A Key Source of Political Power

NYT caption: Losing his huge online following would deprive 

Mr. Trump of cultural influence. It takes away the privilege 

he seems to covet most: the ability to commandeer the 

world’s attention with a push of a button.

A New York Times article, In Pulling Trump’s Megaphone, Twitter Shows Where Power Now Lies, points out the power that social media has. The NYT writes:

The ability of a handful of people to control our public discourse has never been more obvious.

In the end, two billionaires from California did what legions of politicians, prosecutors and power brokers had tried and failed to do for years:

They pulled the plug on President Trump.

Twitter’s decision to permanently suspend Mr. Trump’s account on Friday “due to the risk of further incitement of violence,” after a decision a day earlier by Facebook to ban the president at least through the end of his term, was a watershed moment in the history of social media. Both companies had spent years defending Mr. Trump’s continued presence on their platforms, only to change course days before the end of his presidency.

Why these companies’ chief executives — Jack Dorsey of Twitter and Mark Zuckerberg of Facebook — decided to act now is no mystery. They have been under pressure for years to hold Mr. Trump accountable, and that pressure intensified enormously this past week, as everyone from Michelle Obama to the companies’ own employees called for a permanent ban in the wake of Wednesday’s deadly Capitol riot.

These companies, corporate autocracies masquerading as mini-democracies, often portray their moderation decisions as the results of a kind of formulaic due process, as if “don’t incite an insurrectionist mob” had been in the community guidelines all along. But high-stakes calls like these typically come down to gut decisions made under extreme duress. In this case, Mr. Dorsey and Mr. Zuckerberg considered the evidence, consulted their teams, weighed the trade-offs and risks of inaction — including the threat of a worker revolt that could damage their ability to attract top talent — and decided that they’d seen enough.

There you have it, corporate autocracies masquerading as mini-democracies hold major political power. Together, social media along with major political donors, probably hold more power than all other sources of political and social power in the US. The other major contenders are politically active Christianity and authoritarian radical right political and Christian Nationalist ideologies.

What power do the people and voters have? That's not so clear.

A Short Question About Racism

A number of commentators at various sources have commented that the response of the police at the Jan. 6 coup attempt showed far too much deference to the mob, which was almost completely white. They point out that police are not nearly as deferential to protesters when blacks protest and get out of hand. Those people conclude that this is another example of deeply ingrained systemic racism in American society, government and their institutions, especially law enforcement. 

Did what happened on Jan. 6 reflect systemic racism? 

What would be YOUR movie title concerning Jan. 6?

 YOU have to know, that they will make a movie about the events of Jan. 6, 2021.

IT is inevitable.

The only question I ponder, is what title they will give such a movie.

Will it be bland, like:

Jan. 6, 2021, The Storming of the Capital

OR will it be imaginative, like:

Duck Dynasty vs The Capital Police

OR will it be hyper-partisan, like:

Rightwing terrorists invade the Capital

OR will it take a documentary twist, like:

Riot at the Capital: The Real Story 

SO JUST FOR FUN:

IF you, yes YOU, had a say, what title would YOU give such a movie?

Happy Sunday.

The Fraught Way Forward

Is social media greater than insurrection?

The poll data from 538 indicates that the president was still within his normal range, 41.9%. His attempted coup does not yet seem to have cost him much support. Maybe that will appreciably change in coming days. 

Because the president's core supporters are loyal to the man personally, not the president, democracy or the Constitution, it may be the case that banning him from social media will hurt his approval more than his attempted coup. Loss of social media access arguably is the bigger threat to the president's power and influence than his act to overthrow the government by violence. Based on his public reactions so far, the president arguably sees his social media problem as more serious than his insurrection problem, which he doesn't take any responsibility for. 

For example, Trump is considering moving to the radical right authoritarian-fascist social media site Parler or setting up his own social media platform. The president needs to maintain a constant flow of dark free speech to his supporters to keep them trapped in his fake realities and to maintain his power over them. He also needs it to maintain his ability to tap his people for money. 

It is reasonable to think that the president assesses his situation correctly. If so, then the way forward for American politics and society will be fraught. Trump's supporters firmly believe that Trump won, Biden lost, the election was fraudulent and people who say otherwise are liars. There is no indication so far that a significant portion of the GOP leadership is going to take the coup attempt seriously or otherwise act to counteract the fake realities that Trump has created to trap his supporters. Those people have been sucked into the president's vortex of lies and manipulation. 

So, what can people who oppose the president do to try to inject some reality and context into the situation? The minds of trumplanida believers are not going to easily change, assuming they can ever be changed. For the most part, those minds will have to change themselves. At the moment, the best way to do that probably is to keep the demagogue off of social media. Memories fade, including the memories of Trump supporters. 

The unsolvable problem: dark free speech

Of course the problems with that are (1) Fox News, Breitbart, Newsmax, OANN, etc., and (2) Josh Hawley, Ted Cruz and other radical right GOP demagogues itching for power. Those radical right propaganda sources are not going to change their rhetoric and tactics nor will they go away. And, maybe the radical right online presence will migrate to Parler as the central propaganda clearing house for Trump. Supporters could go to Parler as the central source, while maintain their hundreds of millions of accounts on Twitter, Facebook, Instagram and whatever else there is for repeating and spreading demagoguery, propaganda and lies.

By now, it is clear that simply stating inconvenient facts and laying out sound reasoning has either a neutral or no effect, or they are counterproductive by reinforcing false beliefs. The trumplandia "reasoning" is that assertions of inconvenient facts or reasoning is evidence they are false and the messenger or source is liar. There is no way to penetrate that kind of mindset with mere truth or logic.

Maybe it is a personal lack of imagination and/or intelligence, but every democratic, civilized path forward seems to be significantly (mostly?) blocked by the unstoppable power of dark free speech. 

So, other than keeping Trump off of social media, which probably won't work, and teaching people critical thinking skills, what other plausible options are there? What am I  missing? The problem always seems to boil down to dark free speech.