92% of the time and Paul, the only close thing to MAGA dissent in the Senate votes 85% MAGA. That’s not much opposition. One could almost say it is almost no significant opposition.

Exactly what is the Dem Party?

Why did Michigan’s Haley Stevens go off the rails? Apparently because of disagreement over always poisonous Israel politics. She went nuts and supports Mike Rogers, an authoritarian kleptocrat MAGA politician, because she misunderstand El-Sayed’s stated position on Israel.[1] As usual, Israel supporters generally frame any criticism of Israel as fascist anti-Semitism. Even with stakes as high as possible control of the US Senate and the fate of democracy, an arrogant, idiot (yes, I really mean idiot) Dem politician happily tries to sabotage that over the always toxic American politics related to Israel. That is how fragile the Dem Party coalition is.

In the Dem Party coalition, there are 4 main groups, all of which are poisoned by overarching divisive issues of Israel and special interest money. The party is worse than an organizational mess.

Democratic socialists seek the largest shift of economic power away from wealthy owners and toward workers and public institutions. This is generally the group that is (1) most explicitly opposed to corporate political influence, and (2) the strongest critics of unconditional US support for Israel. These people usually are the most directly at odds with AIPAC’s preferred policies.

Progressives / social democrats support stronger unions, universal benefits, progressive taxation, and tighter corporate regulation within a substantially reformed capitalist economy. Their political support includes grassroots donors, unions, advocacy organizations, and as always, organized interests. Increasingly critical of Israeli government policy and unconditional military aid, but not uniformly so. AIPAC-backed campaigns against progressive incumbents demonstrate how disagreement over Israel can also weaken the party’s economic left.

Mainstream / establishment liberals support regulated capitalism, social insurance, and incremental reform. Their position between the left and business-friendly moderates makes them a major arena for competing donors, organizations, and voter demands. The liberals are traditionally supportive of the US–Israel relationship, but increasingly divided over military funding and conditions on support. Some are moving away from AIPAC toward J Street’s more critical, liberal pro-Israel position. Others maintain relationships with both organizations.

Business-friendly moderates / centrists emphasize private enterprise, market-oriented solutions, and compromise. Their economic approach is more compatible with corporate interests. These elites are often donor beneficiaries when pro-Israel organizations support challengers to the left. But economic moderation and support for Israel remain separate positions. AIPAC’s electoral coalition is organized around demagoguing for Israel, not a comprehensive domestic economic platform.

Obviously there are lots of other ways to describe groups of Dem Party elites. But this should help to see why there is almost always a freak like Stevens going nuts over some damned thing or another, often Israel. The elites are mostly a herd of arrogant grumpy cats, not regular, decent people. They’re not pragmatic rationalists. Not clear-minded politicians. Definitely not disciplined in their reasoning or their loyalties.

But at least, unlike MAGA elites, most of the Dem elites are still nominally pro-democracy and pro-rule of law. Well, probably still mostly pro-democracy and rule of law. As a whole, Dem elites are a broad, independent-minded coalition, basically the opposite of authoritarianism-minded MAGA elites.

Q1: Are the elites running the Dem Party too diverse to ever get away from the plague of one or more of their elected politicians going rogue and doing unbelievably stupid things like Stevens has done?

Q2: Was what Stevens did[2] mostly a matter of a fragile injured ego lashing out against El-Sayed, or is it mostly something to do with Israel, no matter how irrational it is, or a combination of both?

Q3: Is it better for democracy to pretend the Dem Party isn’t the organizational mess it is?

Footnotes:

1. The immediate flashpoint for Stevens going nuts was an outside group’s advertisement connecting Americans’ grocery costs to US military assistance to Israel. Stevens demanded that El-Sayed reject it and made that a condition of joining a campaign event. El-Sayed said the advertisement was not his campaign’s and that he disagreed with its contents. CNN reports that Stevens initially praised that response, but nonetheless endorsed Rogers the following day anyway. Is that insanity or what?

2. According to current reporting, Stevens is not Jewish. But she said in an October 31 interview that she was considering converting to Judaism. The NYT reported that Stevens was pissed at El-Sayed because he refused to say whether Iran or Israel was a greater threat to the US. And thus, the balance of power in the US Senate just might hinge on Stevens being pissed off at El-Sayed for whatever reason(s) there may or may not be, rational or not, pro-democracy or not.

Some info sources:

Centrist Democrats Would Rather Lose the Senate Than Win With El-Sayed

Stevens staff resign over Rogers endorsement

El-Sayed’s primary opponent stuns Democrats by endorsing Republican opponent in Michigan Senate race

Pre-election MAGA news roundup

 

Lying about the law: A Huffpo article, Fox News Loses It Over Mamdani Explainer On Constitutional Rights: ‘How Is This Not Illegal?’, reports on MAGA’s mind-poisoning demagoguery industry falsely basically claiming that giving legal advice to the public is illegal. Fox was in a morally outraged snit because Mamdani made a speech (in Spanish) telling New Yorkers their rights when confronted by ICE. That’s MAGA’s morally rotted demagoguery in action. If his speech was in English MAGA mind poisoners would not be so well-armed. Hm, is it illegal to speak a foreign language in the US? Fox should argue that too.

Trickle-up economics: A NYT opinion, Baby Boomers Are Retiring in Droves. Private Equity Is Waiting, provides a glimpse of how the economic walls are closing in on consumers and workers. Wealth isn’t just trickling up to elites and corporations, it is also concentrating geographically in urban areas, especially coastal urban areas. Unregulated or under-regulated private capital is quietly concentrating ownership, decision-making, and claims on future profits without moving physical assets into the cities where buyers live. Simply put, out of town business owners no longer live locally when private equity buys a business someplace else.

Retiring owners create an opportunity for acquisition. Harvard Business School’s account, citing Project Equity, identifies about 2.9 million U.S. businesses with owners over 55, employing approximately 32.1 million people and generating $6.5 trillion in annual revenue. Those figures describe the businesses potentially facing succession, not businesses already purchased by private equity. The Harvard analysis comments: An expected “tsunami” of retirements by private business owners — and no succession plans in place — threatens the future of those firms, the people who work there and the communities where they are located.

Special interest money in the election: Various sources are commenting on the vast amount of special interest money flowing into the 2026 elections. One report indicates that a group of over 100 super PACS has donated over $1 billion. That reports credits the USSC’s 2010 decision in Citizens United as a major factor. Another report of a different group of donors indicates that 515 wealthy individuals have spent ~$4.2 billion for the 2026 elections.

Regarding the CU decision, it was and still is illegal for corporations and major donors to contribute directly to a campaign. But the CU decision opened a gigantic loophole allowing unlimited money to go to political action committees who can then make contributions.

Illegal: Special interest donor → politician’s campaign

Legal after CU: Special interest donor → political action committee → politician’s campaign

Would they spend that much it if wasn’t worth it?

MAGA’s deregulation: Trump and MAGA elites deregulate businesses by simply stopping existing enforcement actions and not raising new ones. That way, existing regulations and laws stay on the books, but are more or less dead because they are no longer enforced. If there is enforcement, it is against MAGA enemies. Power flows from the public interest protected by laws and regulations to the special interests who are no longer constrained. Once power flows from the public interest, wealth will follow once empowered special interests implement formerly regulated commercial activities. That’s not rocket science, it’s just common sense.

Corruption of MAGA: A Democratic Senate report, THE BILLION DOLLAR DEAL: How the Fossil Fuel Industry Bought the Trump Administration, Cashed In, and Left Americans to Pay the Price, documents the corruption of Trump and MAGA elites by legal pollute for profit payoffs, e.g., via super PACs, etc. The report comments: The Trump Administration’s near-total refusal to cooperate with legitimate Congressional oversight—a sharp break from the practice of prior administrations of both parties—complicated this investigation. Industry was also often unresponsive to Congressional oversight requests. Their silence has not stopped this investigation, but it should trouble every member of this institution, regardless of party. Despite this obstruction, the record we have assembled tells a clear story: a President who sold the federal government to the highest bidder, and an industry that got exactly what it paid for. The American people did not get a vote on that deal.

Obviously, Trump, MAGA elites and politicians all vehemently deny there is any corruption going on. Rank & file MAGA voters presumably either believe the denials, or they are not concerned enough to not vote more for more of the same.

Q1: When a special interest is deregulated by any means, e.g., not enforcing existing regulations or laws, does power usually flow from the formerly protected public interest to affected deregulated special interests?

Q2: When a special interest(s) is deregulated, is it likely in most instances that most of the additional wealth from deregulation will flow from the public interest to the deregulated special interest(s)?

Q3: If it either (1) wasn’t commercially worth it to spend money on campaigns, or if (2) special interest donations were matched by public campaign finance, it is reasonable to believe that there would be a lot less special interest money spent on buying politicians, thereby making it much more important for special interests to get political support on the merits, instead of just buying support regardless of damage to the public interest?

On the matter of trust vs distrust

 

Deregulated brass knuckles capialtism doing its thing

A NYT opinion piece, The Open Secret Buried in Anthropic’s 300-Page I.P.O. Filing, focuses on the huge amounts on money in play. This opinion raises the usually-present issue of who and what to trust when elites in politics, commerce or religion are doing what they do. In the years before and after the USSC’s 2010 Citizens United decision opened floodgates that held back much of the corrupting power of special interest money in politics, power has been flowing from the public interest and the public itself to special interests with a lot of wealth, power, or both. With the election of Trump and rise of MAGA elites to power, they have blown the dam itself to smithereens, while being aided by additional pro-corruption USSC decisions. What is left for us are annoyances in the dam’s rubble that special interests have to steer their money and its power through. They usually get what they want.

The trust issue is grounded in what by now is obvious to most open-minded people paying at least some attention to politics. Specifically, now that Trump and MAGA elites have gutted and neutered power and protections for the people and the public interest, can institutions weakened or neutered by politicians made complicit by private wealth and power, still give the public a meaningful protection regarding AI’s basically unregulated expansion. Put another way, what if any any rational basis is left to trust what mostly unregulated AI, or any other business sector** wants to do, regardless of how badly it damages or disempowers us and the public interest?

** For example, consider Exxon-Mobil and other all major pollute-for-profit businesses and their financiers. The public interest dam has not vanished completely. But major breaches and feeble law enforcement leave wealthy interests far too much room to convert small amounts of their private fortunes into lots of public power. That is the political backdrop against which we are being asked to trust the architects of the AI economy, pollute-for-profit businesses, etc.

Thoughts on trust vs distrust

Based on closely watching how American elites operate and what they do, a reasonable person can believe that concluding bad motives** of MAGA and most deregulated businesses is supported by evidence. That can be sufficient for the court of public opinion. If one has watched events in the years before and after the USSC’s 2010 pro-corruption Citizens United decision, nearly all the evidence points to the worst motives in play for the elites in politics and commerce.

** Bad motives like corrupt, authoritarianism, mendacious, deceptive, autocratic, Christian nationalist theocratic, oligarchic, more mendacity, more corruption, etc.

That is not a reflexive suspicion of one company. It is a judgment formed over years. There is a persistent pattern in how powerful people acquire influence, justify their decisions, and distribute the benefits and costs. The accumulated public record of bad motives and bad acts arguably has exhausted the elites’ entitlement to any presumption of good faith.

Q1: Have Trump and MAGA elites in power exhausted their entitlement to any presumption of good faith?

Q2: Have elites among the Democratic socialists and social democrats exhausted their entitlement to any presumption of good faith? What about the Wall Street Democratic Party elites, e.g., Schumer and Hakim Jefferies?

Some info sources:

Ted Cruz for Senate, et al. v. FEC — The FEC struck down the $250,000 limit on using post-election contributions to repay a candidate’s personal campaign loans.

Citizens United v. Federal Election Commission (2010) — A pro-corruption USSC decision that legalized this: Corporation $ → PAC → politician’s campaign. Before this decision, this was (and still is) illegal: Corporation $ → politician’s campaign. See the new and “improved” way for special interest money to exert power over our political system by buying politicians and political parties?

McDonnell v. United States, 579 U.S. ___ (2016) — A pro-corruption USSC decision that narrowed the definition of an “official act” for the corruption charges at issue.

Snyder v. United States (2024) — A pro-corruption USSC decision that a federal law covering state and local officials prohibiting bribes, did not cover after-the-fact gratuities. Here the USSC converted illegal bribes to state politicians and officials into legal “gratuities” or “tips” after the politician did what the tip-payer wanted.

Buy me I’m for sale! Give me a gratuity I can’t be bought!

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