A perpetual disinformation motion machine

Maybe. But maybe there is both power and persistence 

in propaganda and lies

In an article, ‘A Perpetual Motion Machine’: How Disinformation Drives Voting Laws, the New York Times describes the obvious.[1] Even if it is obvious, it helps to mention it.

The machine incorporates the former president's lies about a stolen election. That undermines some (minority) public confidence in elections. In response to a minority of voters concerns, Republican lawmakers pass voter suppression laws to limit democratic and minority voters. Republican politicians and blowhards cite a lack of public confidence based on the original lie as the reason for an urgent need to suppress voting. Some even have the guts to state that there was was no evidence of massive vote fraud in the 2020 election, but they are merely responding to voter's expressed fears of a fraudulent vote. Lack of evidence of massive vote fraud is irrelevant. Only unfounded complaints from a minority of Republican voters, fomented by the most mendacious liar president in US history, counts as the "rational" basis for Republican voter suppression by government force.

All complaints from even more democratic voters, when that is the case, that there are too many voting restrictions are ignored as lies, irrelevant, non-existent and/or nonsense. 

The disinformation perpetual motion machine

Clearly, this tactic can be used for any authoritarian ends. For example, if the former president claims that there are too many gun laws, and his supporters complain about excessive gun laws, Republicans can pass laws to repeal all gun laws to respond to voter concerns. Same for abortion. Same for tolerance of the free press, political opposition, laws against white collar crime and corruption, laws that apply to a president or his supporters or donors, tax obligations for the president and his donors, etc.

There are many targets for this misinformation and disinformation tactic, so it can be used to crush democracy, the rule of law, pluralism and etc., to build a single party kleptocratic dictatorship. It is fun, mindless and easy. And, for the elite winners, it is vastly rewarding in terms of both power, e.g., re-election, and wealth. Lots of wealth. The non-elite winners (rank & file voters) get satisfying bragging rights and a deep psychological satisfaction from screwing the hated opposition into oblivion, even if their own civil liberties are eventually also undermined.

Questions: Does anyone recall any reporting where an involved Republican lawmaker working to suppress voting in recent years explained clearly why vote suppression law(s) they backed or wrote would decrease voter suppression? The best rationalization I can come up with is this: Conservative White Republican party voters and vote counters are honest and do not commit vote fraud. Everyone else is bad, a crook and a fraud. Bad people votes need to be suppressed, even if it means suppressing a few honest good people votes as unfortunate collateral damage. Or, is that over the top motivated reasoning?

Footnote: 

1. The NYT writes: 

“The ultimate voter suppression is a very large swath of the electorate not having faith in our election systems,” Mr. Kaufmann, a Republican, said in defense of his bill, which was signed into law in March. “And for whatever reason, political or not, there are thousands upon thousands of Iowans that do not have faith in our election systems.”  

The bills demonstrate how disinformation can take on a life of its own, forming a feedback loop that shapes policy for years to come. When promoted with sufficient intensity, falsehoods — whether about election security or the coronavirus or other topics — can shape voters’ attitudes toward policies, and lawmakers can cite those attitudes as the basis for major changes.

There you have it. For whatever reason, political or not, reality-based or not, rational or not, there are thousands of voters who choose to drink the ex-president's Koolaid and Republican disinformation to create a machine of political destruction. Whatever is under attack gets obliterated or at least attacked with intent to obliterate. And, as we all know, destruction of democracy and inconvenient truth are usually fun, easy and psychologically quite satisfying. 

Some folks are just born dividers and destroyers, mostly authoritarians in America. Others are uniters and builders, mostly democrats. At present, the former group is dominant. The uniters and builders are in deadly serious trouble.

A Call for American Renewal

 

https://www.acallforamericanrenewal.com/

PREAMBLE

These United States, born of noble convictions and aspiring to high purpose, have been an exemplar of self-government to humankind. Thus, when in our democratic republic, forces of conspiracy, division, and despotism arise, it is the patriotic duty of citizens to act collectively in defense of liberty and justice. We, therefore, declare our intent to catalyze an American renewal, and to either reimagine a party dedicated to our founding ideals or else hasten the creation of such an alternative.

We call for a rebirth of the American cause and do so in partnership and loyal competition with others committed to the preservation of our Union. With abiding belief in the value and potential of every soul and with goodwill for all, we hereby dedicate ourselves to these principles and make common cause in the flourishing of this great nation and its diverse states, communities, and citizens.

PRINCIPLES

1. Democracy

We seek the preservation and betterment of our democratic republic and the endurance of our self-government, free from interference and defended against all enemies, foreign and domestic. We support reforms that make our system more accessible, transparent, and competitive, oppose the disenfranchisement of voters, and reject populism and illiberalism, whether of the right or the left.

2. Founding Ideals

We reaffirm the self-evident truth that all persons are created equal and free, having the same inalienable rights to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness, and that it is the prerogative of all to make personal decisions in accordance with their free will. We, therefore, condemn all forms of bigotry such as racism, religious intolerance, sexism, and persecution based on sexual orientation.

3. Constitutional Order

We uphold the Constitution as the inviolable and collective contract protecting liberty and justice for all, and honor the essential separation and balance it establishes among coequal branches of the federal government and the states. 

4. Truth

We recognize truth and reason as essential to a free and just society, and expect our leaders, citizens, and press to seek and promote them. We oppose the employment of fear-mongering, conspiracism, and falsehoods and instead support evidence-based policymaking and honest discourse.

5. Rule of Law

We maintain that the impartial rule of law is essential to a free and just society to protect the rights and property of all people. No one is above the law, and our criminal justice system must treat everyone equally without discrimination based on race, status or other unrelated factors.

6. Ethical Government

We demand that public officials and aspiring leaders – regardless of party – act with integrity and honor, the absence of which is a harbinger for abuses of power that threaten the republic.

7. Pluralism

We are committed to a pluralistic society defined by its ideals and welcoming to all peoples rightfully seeking safety, opportunity, and a better life by becoming contributing members of our diverse nation. We reject the notion that America should be characterized by the races, birthplaces, religious affiliations, or partisan identities of its citizens.

8. Civic Responsibility

We believe that all Americans share civic responsibility, which is essential for our self-government and national success. Thriving communities are built by faithfully engaged citizens working to overcome differences with mutual respect and the bonds of civil affection. The solutions to many of America’s greatest challenges can only be found in our diverse communities.

9. Opportunity

We recognize open, market-based economies as consistent with our natural liberty and the optimal means of ensuring economic mobility and the allocation of scarce resources. We support sensible and limited regulation, including to ensure equal opportunity, and affirm government’s vital role in assisting vulnerable citizens, while encouraging self-reliance and ingenuity without the impediments of cronyism and corruption.

10. Free Speech

We reaffirm the Constitution's guarantee of free speech and freedom of the press as essential to accountable government and the American way of life. We sustain the rights of individuals and private entities to exercise this freedom, even to express unpopular views, and condemn efforts to erode press freedom and public support for its vital role.

11. Conservation

We consider vital our shared stewardship of America’s resources – natural, environmental, and financial. We accept responsibility to conserve for ourselves and future generations these public assets, and to protect them from both natural and man-made harms.

12. Common Defense & Welfare

We uphold that government is instituted by the people to secure those essential, collective goods that individuals cannot attain for themselves, particularly providing for the common defense and promoting the general welfare. We, therefore, support policies that further public safety, health, and defense as required for enduring national sovereignty and prosperity.

13. Leadership

Having thrived in the abundance of a choice land, we believe that these United States must work in conjunction with friends and allies to advance worthy interests abroad and to promote freedom by example and with the judicious application of power.

WHO ARE WE?

We are concerned citizens—a group of national, state, and local leaders—calling for American renewal. The country is tired of division and political extremism. It’s time to restore a “common-sense coalition” in our political system, and we are committed to making that a reality.

WHAT'S THE CALL?

A Call for American Renewal is a rallying cry for pragmatists everywhere. Our nation’s future should not be dictated by a single person but by principles that bind us together. That’s why we believe in pushing for the Republican Party to rededicate itself to founding ideals—or else hasten the creation of an alternative.

WHAT'S NEXT?

We cannot stay quiet in the face of rising political extremism. We must stand up and defend our republic. Sign up for updates about how we’re taking action, and join us for our upcoming nationwide town hall on renewing America. Details to follow.

How does it end?

I was looking over some of the comments out there on various blog sites this morning.  Wow, a whole lot of gibberish going on.  Insults flying, sarcasm unchecked, one-upmanship attempts… it really got me wondering, are we, have we become, a nation of imbecilic bottom-feeders or what?  Is this all/the best we got??  Do we have some psychological childish need to behave this way?  That it gives us some kind of goofy personal satisfaction?

We constantly feed each other this stuff; tit for tat, over and over.  And it’s not just your Everyman who does this kind of thing; it even happens at the so-called “highest levels” of discourse. Take yesterday’s bizarre comments by four U.S. House Republicans (see :20 to 1:02 mark)

Am I guilty of the same thing, fomenting discord, by even bringing this video up?  Does that also make me part of the problem??

Phrases like “normal tourists visit,” “not Trump supporters who were taking the lives of others,” “DOJ harassing peaceful patriots,” “no insurrection but a mob of misfits” really give a distorted picture of what we all actually saw happen.  How can we come up with two completely different analyses of the same witnessed event?  Who’s not seeing what?

Granted, a lot of questions there, and the gods know we’ve discussed this subject ad nauseam. But:

Q1: Where does this all end?  Does one side even dare to stop, which then emboldens the other side?

Q2: How to best handle the problem of childish gibberish, writ large, in the U.S.?  You tell me.

Thank for posting and recommending.

Analysis of the insurrectionists and their motivation

An 18-minute interview with a professor who studies political violence all over the world led him to some interesting findings about the insurrectionists in the 1/6 coup attempt. 

Summary of the interview

Most of the 1/6/ insurrectionists were male (~85%) and White (~94%) and ~34 to 55 years old. About 45% were professionals including CEOs, business owners, doctors, lawyers and managers, but only 7% were unemployed, about the same as the national average. About 90% of the 420 arrested so far are not affiliated with any militia or gang. The apparent main driver was fear of the Great Replacement of rights of Whites by expanding rights for non-White Hispanics and Blacks. About half of the insurrectionists came from counties that voted for Biden, i.e., urban areas. The main risk factor was % decline in non-Hispanic White population -- counties where the White population was declining had the highest likelihood of participating in the violent protest. Fear of the Great Replacement was the main driver of violence.

Commentary

This fear makes no sense to me. Rights for White are not going away or being reduced. Rights and privileges for non-Whites are possibly coming closer to White rights and privileges. Replacement isn't possible. About 4% of adult Americans fit the insurrectionist mindset, but a much greater group are driven by fear of the Great Replacement and they sincerely believe the election was stolen. The larger group claims they are not willing to participate in violence, but include a lot of active and passive supporters of the insurrectionists, i.e., they are willing to overlook or sympathize with the crimes of the insurrectionists because they were fighting in defense of what they see as severely threatened White rights and privileges.

Is this the basis for the Great Replacement fear?

The DarkSide hack on US infrastructure

A soft, cozy place to nap

Last week, Colonial Pipelines was hacked by an organized crime group called DarkSide. The group installed ransomware in CP's computers and the company had to shut down it's entire transmission pipelines from Texas to the East Coast. CP transports 45% of East Coast the oil, diesel and gasoline used in that region of the country, e.g., this hack has a huge impact. The pipelines remain shut down today. The company refuses to say if it paid the ransom or not.

DarkSide is a Russian government-sanctioned criminal organization that can hack and disrupt operations outside of Russia and inside countries Russia deems to be enemies. Quartz writes about the DarkSide crime gang in an article entitled, Hacking collective DarkSide are state-sanctioned pirates:

DarkSide is not a unit of Russia’s intelligence services, and there’s no evidence that it is funded or directed by the Kremlin. Instead, DarkSide is a private, for-profit criminal organization that operates under the benign neglect of Russian authorities. DarkSide reserves its mischief for Russia’s geopolitical rivals—companies based in the US and western Europe—and Russian authorities don’t interfere with its work.

In many ways, DarkSide resembles the privateers that terrorized the seas during the golden age of piracy in the 17th and 18th centuries. In that era, a captain could obtain a letter of marque from a colonial government officially authorizing him to pillage and plunder merchant ships belonging to rival nations—so long as he left his own country’s ships alone. Unlike pirates, who were “enemies of all mankind” and liable to be captured and killed wherever they went, privateers could safely use one of the major powers’ ports as their base of operations.

Hackers get a similar deal. DarkSide is one of the many for-profit ransomware groups that have proliferated and thrived in Russia. These cyber-gangs steal companies’ data and hold it hostage in exchange for ransoms ranging from $200,000 to $20 million. Many of these groups, including DarkSide, slip lines of code into their hacking software that check to see if a victim’s computer uses Russian as its default language; if so, the software automatically stops the attack. Features like this help hackers avoid the ire of their host governments, and ensure that they don’t wear out their welcome in their safe harbor.

“Russian actors tend not to target their own country, mainly because they don’t want law enforcement coming after them,” said Jon Clay, vice president of threat intelligence at cybersecurity firm Trend Micro. “We see that around the world: Depending on which country an actor group is coming from, they tend to stay away from targeting their own.” 

The attack seems to be a serious miscalculation on the part of the cyber criminals. One explanation for the ill-advised attack is that hacking syndicates—much like the privateers of yore—are loose cannons. DarkSide is particularly hard to control because, in addition to carrying out its own attacks, it sells its hacking software as a service to other criminal groups who want to extort companies.

In a May 10 statement, DarkSide seemed to indicate that the Colonial Pipeline attack was the result of an affiliate gone rogue. “Our goal is to make money, and not creating problems for society,” the group wrote. “From today we intoduce [sic] moderation and check each company that our partners want to [attack] to avoid social consequences in the future.”

A few points merit mention. First, Russia remains a deadly enemy that is now engaged in a permanent full-blow war against the US. Russian cyberattacks will not stop. Based on the scope of the Solar Winds hack, Russian cyberattacks can cost the US economy trillions. 

Second, it is not close to credible for any Russian-sanctioned cyberwarfare group to claim their goal is merely to make money, not to cause problems for society. The Russian government will not hesitate to order its criminal minions to launch attacks that could cause trillions in damage and millions of American deaths if it believed that the time and circumstances were right. Knocking out power grids in and infrastructure the US for weeks could cause mass deaths, e.g., by crippling water and sewage treatment plants, food transportation, etc.

Third, US companies continue to be sloppy about computer security. Computer security costs money and that cuts into profits. Due to Republican hate of government as tyranny, companies are not forced to take security seriously. They aren't even required to repost hacks to anyone.[1] Due to mostly Republican-broken American government, the US economy and government is a big, fat juicy target just sitting there for criminals and hostile nations to attack and feed on at their convenience. 

Average Americans pay the price for both the mostly Republican-broken government and unregulated markets with their immoral profit above all mentality. As usual, money talks and everything else walks. No one is looking out for taxpayers or the public interest. In its capitalist greed, America is defenseless and there is no place to look for help. 

Questions: Is it unfair or inaccurate to blame Russia for the CP hack? Solar Winds? Is the seriousness of the threat discussed here as serious as described, or is it at least hyperbole or worse, e.g., flat out lies? Is it fair to mostly blame Republicans for an ineffective government presence in this? Is corporate greed part of the problem, or is that assertion too tenuous to be credible or a major factor?

Footnote: 

1. One source commented in 2018:

Just a friendly reminder that the United States does not, at the time of this writing, have any kind of federal data breach notification laws on the books.

Such a law that would provide specific rules about what a company — let’s say, Equifax, Intel, Uber or Yahoo, just as a couple high-profile examples — has to do after a major hack, like how soon it needs to tell customers the hack occurred and how executives should behave when they find out there’s been a breach.

Truth vs. Indoctrination

Granted, there is a bit of an overlap (since both truth and indoctrination involve the imparting of information), but fundamentally, these are really two different concepts.  The way I see it, the goal of truth is to disseminate facts upon another, while indoctrination’s goal is to disseminate opinions upon another.

Societally speaking, disseminating truth takes on a positive connotation, while disseminating indoctrination takes on a negative one.  Truth can categorically prove its wares, whereas indoctrination cannot.  Indoctrination depends more on receptive, often gullible subjects.

Two great examples of this “truth versus indoctrination” slippery slope can be found in the subjects of religion and politics.  Regarding these subjects, at what point does truth slip (bend) into a form of indoctrination and indoctrination get promoted into a form of truth?  Yes, good question.

Let’s start with religion.  What truths can be proven about religion?  Is it not always a touchy-feely, indoctrination kind of thing, totally dependent on “our feelings?”  Logically speaking, there really is not a lot of logic to it... if any. 

For example, let’s take a major focal point of Christianity: Can it ever be proven, be an objective truth, that Jesus lived, died on a cross, then came back to life three days later?  No, it cannot.  Logically speaking, that’s impossible.  Yet, as children, that’s what we are indoctrinated with. For most of western society, that belief grows with us and psychologically within us, as we grow into adults, and pass it along to our own progeny.  Sure, Jesus might have actually lived.  And sure, he might have been crucified.  So far, so good (or good enough).  But then the story takes a strange turn, heads down the slippery slope, and believing his coming back to life after three days slips us into bizarr-o (indoctrination) territory.  A case where possible truth gets turned into indoctrination.  And it’s not just Christianity; I’m sure all the other orthodox religions do the same thing with their children.  Such are the indoctrination stories with no objective truth, passed on from generation to generation to the especially receptive/gullible.

Let’s take on politics now.  What better example can there be than the current-day “big lie” being perpetuated by the majority of republicans; the big lie being that Donald Trump won the 2020 presidential election?  Votes have been counted and recounted, in some cases even more than twice.  Yet the lie persists, even in the face of contradictory factual evidence.  Like with religions, have Trump’s supporters now slid down that slippery slope, been indoctrinated to believe the big lie?  Personally, I think so.  And it gets worse, more ingrained, the more they hear about it (i.e., the power of suggestion/repetitiveness at work).

___________

Lots of philosophical questions there, along with my “opinions” 😉, and I know things can get really complicated.  Few things are ever cut-and-dried (probably only objective truth ;).  But here are the basic questions I’d like to discuss…

Q1: Whether politics or religion or any other subject matter, is indoctrination just subjective wishful thinking in the face of no facts?  What part of my analysis did I get wrong?

Q2: What do you see as the main difference between truth versus indoctrination?  IOW, at their most fundamental, what are they?  Define them in basic terms.

Q3: Do you think anyone has ever tried to indoctrinate you? If yes, who/when?  Did you ever manage to reject it?  Or do you still embrace it?  Does/Did it give you a sense of identity; like you belonged to a like-thinking collective?  Tell us about any indoctrination experience(s) you’ve had.

Thanks for posting and recommending.