News digest: Free speech, etc.

Free speech under attack

The Verge writes:

Virtually every American politician professes to love the First Amendment. Many of them profess to hate another law: Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act. But the more they say about 230, the clearer it becomes that they actually hate the First Amendment and think Section 230 is just fine.

The heart of Section 230 is famously just 26 words: No provider or user of an interactive computer service shall be treated as the publisher or speaker of any information provided by another information content provider.  

Threatening to repeal 230 is a shakedown racket, a way for lawmakers to quietly put their thumb on the scale — a back door to imposing government speech regulations.  

The thing is, these complaints get a big thing right: in an era of unprecedented mass communication, it’s easier than ever to hurt people with illegal and legal speech. But the issue is far bigger and more complicated than encouraging more people to sue Facebook — because, in fact, the legal system has become part of the problem. 

The legal system wasn’t built for bad faith at scale. The First Amendment doesn’t work if the legal system doesn’t work. Republican-proposed speech reforms are ludicrously, bizarrely bad. The rules are transparently rigged to punish political targets at the expense of basic consistency.

In other words: 

• Our legal system cannot handle all the bad faith that has completely taken over the rhetoric of America’s fascist radical right and is now starting to poison the left
• There is not yet equivalence between America’s fascist radical right and the left, but the gap is probably narrowing

Section 230 shields web hosts from liability for illegal speech that a third party posts or reposts. The problem is that the scope of illegal speech is so narrow that online hate speech, blatant lies, crackpot conspiracy theories, harassment and etc., are not illegal. 

What some anti-free speech politicians want to do is repeal the Sec. 230 shield for certain kinds of online disinformation, e.g., lies about COVID vaccines killing many people or being ineffective. Republicans want that to apply to giant social media sites, while leaving small radical right crackpot sites untouched and free to spew lies, slanders,[1] disinformation, etc.

Republican plans for domestic spending once 

they are back in power 

The NYT writes:

Congressional Republicans, eyeing a midterm election victory that could hand them control of the House and the Senate, have embraced plans to reduce federal spending on Social Security and Medicare, including cutting benefits for some retirees and raising the retirement age for both safety net programs.

.... several influential Republicans have signaled a new willingness to push for Medicare and Social Security spending cuts as part of future budget negotiations with President Biden. Their ideas include raising the age for collecting Social Security benefits to 70 from 67 and requiring many older Americans to pay higher premiums for their health coverage. The ideas are being floated as a way to narrow government spending on programs that are set to consume a growing share of the federal budget in the decades ahead.

Of course radical right Republicans are not saying exactly what they would do before the elections next week. Only after they are in power will we find out what fun plans they have to screw us. Once back in power, the radical right will continue its relentless assault on government’s ability to protect citizens from enraged Christian fundamentalists, ruthless brass knuckles capitalists and power mad, fascist Republican Party elites.

From the too little, too late files: 

Biden feebly tries to defend democracy

The NYT writes: 

President Biden issued an impassioned condemnation of his predecessor and other Republicans on Wednesday night for encouraging political violence, voter intimidation and “the Big Lie,” framing next week’s elections as a pivotal test of American democracy.

“As I stand here today, there are candidates running for every level of office in America — for governor, Congress, attorney general, secretary of state — who won’t commit, they will not commit to accepting the results of the elections that they’re running in,” Mr. Biden said at Union Station, just blocks from where a mob stormed the Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021, to disrupt the transfer of power. “This is the path to chaos in America. It’s unprecedented. It’s unlawful. And it’s un-American.”

No Joe, it is not a path to chaos and so far it has not been illegal, except for the Republican’s 1/6 coup attempt. It is a path to things like Christian Sharia law under a brutal, enraged Christian Taliban, ruthless, unregulated brass knuckles capitalist kleptocracy and American-style fascism served up by Republican Party grifter elites. That is the path we are on right now.

In my humble opinion, Joe still doesn’t get it. Regardless, it’s probably too late for Joe’s speech to make much difference in the elections next week. 

Hear that hammering sound? It is nails starting to be pounded into the coffin of democracy, civil liberties, secularism, respect for fact and truth, and the rule of law.

Footnote: 

1. When I use slanders in this context, which I do a lot now, I do not mean slander in the sense of what is needed to win a defamation case in court. That is usually impossible or almost impossible to do. What I mean is defamatory insults that are rarely prosecuted. An current example is the lies America’s fascist radical right put out that Paul Pelosi (Nancy's husband) had hired a male prostitute, wound up in a drunken fight with him, and got hit in the head with a hammer. Those lies are obviously insulting to Paul. But they’re the kind of insults that rarely go to court, and rarely lead to a finding of defamation for the few lawsuits that are filed.

Climate change non-education

An effective way to keep people from opposing or supporting something that elites want or don’t want is to keep the public as ignorant, deceived, disinformed, confused and/or distracted as much as possible. A great way to foster ignorance and disinformation is to simply not teach subjects that elites want the public to remain ignorant and disinformed about. The NYT writes:

Many States Omit Climate Education. These Teachers Are Trying to Slip It In.

Around the United States, middle school science standards have minimal references to climate change and teachers on average spend just a few hours a year teaching it.

In mid-October, just two weeks after Hurricane Ian struck her state, Bertha Vazquez asked her class of seventh graders to go online and search for information about climate change. Specifically, she tasked them to find sites that cast doubt on its human causes and who paid for them.

It was a sophisticated exercise for the 12-year-olds, Ms. Vazquez said, teaching them to discern climate facts from a mass of online disinformation. But she also thought it an important capstone to the end of two weeks she dedicates to teaching her Miami students about climate change, possible solutions and the barriers to progress.

.... in Florida, where Ms. Vazquez has taught for more than 30 years, and where her students are already seeing the dramatic impacts of a warming planet, the words “climate change” do not appear in the state’s middle or elementary school education standards.

“Middle school is where these kids are starting to get their moral compass and to back that compass up with logic,” said Michael Padilla, a professor emeritus at Clemson University and a former president of the National Science Teachers Association. “So middle school is a classic opportunity to have more focus on climate change.”

For those who do receive formal instruction on climate change, it will most likely happen in middle school science classrooms. But many middle school standards don’t explicitly mention climate change, so it falls largely on teachers and individual school districts to find ways to integrate it into lessons, often working against the dual hurdles of limited time and inadequate support.

Ms. Vazquez really went out on a limb to admit she teaches climate change in Florida, which politically is anti-climate change science. She has moral courage, but maybe not a job for much longer. A way to fire her will probably be found soon. And, radical right Republican climate science deniers like Rick DeSantis will look into ways to get laws passed in Florida to stop the teaching about climate change and science. DeSantis will attack it as socialist lies, groomer indoctrination and whatever other crackpottery seems good enough to keep the base angry, fearful, distracted, deceived and ignorant.

An ignorant public is a much more gullible and deceivable public than a well-informed public. The Republican Party understands this. That underpins ruthless Republican efforts to maintain ignorance and deceit about climate change.

News Snippet: How Republicans are slowly killing democracy

We're in a period of death of democracy the rule of law and civil liberties by thousands of cuts coming over at least several decades. Attacks on government, secularism and inconvenient truth are all intensifying. Here is another example.

NBC News writes: 

Chief Justice Roberts temporarily blocks release of Trump's tax records to House Democrats

Chief Justice John Roberts on Tuesday [that is today folks] temporarily blocked a congressional committee from accessing former President Donald Trump’s tax records.

Trump, unlike other recent presidents, has refused to make his tax returns public amid scrutiny of his business affairs, and turned to the justices after an appeals court in Washington refused to intervene on the release of the records. The high court has recently rejected similar requests made by Trump.

Trump’s lawyers say the House Ways and Means Committee’s assertion that it needs the information to probe how the IRS conducts the auditing process for presidents does not stand up to scrutiny.

The U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit declined Thursday to reconsider a three-judge panel’s ruling in August that the committee could obtain the tax returns.

As usual, the MSM does not get it, or if it does, it is incompetent. That's normal these days and has been for years.

What NBC fails to point out is that (i) Roberts blocked release until after the election, (ii) Trump is not running for any office so there is no reason for timing it to the election, and (iii) if the Republicans retake the House, as some polling indicates is likely, that temporary block will be permanent. Once the Repubs retake the House, that is the end of all House investigation into Trump's treason and crimes. That leaves the DoJ and Garland. There is little or no hope for justice emanating from the clueless paralyzed Garland.

Once again, a Republican judge on the Supreme Court protects a corrupt Republican elite. And by delaying as much as possible, Trump once again gets away with treason and/or crimes.

The rule of law has fallen. The rest of democracy is next. Our freedoms come right after that.

My grade for the MSM: Rock solid F (failure).

My grade for the Republican Party, the enemy of the people and democracy: F--- (triple minus F).

What the radical right rank and file thinks

New poll data by PRRI is published and it sheds light on support for Republican extremists. A WaPo opinion piece comments:

For answers, turn to the Public Religion Research Institute’s American Values Survey, which provides insight into the beliefs of White evangelical Christians, who make up the core of the GOP. It reveals a lot about what they think and why they vote the way they do.

A striking 71 percent of these voters think the country has gone downhill since the 1950s (when women were excluded from most professions, Black Americans faced barriers to voting, 50 million Americans still used outhouses and only about 5 percent of Americans were college-educated). Because White Protestant evangelicals make up such a large share of the GOP, that means 66 percent of Republicans want to go back to the time of “Leave It to Beaver.”

Half of White evangelical Protestants also think God intended America to be the promised land. Nearly two-thirds say immigrants are a threat, and 61 percent say “society has become too soft and feminine.” And they are the only discrete religious group polled to support overturning Roe v. Wade.

On race, only 19 percent of the group agrees that “the legacy of slavery and discrimination have limited Black Americans’ upward mobility.” They are the least likely to accept that African Americans disproportionately receive the death penalty. And here’s the kicker: Unlike a majority of Americans, “six in ten white evangelical Protestants (61%) agree that discrimination against white Americans has become as big a problem as discrimination against racial minorities.”

Given these figures, it shouldn’t be surprising that while 58 percent of Americans think white supremacy is still a major problem, only 33 percent of White evangelical Protestants do, the lowest among religious groups. Similarly, 51 percent of the group believe that public teachers and librarians are “indoctrinating students with inappropriate curricula and books that wrongly portray America as a racist country,” compared with only 29 percent of Americans broadly.  

And on immigration, only 30 percent of Americans buy into the “great replacement theory.” But 51 percent of White evangelical Protestants agree that “immigrants are invading our country and replacing our cultural and ethnic background.”  

In a nutshell, this group’s beliefs clash with the essence of the American experiment and conflict with objective facts, demography and economics. White evangelical Protestants’ outlook is warped by right-wing media and refracted through a prism of visceral anger and resentment.

It makes little sense to debate whether the MAGA movement radicalized White evangelical Protestants or the other way around. They are essentially one and the same.  

Last year, Eastern Illinois University professor Ryan Burge wrote for the New York Times, “In essence, many Americans are coming to the understanding that to be very religiously engaged and very politically conservative means that they are evangelical, even if they don’t believe in the divinity of Jesus Christ.” In other words, Burge explained, more people are “conflating evangelicalism with Republicanism — and melding two forces to create a movement that is not entirely about politics or religion but power.” (This helps explain how evangelicals can embrace views that fly in the face of Christian theology; it’s not about the religion.)

From what I can tell, White evangelical Protestants were radicalized decades before Trump came on the scene. He just normalized bad things like Christian radicalism, bigotry, rage-mongering and acceptance of lies and slanders. For the radical right, religion has merged into politics. God's dogma is actually Republican Party dogma. The rank and file just cannot see this. Decades of toxic Republican Party propaganda has done its job quite well.