Pragmatic politics focused on the public interest for those uncomfortable with America's two-party system and its way of doing politics. Considering the interface of politics with psychology, cognitive science, social behavior, morality and history.
Etiquette
DP Etiquette
First rule: Don't be a jackass.
Other rules: Do not attack or insult people you disagree with. Engage with facts, logic and beliefs. Out of respect for others, please provide some sources for the facts and truths you rely on if you are asked for that. If emotion is getting out of hand, get it back in hand. To limit dehumanizing people, don't call people or whole groups of people disrespectful names, e.g., stupid, dumb or liar. Insulting people is counterproductive to rational discussion. Insult makes people angry and defensive. All points of view are welcome, right, center, left and elsewhere. Just disagree, but don't be belligerent or reject inconvenient facts, truths or defensible reasoning.
New York Times: DeSantis, Once a ‘No’ on Storm Aid, Petitions a President He’s Bashed. The Florida governor, who as a congressman opposed aid to victims of Hurricane Sandy, is seeking relief from the Biden administration as Hurricane Ian ravages his own state. He said: “As you say, Tucker, we live in a very politicized time.”
Ron, tell your supporters to pull themselves up by their bootstraps. What are you, a socialist or something?
From the Armageddon Coming Soon files
Someone reported yesterday that once Russia annexes the four chunks of Ukraine that Putin invaded and forced to vote for annexation, Ukrainian efforts to conduct military resistance there will be considered attacks on the sacred Russian motherland. That will be Putin's excuse to respond with tactical nuclear weapons.
Post apocalypse
From the democracy is screwed files
The NYT reports that former President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva is trying to cap a stunning political comeback by defeating the incumbent Jair Bolsonaro in Brazil’s elections on Sunday. What a choice, da Silva is a deeply corrupt liberal politician and Bolsonaro is a deeply corrupt tyrant.
From the Armageddon again files
Pentagon Plans to Set Up a New Command to Arm Ukraine, Officials Say. The mission in Germany would streamline a training and assistance system that the United States and its allies created on the fly after Russia’s invasion, officials said.
From the democracy is screwed files
Ginni Thomas tells Jan. 6 panel she still believes false election fraud claims, chair says. “The information was typical of a lot of information we received from other people who were involved in this effort around Jan. 6. A lot of: ‘Well, I believed something was wrong,’” select committee chair Rep. Bennie Thompson (D-Miss.), told reporters Thursday of Thomas’ testimony.
As usual, Thomas provided no evidence. But like other radical right stolen election cultists, she has the faith. No evidence, but lots 'n lots of faith.
From the corrupt, radical right Christian nationalist Republican judge files
Judge Aileen M. Cannon told Donald Trump’s lawyers Thursday that they did not need to comply with an order from special master Raymond J. Dearie and state in a court filing whether they believe FBI agents lied about documents seized from the former president’s Florida residence. Thursday’s ruling was the first clash between Cannon, a Trump appointee who has generally shown the former president deference in litigation over the Mar-a-Lago investigation, and Dearie, a federal judge she appointed as an outside expert in the case, who appears to be far more skeptical of Trump.
No doubt, judge Loose Cannon will give the ex-president what he believes he deserves. The Cannon will deliver no justice and vindicate no law because she knows the ex-president is a gooood boy. She has blind faith, just like Ginni Thomas.
Occasionally, something happens that is so blatantly and obviously misguided that trying to explain it rationally makes you sound ridiculous. Such is the case with the Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals’ recent ruling in NetChoice v. Paxton. Earlier this month, the court upheld a preposterous Texas law stating that online platforms with more than 50 million monthly active users in the United States no longer have First Amendment rights regarding their editorial decisions. Put another way, the law tells big social-media companies that they can’t moderate the content on their platforms. YouTube purging terrorist-recruitment videos? Illegal. Twitter removing a violent cell of neo-Nazis harassing people with death threats? Sorry, that’s censorship, according to Andy Oldham, a judge of the United States Court of Appeals and the former general counsel to Texas Governor Greg Abbott.
A state compelling social-media companies to host all user content without restrictions isn’t merely, as the First Amendment litigation lawyer Ken White put it on Twitter, “the most angrily incoherent First Amendment decision I think I’ve ever read.” It’s also the type of ruling that threatens to blow up the architecture of the internet. To understand why requires some expertise in First Amendment law and content-moderation policy, and a grounding in what makes the internet a truly transformational technology. So I called up some legal and tech-policy experts and asked them to explain the Fifth Circuit ruling—and its consequences—to me as if I were a precocious 5-year-old with a strange interest in jurisprudence.
Techdirt founder Mike Masnick, who has been writing for decades about the intersection of tech policy and civil liberties, told me that the ruling is “fractally wrong”—made up of so many layers of wrongness that, in order to fully comprehend its significance, “you must understand the historical wrongness before the legal wrongness, before you can get to the technical wrongness.” In theory, the ruling means that any state in the Fifth Circuit (such as Texas, Louisiana, and Mississippi) could “mandate that news organizations must cover certain politicians or certain other content” and even implies that “the state can now compel any speech it wants on private property.” The law would allow both the Texas attorney general and private citizens who do business in Texas to bring suit against the platforms if they feel their content was removed because of a specific viewpoint. Daphne Keller, the director of the Program on Platform Regulation at Stanford’s Cyber Policy Center, told me that such a law could amount to “a litigation DDoS [Denial of Service] attack, unleashing a wave of potentially frivolous and serious suits against the platforms.”
To give me a sense of just how sweeping and nonsensical the law could be in practice, Masnick suggested that, under the logic of the ruling, it very well could be illegal to update Wikipedia in Texas, because any user attempt to add to a page could be deemed an act of censorship based on the viewpoint of that user (which the law forbids). The same could be true of chat platforms, including iMessage and Reddit, and perhaps also Discord, which is built on tens of thousands of private chat rooms run by private moderators. Enforcement at that scale is nearly impossible. This week, to demonstrate the absurdity of the law and stress test possible Texas enforcement, the subreddit r/PoliticalHumor mandated that every comment in the forum include the phrase “Greg Abbott is a little piss baby” or be deleted. “We realized what a ripe situation this is, so we’re going to flagrantly break this law,” a moderator of the subreddit wrote. “We like this Constitution thing. Seems like it has some good ideas.”
Everyone I spoke with believes that the very future of how the internet works is at stake. Accordingly, this case is likely to head to the Supreme Court. Part of this fiasco touches on the debate around Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act, which, despite its political-lightning-rod status, makes it extremely clear that websites have editorial control. “Section 230 tells platforms, ‘You’re not the author of what people on your platform put up, but that doesn’t mean you can’t clean up your own yard and get rid of stuff you don’t like.’ That has served the internet very well,” Dan Novack, a First Amendment attorney, told me.
“A lot of people envision the First Amendment in this affirmative way, where it is about your right to say what you want to say,” Novack told me. “But the First Amendment is just as much about protecting your right to be silent. And it’s not just about speech but things adjacent to your speech—like what content you want to be associated or not associated with. This law and the conservative support of it shreds those notions into ribbons.”
The implications are terrifying and made all the worse by the language of Judge Oldham’s ruling. Perhaps the best example of this brazen obtuseness is Oldham’s argument about “the Platforms’ obsession with terrorists and Nazis,” concerns that he suggests are “fanciful” and “hypothetical.” Of course, such concerns are not hypothetical; they’re a central issue for any large-scale platform’s content-moderation team. In 2015, for example, the Brookings Institution issued a 68-page report titled “The ISIS Twitter census,” mapping the network of terrorist supporters flooding the platform. The report found that in 2014, there were at least 46,000 ISIS accounts on Twitter posting graphic violent content and using the platform to recruit and collect intelligence for the Islamic State.
I've argued here many time that dark free speech (deceit, lies, slanders, irrational emotional manipulation, flawed motivated reasoning, etc.) has been the single most potent weapon America's radical right has used, among other bad things, to divide and polarize society, foment irrational distrust, destroy respect for inconvenient truth and expertise, corrupt democracy and the rule of law, and attack civil liberties.
But maybe we are at a new point in the Republican Party's attack on democracy, secularism, civil liberties and the rule of law. Maybe equally or more effective tactics will come from subversion of federal courts by extremist radical right judges. Ex-president T**** publicly stated that judges are a core focus for him, and he acted that way while in office. T**** appointed the rotted judge here, Andy Oldham to the 5th circuit appeals court in 2018. Radical right Christian nationalist judges have subverted and dominate the US Supreme Court. That will very likely be the situation for some years to come.
For at least the next few years, more extremist rulings from T**** judges and other radical right Republicans on the federal bench can be expected to continue. The goal is to inflict serious damage to democracy, secularism, inconvenient facts and truths, civil liberties and the rule of law. It's not clear that our democracy and our rights can be defended when the attacks come from a subverted, anti-democratic federal judiciary. I cannot see any way to stop or blunt the damage that Republican federal judges already have and will continue to inflict. There are good reasons to believe these attacks on democracy and civil liberties by radical right extremists will continue.
Acknowledgment: Thanks to milo for bringing this article to my attention.
This question is mostly for the U.S. crowd, but if outside
the U.S., chime in with your country’s political equivalent.
Fill in the blank:
A.)I
am a (Democrat, Independent, Republican, other) because
___________________________.
Or, if your “not” reasons dominate, flip the scenario:
B.)I
am not a (Democrat, Independent, Republican, other because
___________________________.
If you can/will, please answer both questions (the “why” and
the “why not” of your voting choice).
C.)What
guiding political principle(s) are most important to you (e.g., personal and/or social
freedoms / rights, economic policies, lower taxes, etc.)?
I have a habit of not relying on sources that are rated poorly by fact checkers or that I assess to be unreliable or crackpot in some way(s). I sometimes get criticized for (1) ignoring important and useful perspectives and information from these sources, and (2) being misled, deceived and bamboozled by America's bad bad mainstream media and the propaganda it routinely puts out.
There is truth to the allegation that our MSM is biased and often presents intentionally misleading narratives. Our MSM is significantly corrupted and subverted by corporate ownership, big advertisers and the usually (~75% of the time ?) inconvenient fact and truth distorting or killing profit motive.
But regarding unreliable information sources, why should someone invest precious time and effort on their content. With poorly rated sites, it requires lots of time to see what is reasonable content and what isn't. Life is too short for that.
Here's an example of the most recent round of debate on this topic. In this debate, I was arguing for censorship of provable lies on private social media platforms, not in places where lies(free speech) cannot be censored. I argue this in view of the what I see as massive damage to American society and government that divisive lies and propaganda has inflicted on us. My interlocutor argues that at least some poorly rated sites deserve some consideration.
The debate
Me (to someone else): .... Eau contraire, mon ami. Tens of millions of conservatives, haters or not, have been fooled and still are fooled.
My interlocutor: All well and good... but we don't see as many provable lies proven in the news we're provided with as we do true incidents very carefully framed to leave us with a strong impression. That's why I believe it's necessary to follow as wide a variety of sources as is possible. Which in the Age of the Internet is quite a generous field of choice.
My interlocutor: See, this is where you and I part the ways. You present yourself as being incapable of critically examining a specific piece of writing, but instead go to the publisher's general reputation... as though anything appearing on this Canadian lefty site must be rubbish, therefore not worth reading. To me, this individual brings a refreshing perspective. In fact I see reliance on a quick study guide as being a sure way to stovepipe your thinking, so you limit yourself to only looking at a single POV. This places you exactly in the company of conspiracy-theorists like QAnon and the anti-vaxxers. Their tunnel vision forces them to become fanatics because they are determined to never read any opposing viewpoint. Like you, might I suggest?
I would like to see you take apart the specific article I cited, using your renowned critical intelligence.
Me (now mildly riled up): Yes, here we part ways. And for a damn good reason. My time is valuable and quite limited. I don't want to critically examine specific pieces of writing from crackpot conspiracy sites. Should I spend my time combing through the tons of garbage that Global Research or QAnon spews to find a nugget or two of truth or insight somewhere in the huge steaming pile?
If so, why? Why is it that places like Global Research or QAnon would be a great place to spend one's time looking in good faith for something of value that cannot be found more easily elsewhere? Just tell me why.
"Global Research" says: "One doesn’t need to look far to understand who the Atlantic Council are and what they stand for : it is a think tank essentially funded by NATO, weapons manufacturers, Middle-Eastern oil-state monarchies, billionaires and different branches of the US military."
OK, so it is pro-war biased, but factually accurate. Now we know. We can all use our critical thinking skills to assess whatever it is the Atlantic Council is saying. At least its not making stuff up.
"Global Research" says: "Hence, it should come as no surprise that when the Atlantic Council’s Digital Forensic Research Lab gets down to work weeks before the upcoming midterms, it has little intention of putting a stop to actual disinformation groups and rather silences those that speak a message opposing their own."
Germaine says: "Global Research" cites The Anti-Media and Free Thought Project as examples of shutting down opposing messaging, not disinformation. So I looked and found these:
More crackpot sites. So my critical thinking analysis is that "Global Research" ("GR") is a leftist crackpot site complaining about the crackpottery at other apparently radical right sites crackpot sites. Who cares? Why should anyone care?
"Global Research" says: "Shortly after, Twitter decided to take them down as well, as well as Carey Wedler‘s (editor at Anti-Media) own personal account for literally no reason:"
Germaine's critical thinking analysis on that asks what evidence does "GR" have that Twitter had literally no reason? Since "GR" itself is a crackpot site, why should Germaine accept that allegation as true? "GR" didn't ask Twitter or Carey Wedler why Twitter suspended Wedlers' account, because if it did ask either (1) it would have said so, or (2) was incompetent and thus not trustworthy for omitting to say so. (see the critical thinking there? that was a fun one!)
"GR" says: "Many of the pages taken down had already been targeted back in 2016 by the McCarthyist webpage PropOrNot.not, endorsed by the Washington Post, in an effort to arbitrarily mark pages that they believe somehow are connected to Russian propaganda efforts. Already back then it was clear that many of the pages targeted by PropOrNot were leftist, anti-war pages, and almost none of them had anything to do with Russia whatsoever. The Washington Post finally later on retracted their article endorsing PropOrNot, but this didn’t help the fact that these websites had now already been flagged as propaganda by many."
Germaine says: WTF!! WaPo makes a mistake and then retracts it, but gets blasted by "GR" for having made a mistake. But on the other hand, "GR's" vaunted Carey Wedler says in her own video that she makes mistakes but when she does she retracts them.
Why doesn't "GR" attack Wedler for her self-confessed mistakes? Bigger question, why trust anything "GR" says in its screed because (i) it is incoherent, (ii) not factually supported, and (iii) a crackpot source to begin with? (more fun critical thinking)
"GR" says: "RT Reporter Rachel Blevins with 70,000 followers on Facebook and investigative journalist Dan Dicks with 350,000 followers also both saw their accounts taken down overnight – both were very critical of mainstream journalism."
Germaine responds: 1. For Christ's sake, Blevins was an RT reporter, i.e., a professional Russian propagandist. 2. Who the hell is Dan Dicks? search . . . . . search . . . . find a relevant hit, read it. Here's the hit -- Dicks runs the web site "Press For Truth":
Egad!! Another crackpot pseudoscience and crackpot conspiracy theory site. No wonder Twitter got rid of Dicks. He's a crackpot pseudoscience and crackpot conspiracy theory monger. (see the razor sharp critical analysis in that little gem?)
3. Just because Dicks was critical of mainstream journalism does not mean that his journalism (or whatever it is) has merit. Maybe he is pissed at the MSM because he was got good enough to get a MSM job as a reporter. The "GR" article does not support its implied but not stated allegation that Twitter unfairly banned his crackpot ass from its platform. (see the logic in that analysis? there really is logic in it, honest)
So, I could probably go one and on ripping the "GR" article to pieces, sentence by sentence. But sadly, I've already spent well over two hours of my precious time discovering what I strongly suspected would be the case right from the get go. Namely I suspected that based on its MBFC rating, the "GR" article would be mostly crap not worth spending my time on. That suspicion turned out to be true.
I don't resent or regret the time I spent on this. Three reasons. First I respect you, (interlocutor). Second, I hope this example of how to do my brand of critical thinking and analysis is instructive to anyone who reads it. Third, I hope this exercise shows at least some basis in fact and reason for my reluctance to spend my time with sources that get poor fact accuracy ratings. That includes sites that engage in non-trivial amounts of pseudoscience or crackpot conspiracy theory.
Am I being unfair here? Are my facts and analysis insufficient to support my distrust in sources that get poor fact and/or reasoning ratings? Do all fact checkers just produce nonsense that everyone should ignore?
Me again: Well, what do you have to say about my critical analysis of the GR article you cited? I spent over 2 hours on those insightful comments.
My interlocutor: It took you two hours to find that page, where somebody says that GR rates high in pseudoscience? Dude, what happened to your research skills?
For starters, there's no pseudoscience in the article. It's an assessment of the bias to be found in the work of the Atlantic Council. If you want to undercut it, show me how we can dismiss the notion that the AC is biased. It's a creation of NATO, and thus approx as objectively reliable as anything we might read from Tass. They are not the right org to be censoring comments on YouTube.
So let's try it again. Take a look at the article and find any lies or distortions you can describe to me. Maybe I'll learn something from you. But in my view, if Facebook wanted an outside party to come in and censor everyone's comments, they'd be better off to employ an outfit like Aljazeera for the job. They are in my view accurate, insightful and highly unbiased.
Me: No, it did not take me over two hours to find the MBFC rating. That task took about 20 seconds and posting the image took about 1 minute. So based on that, my research skill for that kind of info was OK as far as I can tell. If MBFC and no other fact checker had rated GR, it would have taken many hours of my time to assess GR.
For starters, there's no pseudoscience in the article. It's an assessment of the bias to be found in the work of the Atlantic Council.
I know. I didn't say there was any pseudoscience in it. You said I said that, I didn't.
It's a creation of NATO, and thus approx as objectively reliable as anything we might read from Tass.
I know it is biased. I was explicit about that in my comments. I even cited the MBFC rating of it and its analysis of the bias being pro-war and pro-corporation. But, unlike GR, the Atlantic Council doesn't lie much and has a high fact accuracy rating. Like I said in my comments: "OK, so it is pro-war biased, but factually accurate. Now we know. We can all use our critical thinking skills to assess whatever it is the Atlantic Council is saying. At least its not making stuff up."
They are not the right org to be censoring comments on YouTube.
I agree. But here's some more of my critical thinking. First, Twitter bans Twitter accounts. The Atlantic Council does not ban Twitter accounts. The GR article strongly implies that, but it's a lie of omission. The Atlantic Council’s Digital Forensic Research Lab looks for disinformation sites, it does not run Twitter or ban accounts.
Second, look at the sites that Twitter banned, The Anti-Media and the Free Thought Project. Both are crackpot liar sites. Even if the Atlantic Council did influence Twitter's decision to ban them, what's wrong with that?
Yes, Al Jazeera would probably be less biased than the Atlantic Council, but at least the AC doesn't lie. As far as I am concerned, let pro-right biased and pro-left biased and pro-truth disinformation seekers feed honest information to Twitter and Facebook so that more liar accounts get removed. What's wrong with that? If liars want to lie to the public, let them do it on their own rotten, immoral sites.
And with humans, there is no such thing as completely unbiased. But when humans sincerely respect facts and truth, it is harder for their biases to render their content as morally rotted as what Anti-Media, Free Thought Project and Press for Truth sites spew on the public.
So let's try it again. Take a look at the article and find any lies or distortions you can describe to me.
I did point out a lie in this comment. Specifically, GR lied by omission that the Atlantic Council bans Twitter accounts it dislikes. That is false.
But it's more than just lies that kills the credibility of the GR article. For example, the GR article asserts: In total, 559 pages and 251 personal accounts were instantly removed from the platform, for having “consistently broken our rules against spam and coordinated inauthentic behavior” according to Nathaniel Gleicher, Facebook’s Head of Cybersecurity and former White House National Security Council Director of Cybersecurity Policy under Obama. This is but one of similar yet smaller purges that have been unfolding in front of our eyes over the last year, all in the name of fighting “fake news” and so called “Russian propaganda”.
That is loaded with deceptive rot. First, 559 pages and 251 accounts is less than puny. There are far more rotten accounts and pages than that, over a billion according to a reliable source. IMO, what the GR article relies on constitutes essentially no effort by Facebook to deal with divisive disinformation and lies. The propagandist who wrote the GR article doesn't know what he is talking about. He is using motivated reasoning to concoct a nutty narrative.
Second, GR's assertion that Facebook's puny account bans and page take downs are all in the name of fighting “fake news” and so called “Russian propaganda”, directly implies that there is no such thing as fake news or Russian propaganda. That is so wrong that one could, and I do, consider it to be two blatant, insulting lies. If the author intended something else, he should have made his intent clear. That leaves three main possibilities, (i) the author is incompetent as a writer, (ii) the author is intentionally deceptive and mendacious, or (iii) a combination of the two. GR certainly failed to edit clarity into that, so GR deserves the exact same analysis, i.e., it is incompetent, mendacious or both.
I doubt we are going to come to much or any agreement here. But, at least you can see why we disagree. There is value in that.
Interlocutor: You expose your own grey area when you equate Global Research and QAnon. And you expose the core of that ignorance when you admit there's a whole world of info-- info you present yourself as being qualified to comment on-- that you just never read? That would make you like the ardent anticommunist, pontificating on Soviet disinformation, who admits he has never read either Pravda or Izvestia. He would be speaking from a position of utter ignorance. I would think a zealot, speaking out against, say, the evils of the Christian Right, might at least find a little time reading their literature to be well spent. Not referring to you personally, of course. Just some anonymous zealot.
But to move from the general to the specific, don't you think if I have found and posted an article in support of some thesis, you might at least glance at the article itself? You might just find it contains something of value. Why, you might even find it does not represent the sort of worldview you assume everything ever published by GR shares. (For the record, I do not compulsively consume every morsel appearing in GR. Some of its articles I find weak and unconvincing. And in fact I rarely even read it. I was googling for articles relevant to Facebook + AC when I found this.)
At any rate, I see I've wasted too much of your valuable time already. So I'll just ask you this brief question: How objective and unbiased do you feel the work of the Atlantic Council to be? And please don't just look in the back of the book, to see how your source rates them. Just give me your off-the-cuff opinion. Your gut sense.
Thanks in advance. I hope we both end up finding this to be a productive engagement.
Me:
And you expose the core of that ignorance when you admit there's a whole world of info-- info you present yourself as being qualified to comment on-- that you just never read?
I am presenting myself as able unwilling to rely on unreliable sources. There is an ocean of politics out there. I can only consider ~0.00001% of it.
.... don't you think if I have found and posted an article in support of some thesis, you might at least glance at the article itself?
Yes, I probably would have read it, because I like, trust and respect you. You earned and deserve that. After you asked, I read the GR article.
How objective and unbiased do you feel the work of the Atlantic Council to be?
I didn't know what the Atlantic Council was before now. I'd heard of it and thought it probably was a think tank, probably pro-NATO because of its name. That was all. Now, I understand that it is pro-war, and pro-military industrial complex biased, but it doesn't lie about facts. As far as I can recall, I've never relied on anything from the Atlantic Council, so my opinion about it was mostly neutral to non-existent. Based on what I know now, their bias is conservative and hawkish, but their facts are legit.
Film description: Michelle Obama is not who she pretends to be. In MICHELLE OBAMA 2024, filmmaker Joel Gilbert does a deep dive into the life of the most popular woman in America and reveals one game-changing detail after another. Gilbert's investigative journey takes him from Chicago to Princeton to Washington to Martha's Vineyard and beyond. Along the way, he discovers that Michelle has created a cynical, highly effective, false narrative of her life story based largely on gender and race. In Chicago, Gilbert chronicles how Michelle has repeatedly run from the Black community or sold it out, much as her father did when he served as a precinct captain for the Daley Machine. Gilbert then exposes Michelle Obama's "I hate politics" disclaimer as strategic cover for her intense lifelong political advocacy as he deconstructs Michelle's best-selling autobiography, Becoming. As the best-loved Democrat, Michelle has been preparing to run for President since 2016 by following the same formula as Barack did before her. This includes writing an autobiography, giving the keynote speech at the Democrat National Convention, and heading up a voter registration organization. Gilbert also unveils Michelle's psychological dark side and explains how her deep feelings of inadequacy drive her to run for the presidency. Gilbert ultimately reveals the real Michelle Obama, one very few Americans know or understand, but that all must be wary of as she seeks the highest office in the land. If she wins in 2024, Gilbert predicts, Michelle will take orders from global elites...and chaos will follow as surely as night follows day.
Since everyone else is thinking of expanding their empire.............
I started musing, and the more I mused, the more I wondered ......... WHY NOT THE U.S. ?
Just a thought, but what I was musing about was - why isn't the U.S. invading Cuba and Venezuela and Brazil? The first two are NOT Ukraine and easily conquered. Brazil might be a fight but I suspect Jair Bolsonarocould easily be overthrown, as he is not even popular in his own country.
SO WHY NOT?
Because the U.S. isn't Russia? Because we don't want to get into invading other countries? Because we are stretched too thin around the world as it is? Because we respect borders?
YEAH OK.
We don't need no hardline Righties like Bolsonaro or Commies like Cuba and Venezuela polluting up the Americas, do we?
Anyone with me on this one?
OK OK, on further reflection, forget Brazil, the US has to stop the migration of countries like
Elsavador, Guatemala, and Honduras. Better to invade that threesome!
The weather is always changing. We take climate change seriously, but not hysterically. We will not adopt nutty policies that harm our economy or our jobs. -- Republican Senators Rick Scott’s only mention of the environment or climate change in his March 2022 radical right plan for America; Reasonable interpretation: Essentially all federal government policies to deal with climate change or pollution are nutty and must be opposed
This post is just a short reminder that the Republican Party is staunchly anti-climate science and pro-profit from pollution capitalist.
Over the last four years, the Trump administration has taken on a massive deregulatory effort. With the issuance of Executive Order 13771, the administration’s two-for-one rule, federal agencies were directed to eliminate two regulations for each new rule issued. Much of this effort has focused on scaling back previous Obama-era regulations and weakening agencies’ statutory authority. Notably, environmental regulation has proven a prominent and easy target, as many existing policies and regulations had never been enshrined into law. The Trump administration has replaced the Clean Power Plan, redefined critical terms under the Endangered Species Act, liftedoil and natural gasextraction bans, weakened the Coal Ash Rule, which regulates the disposal of toxic coal waste, and revised Mercury and Air Toxic Standards–just to name a few[1].
Over the past few months, various federal agencies have finalized major environmental deregulations marking the end of, in some cases, years-long processes. The rules vary in consequence, from walking back pesticide bans to encouraging fossil fuel extraction on federal lands, weakening emissions standards, and even countering previous Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) findings.
The article goes on to point out that T**** and his pro-pollution Republican Party enablers eliminated or weakened regulations on toxic pesticides, greenhouse gas emissions and mercury and toxic air pollution, while expanding the scope of waterways and wetlands that could be polluted and/or bulldozed into non-existence.
The failure to enshrine into law environmental policies and regulations constitutes a massive bipartisan failure. Democrats has chances to put real teeth into environmental regulations, but they failed to do so. Now, it is too late. Republicans have publicly made it crystal clear that the only sense in which the GOP takes the environment and climate change seriously, is when environmental or climate policies and regulations need to be opposed and blocked or eliminated. That allows the private sector to profit from pollution with minimal government interference and no concern for climate change. In other words, Republican Party policy rewards pollution for profit. Some of that profit flows into Republican Party coffers. For Republicans and major polluters, it’s a gigantic win-win. For the public interest and the environment, it’s a gigantic lose-lose.
Acknowledgment: Thanks to Just Drew for linking to the Brookings article about the Executive Order.
Only two weeks after Sweden's Social Democratic Prime Minister, Magdalena Andersson, conceded defeat as a Far-Right party which began as part of the Neo-Nazi movement in the 80s rose to prominence in a Right Wing coalition, Italy's next Prime Minister (based on current exit polls) is poised to be Giorgia Meloni, the leader of the Brothers of Italy, whose roots lie in Italy's fascist Italian Social Movement (MSI). Meloni joined the pro-Mussolini MSI at the age of 17, later co-founding a party-- National Alliance-- with other MSI members. In 2012, after cutting her teeth working with well known Right Wing populists like Matteo Salvini and Burlosconi ( both of whom are part of her new Right coalition) , she started her own party, Brothers of Italy (FDl) which, after today's general election, will now form a coalition government that she will lead as PM
She has tried hard to sell herself and her party as "moderate conservatives," likening them to Tories in one speech. But that's false advertising. Here is a clip of a short speech from only a few years ago (December of 2018) well worth watching, as she will soon be PM of an important Western European economy (Europe's 3rd largest) and a G7 country. In this short clip of her addressing her peers in Parliament, the topic is UN and EU policies regarding migrants, especially refugees from the global south. But she speaks with similar vitriol and self-righteous anger on a variety of topics including European identity, traditional family, the "perversions" of the "LGBT Lobby," abortions, atheism and loss of Christian identity et al. The common thread is that Europe and Italy are in political, social and cultural decline due to the rootless cosmopolitans, global elites, evil agents of George Soros, etc. This being the case, the evil and decadence must be decisively beaten back, and "real European-ness" asserted as basis for civilizational greatness for Italy, just as, in her mind, Orban is doing for Hungary and Kaczynski for Poland (among others). At about the 3 minute mark in the vid, she states that the EU and UN "have used illegal immigration in recent decades to complete the Grand Plan of financial speculation to deprive nations and people of their identity. Because without roots you're a slave, and when you're a slave you serve the interests of Soros." Note the anger she channels on behalf of her many devoted followers as she says this. It is a nod to both replacement theory, Soros conspiracy theories (which she and Orban never tire of employing) and it highlights her mission to liberate the 'real people' of Italy/Europe who are currently "enslaved" by their evil globalist keepers.
In her campaign this summer, Meloni has been careful to *say* she approves of the EU, or at least a less centralized version of it. She claims to support the EU position on the Ukraine War, but Burlosconi and Matteo have well established Putin-friendly stances. She also likens her own support of the EU to that of Viktor Orban who has just been rebuked officially by the EU as leading Hungary down a non-democratic path https://www.politico.eu/article/viktor-orban-rule-of-law-european-parliament-brands-hungary-as-no-longer-a-democracy/ . She also expresses admiration for Poland's authoritarian Law and Justice Party. She has also spoken at the Republican organization CPAC-- currently ground zero of the MAGA movement. Further, while denying any lingering fascism in her party or herself, Meloni has refused to denounce Musolini, and consistently deflects questions about the infamous tri-color flame which remains the logo of her party, as it was for the pro-Musolini MSI which she joined in her teens. Her standard line is "that was a long time ago" and "fascism has been consigned to the past by history." (In a Vice Report below, you can see her immediately change the topic when asked by the reporter about the fascist tri-color flame logo she has refused to abandon; likely to keep the old faithful on board). In a classic moment of damage control last week, Meloni suspended a party member when some of his comments from 2014 from Facebook surfaced. The fellow Brothers of Italy member "praised" Meloni in the comments, likening her to Hitler ( referred to as "a great German statesman of 70 years ago"). https://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-62971802
Yet many who feel desperate in Italy in the wake of the Covid crisis as
well as economic and political problems that seem intractable, take her
on her word-- or at least are willing to "give her a chance." As a
charismatic rhetorician practiced in the "politics of resentment," she
is able to tap into the anger and despair of many citizens, not all of
whom are well informed. Since Italian governments come and go with some frequency (72 since WW2) one can only hope this one is particularly short-lived. But we see desperate and confused Europeans in the aftermath of economic displacement, a refugee crisis, and the covid pandemic-- all in the space of a decade-- turning increasingly to Right Wing alternatives, as they feel the status quo of liberalism has failed them.
Below is a link to a 15 min. Vice Report on Meloni's campaign which provides further context and contains interesting interviews, followed by 1 or 2 articles on this major development.
Deutsche Welle Video Report on Victory of Far Right Sweden Democrats (also descendants of a fascist party, in this case of Neo-Nazis from the 80s) who will be prominent members of Right Wing Coalition gov't that just defeated the Social Democrats 2 weeks ago: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bpDQ6r-jHRc
Q: Why do you think we are seeing so many elections in liberal democracies rejecting the status quo and embracing hard-line far right parties-- some with very dubious roots in the Neo-Fascist movements of 20th century Europe?
A New York Times article reports that online hate speech in Germany is being prosecuted, with fines and sometimes jail time being part of the penalties. This touches on what I see as one of the most complex but important issues in modern politics.
Americans are untrained and defenseless
American society is clearly not able to defend itself. We are overwhelmed by a vast online onslaught of divisive lies, slanders, flawed motivated reasoning, crackpot conspiracies, irrational emotional manipulation, slanders and all the other filth and moral rot that is protected free speech in the US. Social media companies claim to police it, but it is clear by now that such a claim is mostly window dressing (~95% ?). That is just a fig leaf that allows social media companies to claim that hate and lies are being policed. Profit prevents the companies from getting serious about hate speech.
On top of that, hate speech cannot be policed in public places and platforms. Only private sources and police and censor it.
In my firm opinion, decades of dark free speech in America has been and is the single most potent and effective tool that radical right conservatives used to tear American society apart and subvert both politics and democracy. Decades of dark free speech has pushed conservative politics into normalization and acceptance of, a shocking degree of mendacity, authoritarianism, corruption and radical Christian theocracy that comes straight out of the Dark Ages. That is now accepted politics by tens of millions of conservative American adults.
At that exact moment in March, a similar scene was playing out at about 100 other homes across Germany, part of a coordinated nationwide crackdown that continues to this day. After sharing images circulating on Facebook that carried a fake statement, the perpetrators had devices confiscated and some were fined.
“We are making it clear that anyone who posts hate messages must expect the police to be at the front door afterward,” Holger Münch, the head of the Federal Criminal Police Office, said after the March raids.
Hate speech, extremism, misogyny and misinformation are well-known byproducts of the internet. But the people behind the most toxic online behavior typically avoid any personal major real-world consequences. Most Western democracies like the United States have avoided policing the internet because of free speech rights, leaving a sea of slurs, targeted harassment and tweets telling public figures they’d be better off dead. At most, Facebook, YouTube or Twitter remove a post or suspend their account.
But over the past several years, Germany has forged another path, criminally prosecuting people for online hate speech.
German authorities have brought charges for insults, threats and harassment. The police have raided homes, confiscated electronics and brought people in for questioning. Judges have enforced fines worth thousands of dollars each and, in some cases, sent offenders to jail. The threat of prosecution, they believe, will not eradicate hate online, but push some of the worst behavior back into the shadows.
In doing so, they have flipped inside out what, to American ears, it means to protect free speech. The authorities in Germany argue that they are encouraging and defending free speech by providing a space where people can share opinions without fear of being attacked or abused.
“There has to be a line you cannot cross,” said Svenja Meininghaus, a state prosecutor who attended the raid of the father’s house. “There has to be consequences.”
But even in Germany, a country where the stain of Nazism drives a belief that free speech is not absolute, the crackdown is generating fierce debate:
How far is too far?
Is it going too far to censor actual, provable lies, which are usually a non-trivial component of crackpot conspiracy theories? What about slanders? Essentially all of the liars, conspiracy crackpots and slanderers claim to speak truth. They vehemently deny that they are liars, crackpots and/or slanderers. By doing that they implicitly but undeniably point to truth, honesty and non-slander as something good.[1]
What about flawed motivated reasoning? That is more complicated and subtle, but nonetheless a critically important consideration. The human mind is susceptible to it and we are usually completely unaware that it is in operation. Wikipedia:
Motivated reasoning is the phenomenon in cognitive science and social psychology in which emotional biases lead to justifications or decisions based on their desirability rather than an accurate reflection of the evidence. It is the “tendency to find arguments in favor of conclusions we want to believe to be stronger than arguments for conclusions we do not want to believe.” People can therefore draw self-serving conclusions not just because they want to but because the conclusions seemed more plausible given their beliefs and expectancies.
When I listen to most Republican politicians and partisans speak, motivated reasoning is usually a non-trivial or dominant part of what is being asserted. Usually, the reasoning is based on one or more provable lies that are folded into the argument being asserted. That is one objective basis to censor motivated reasoning. It seems that one or more lies or falsehoods cut through most dark free speech (~80% ?).
What about motivated reasoning that is not based heavily on lies or falsehoods? Some arguments based on logic flaws can be like that. For example, relying on a circular or strawman argument or by positing a false dilemma. Many people, especially most partisans and ideologues, do that fairly regularly. They firmly believe their argument and reject allegations of any error in their reasoning.
Questions of censorship are complicated but important. For years it seemed best to leave dark free speech free and untouched. Then it became clear that it is divisive, deadly and corrosive to society, respect for truth, democracy, the rule of law and civil liberties.
The stakes of leaving dark free speech untouched are very high. The stakes of touching it might be just as high. That is because, if autocrats, theocrats and/or kleptocrats (ATKs) rise to power, they could and probably would impose limits on free speech. Their limits would related to squelching criticism and inconvenient truth. That’s what the ATKs in places like China, Russia and North Korea have done.
Yes, ATKs would try to subvert laws that censor some or most dark free speech that are intended to defend truth and democracy. That is an ever-present risk of censorship.
Q: What runs the higher risk to truth and democracy, trying to censor some or most dark free speech or leaving it all alone and letting the ATK chips fall where they will?
Footnote:
1. That strikes me as being akin to Putin holding an election “referendum” in occupied Ukraine and then telling the World the people there, who were forced at gunpoint to vote as they were told, want to be part of Russia. Even a murdering thug like Putin must see at least propaganda value in elections, even if they are an obvious farce.
“Social responsibility is a fundamentally subversive doctrine" in a free society, and have said that in such a society, "there is one and only one social responsibility of business–to use it resources and engage in activities designed to increase its profits so long as it stays within the rules of the game, which is to say, engages in open and free competition without deception or fraud.” ― Milton Friedman, The Ethics of Competition and Other Essays, 1935 (Businesses do not stay within the rules of the game, and they probably never did. Deception and fraud have always been there. They were and still are important, not trivial aspects of normal business operations. And, most or nearly all businesses hate open and free competition.)
In America there are hundreds of thousands of abandoned oil and gas wells. Many of them continue to emit into the air and/or ground the potent greenhouse gas methane and/or toxic compounds such as xylene. In coming years, millions of wells will be abandoned as the economy transitions from carbon energy to other energy sources. This 13 minute video shows that private funds and taxpayers pay ~$30,000 to $1,000,000 each to plug and cap wells that drillers and well owners abandoned.
Most owners of abandoned either cannot afford to cap their wells or they cannot be found and the land sold to other people, many of who are not aware that they have one or more abandoned wells on their property. The problem is left to the states, which choose to not fund well capping.
An obvious solution to this problem, assuming one sees it as a problem worth solving, is to (i) require plugging and capping before a well is abandoned, and (ii) tax what each well produces so that there is money to properly plug and cap old and newly abandoned wells.
Obviously that solution is politically impossible. Oil and gas companies will scream bloody murder and unleash their hordes of lobbyists and campaign contributions to kill any such measure. On top of that massive barrier, the Republican Party will scream bloody murder, accusing the effort as more evil socialist tyranny, pedophilia, cannibalism, satanism and whatever else they come up with in their raging ideological fever dreams and crackpot conspiracy theories.
This is just another example of how callous and irresponsible people and companies that profit from pollution are. They could not care less about environmental or human damage. That is the heart and soul of energy sector capitalism. Laws could have and should have been passed decades ago making it mandatory to plug and cap wells.
But as usual for most American capitalism, there is no such thing as social conscience. Social conscience is subversive to profit. Despite contrary capitalist public relations* rhetoric, social conscience is intolerable. It is blasphemy to core capitalist dogma of profit above all else.
* Public relations from big corporations is mostly just propaganda, largely consisting of lies, deceit, opacity, deflection, flawed motivated reasoning, etc.
Acknowledgement: Thanks to Peach Freeze for bringing this video to my attention.
The Political Economy Research Institute at U. Mass. Amherst compiles polluter lists and updates them periodically. The Greenhouse 100 polluters index 2021 report is based on 2019 data. Clicking on a polluter opens a list of facilities and the town and state they are located in. PERI compiles other lists such as the top 100 air polluters and water polluters. Some of the Greenhouse gas polluter list is shown below:
One thing that criminal law usually requires is intent to commit the crime shown by evidence “beyond a reasonable doubt.” That is a very high standard. It is a major reason why prosecutors often choose not to prosecute a case. A Washington Post article about radical right representative Matt Gaetz (R-FL) highlights this issue. The WaPo writes:
Career prosecutors have recommended against charging Rep. Matt Gaetz (R-Fla.) in a long-running sex-trafficking investigation — telling Justice Department superiors that a conviction is unlikely in part because of credibility questions with the two central witnesses, according to people familiar with the matter.
Senior department officials have not made a final decision on whether to charge Gaetz, but it is rare for such advice to be rejected, these people told The Washington Post, speaking on the condition of anonymity to discuss the deliberations. They added that it is always possible additional evidence emerges that could alter prosecutors’ understanding of the case.
A criminal defense lawyer commented that when a witness changes their story, their credibility is damaged or completely blown. That is usually enough for defense lawyers to create a “reasonable doubt” in the mind(s) at least one of twelve jurors. That is all it takes for a criminal to get away with crime.
In this case, credibility issues were probably not because the witness is a sex worker. Instead, she probably either (1) gave inconsistent interviews during the investigation, and/or (2) gave one version, was shown some evidence, and with a refreshed recollection gave another. Either way, that’s a defense attorney’s bread and butter. That’s the case right there. Defense lawyers love going to trial where no matter what the alleged victim says, there is at least one prior inconsistent statement. And, the fact that her second story would be consistent with the documentary evidence makes it worse, not better.
This is a common example of how ordinary and easy it is to erect plausible deniability in criminal cases. Matt Gaetz is probably not going to be prosecuted for crimes he probably committed.[1]
If you’re interested -- a personal anecdote about witnesses
About 35 years ago, I witnessed a bad car accident on my drive home from San Francisco one night. Two cars were racing, going at least about 100 mph, my guess in court was about 110 mph. After the two cars blew past me going 72 mph on cruise control, one lost control. That car swerved across 4 lanes from the fast lane into the slow lane and broadsided a car in the slow lane. Both vehicles were totaled. I was one of the cars that stopped to see if anyone was hurt. The guy in the slow lane was hurt, bleeding and panicking because he could not open his door, which was smashed in. A couple of us forced the door open and that calmed the guy down. No one in the wrecked race car was hurt. I witnessed the whole thing with amazement.
I waited for police and medics to arrive and take care of the hurt person. Then the cops asked for witnesses. People were eager to tell their story, but I sort of hung back and just listened. The accounts that each of three witnesses gave were not only quite different from each other, they were just wrong based on what I saw. I was amazed again.[2] If that personal experience is probative evidence, many or most human witnesses are amazingly unreliable.
Footnotes: 1. Despite being a high burden of proof that prosecutors must show to get a criminal conviction, the system does sometimes convict innocent people. From what I can tell, there is significant bias in wrongful criminal convictions. A 2018 research paper’s abstract summarizes the issue:
We examine the extent to which DNA exonerations can reveal whether wrongful conviction
rates differ across races. We show that under a wide-range of assumptions regarding
possible explicit or implicit racial biases in the DNA exoneration process (including no bias),
our results suggest the wrongful conviction rate for rape is substantially and significantly
higher among black convicts than white convicts. By contrast, we show that only if one
believes that the DNA exoneration process very strongly favors innocent members of one
race over the other could one conclude that there exist significant racial differences in
wrongful conviction rates for murder.
2. For the rest of the story: I started to slink away, but one of the cops was watching me and he stopped me. I gave him my version of events. When the court case came up, I was the only witness called, so my version of the event was on display. The race car driver’s defense attorney was unhappy with my version, especially the amount of detail about the accident I was able to recall. For example, I knew my exact speed due to my cruise control. So, he impugned my credibility by asking if I was some sort of scientist, and when I said yes, he dropped that line of attack and tried another.
He asked me for the details of what was on each side of the highway in the area of the accident, stuff like what kind of trees, what buildings were like, etc. I could not answer that very coherently even though I could picture it in my mind pretty well. And that is where he left it. I could not answer what was on the sides of a road I had been driving 4-5 times per week for several years. That undermined my credibility.
PROVO, Utah — On June 1, David Leavitt, the prosecuting attorney for Utah County, stood behind a lectern in his windowless Provo office before a gaggle of reporters. Wearing a gray suit and an exasperated look, he wanted to make something categorically clear: Neither he nor his wife were guilty of murdering or cannibalizing young children.
It was, by all accounts, a strange declaration from the progressive Republican prosecutor, a Mormon and younger brother of a former Utah governor, Mike Leavitt, who had earned a name for himself by prosecuting a well-known polygamist in 2001. But David Leavitt was up for re-election, Utah County voters would start casting ballots the next week, and the allegations, ridiculous as they may have sounded, had started to spread online and throughout the community.
Some of Leavitt’s most high-profile political opponents were willing to at least wink at the allegations against him: Utahns for Safer Communities, a political action committee opposing Leavitt’s re-election, posted his news conference to YouTube with the caption, “Wethinks He Doth Protest Too Much,” and on their website, the group wrote that Leavitt “seems to know more than he says.”
Leavitt lost the election, most likely not just because of the allegations against him but because of his liberal style of prosecution in a deeply conservative county where opponents labeled him as “soft on crime.” But the allegations’ impact on Leavitt was clear. After decades of serving as a city and county attorney with grander plans for public office, Leavitt now doesn’t think he’ll run again.
“The cost is too high,” he said recently in an interview from his home.
Leavitt’s experience is one of a spate of recent examples in which individuals have been targeted with accusations of Satanism or so-called ritualistic abuse, marking what some see as a modern day version of the moral panic of the 1980s, when hysteria and hypervigilance over protecting children led to false allegations, wrongful imprisonments, decimated communities and wasted resources to the neglect of actual cases of abuse.
While the current obsession with Satan was boosted in part by the QAnon community, partisan media and conservative politicians have been instrumental in spreading newfound fears over the so-called ritualistic abuse of children that the devil supposedly inspires, sometimes weaving the allegations together with other culture war issues such as LGBTQ rights. Those fears are powering fresh accusations of ritual abuse online, which are amplified on social media and by partisan media, and can mobilize mobs to seek vigilante justice.
The daily invocations of Satan by the biggest players in conservative politics and media are too numerous to catalog in full.
Rep. Marjorie Taylor Green, R-Ga., credited the devil with whispering to women who choose to have abortions and controlling churches who aid undocumented immigrants. In June, she tweeted a video of a man dressed as the devil, stating that the mythical creature would be the next witness called by the House Jan. 6 committee. “They all know him, they all love him, and some even worship him,” she wrote.
Charlie Kirk, the president of one of the largest conservative groups in the country, Turning Point USA, recently opined that Republicans should “use the law to shut down Satanism.” Last year, Fox News host Tucker Carlson expressed his opinion on trans people, telling his viewers, “When you say you can change your own gender by wishing it, you’re saying you’re God, and that is satanic.” The Republican nominee for Missouri’s St. Louis County executive, the top job in the local government, is currently suing her former employer over its mask mandates, citing their use in “satanic ritual abuse.”
And after President Joe Biden’s recent speech on the threat that “MAGA Republicans” pose to democracy, the very subjects of his warnings framed the president’s address as “satanic,” because of the red lights illuminating the backdrop of Philadelphia’s Independence Hall. (As an aside, that red background was definitely bad optics, just sayin')
In the U.S., a Republican candidate for governor in Georgia, Kandiss Taylor, campaigned on demolishing the Georgia Guidestones, a tourist attraction known by some as American Stonehenge. When the mysterious monument — made up of massive granite slabs etched with innocuous rules for living — was blown up in July, Taylor seemed to celebrate, calling them “satanic.”
