Help me understand...

In yesterday’s DisPol OP (please review this link) regarding the Georgia RICO case against Trump, Germaine wrote:

Roman is a radical right authoritarian activist and professional political dirt digger. Maybe the Georgia case will fall apart, but it is still too early to know. At this point, there is still too much the public has not been made aware of. I just get a real bad vibe from what has happened and is happening now. Radical right authoritarian state legislators are just itching to quash the lawsuit and this gives them an excuse.

Yeah, I’m still trying to figure out how I feel about all that (Willis being caught up in (let’s call it) a “sex scandal” with Wade).  I had heard several things about it:

• That Wade was not qualified to take on a lead prosecutor role due to little experience, yet he was catapulted into that position by Fani Willis, who personally hired him;
• Large amounts of money were paid to him and his firm;
• Wade and Willis vacationing with each other using public funds;
• Their relationship didn’t happen until AFTER he was put in the prosecutor’s position; … 

Now I know that schtuff happens when people are in the middle of a messy divorce.  I met my own husband when he was in the middle of a messy divorce.  So, who am I, right?

My problem/conundrum is that we are blaming Trump for his affair with Stormy Danials but we shouldn’t blame Willis, a government official, for pretty much the same kind of activities?  I’m no prude but Willis hiding her affair is not a lot different than Trump trying to hide his affair(s) with a porn star, is it?  Yes, he was running for president at the time and wanted to cover it up because it might cost him votes. 

Anyway, these are some of the questions running through my mind:

1. Can we/Should we expect more from Willis than from Trump?  How is one better/worse than the other?
2. Is any political office(r) obligated to be forthright with their personal life, however “steamy”, including Willis?
3. Can we be upset with Trump but NOT upset with Willis?  Isn’t that a double standard?

Help me understand why one is different than the other.  I.e., why I shouldn’t forgive Trump, but I should forgive Willis??

How do I reconcile the two?  I need (logical) help.

Debating freedom of thought

I got a criticism of my thinking regarding freedom of thought in a post yesterday. I raised the idea of society or the law somehow disapproving of DFS (dark free speech) in politics. The criticisms and my responses shed light in one reasonable mental frame about how to think about these complicated things.

Criticisms 

You said:

Is it unconstitutional for government to tax Faux News more heavily than NPR because Faux relies heavily on DFS? I don't see why.

Well, there's this:

Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press;

Taxing a private company because of its speech - dark or otherwise - is definitely an abridgment of freedom, and unconstitutional.

Style over substance? I don't get it. Lies are lies, not truths. Logic flaws are logic flaws, not sound logic. Deceit is deceit, not honesty. Those things look clear to me, even if the lines are not always sharp...

So what "lies" are you referring to? That the moon landing was a side project by Kubrick filmed in Hollywood, or that global warming reversed when we elected Obama, or that there were no WMD in Iraq? Here you focus on the most straightforward of the criteria you listed earlier, and yet here too you'll find the utility of limiting speech marginal at best.

And whatever utility you think there is, none of these rebuttals eliminates the role of agreement in determining the "correct" standard. Ultimately your demand for limiting "dark" speech is inherently a demand for others to take your view of things. They must agree with you, do things your way, or be punished in some way.

My responses

I am unsure if taxing a private company because of its DFS (not honest speech) is definitely unconstitutional. That is a legal hypothesis I would very much like to see tested. Consider defamation law, which is constitutional:

To prove prima facie defamation, a plaintiff must show four things: 1) a false statement purporting to be fact; 2) publication or communication of that statement to a third person; 3) fault amounting to at least negligence; and 4) damages, or some harm caused to the reputation of the person or entity who is the subject of the statement.

Different states vary in their anti-defamation statutes. As such, courts in different states will interpret defamation laws differently, and defamation statutes will vary somewhat from state to state. In Davis v. Boeheim, 110 A.D.3d 1431 (N.Y. 2014), which is a New York state court case, the court held that in determining whether a defamation claim is sufficient, a court must look at whether the "contested statements are reasonably susceptible of a defamatory connotation.

Truth is widely accepted as a complete defense to all defamation claims. An absolute privilege is also a complete defense to a defamation claim. Among other examples, this includes statements made by witnesses during judicial proceedings.

In commerce, lying can amount to a criminal offense:

Businesspersons Beware: Lying is a Crime

The rules regarding lying in business in the U.S. are currently being vigorously enforced

In case after case, scandal after scandal, American federal law enforcement officials have clearly shown by their indictments and prosecutions that there is no confusion in their minds—lying is a crime. Businesspersons need to clearly understand those rules and what prosecutors define as lying.

In recent corporate scandals, some executives have learned the hard way that lying is still a crime in corporate America. Martha Stewart was accused of selling her ImClone stock allegedly after receiving insider information. However, she was not convicted of securities fraud. She was instead convicted for lying. In addition, Computer Associates executives were indicted and some have already pleaded guilty for lying to their own company’s attorney during an internal investigation when their lies were passed on by their attorney to the government.

To me the evidence is rock solid: It is sometimes or often possible to determine that a person has lied and that can trigger criminal guilt for the liar. That is a key point here.

So what "lies" are you referring to?

Excellent question. My main focus is on politics, which now clearly includes both commerce and religion. Therefore lies in politics are what I refer to, especially lies by people in government, commerce or religion who hold positions of power or public trust. Lies such as (i) the 2020 election was stolen, (ii) Joe Biden is an illegitimate president, (iii) Trump's 1/6 coup attempt was merely legitimate political discourse and/or something Trump bears no responsibility for, (iv) the over 30 thousand false or misleading statements DJT made while he was in office, (v) the lies that Faux News routinely asserts as truth in some or most of its broadcasts, and (vi) decades of corporate lies about climate change.

From what I (and some others) can tell, the entire GOP leadership now relies heavily on DFS because actual facts and truths are not on the side of kleptocratic authoritarianism.

No, fact checking is not a perfect science. Humans make mistakes, so honest mistakes will be made. But where does the greater danger lie? In my opinion, the greater danger is in letting people and interests who significantly rely on DFS to get away free and clear shifts the costs and harms from those responsible to the whole society. Screw that noise, I'm tired of people and the environment getting constantly shafted by the rich and powerful hiding behind a thick shield of constitutionally protected DFS.

Ultimately your demand for limiting "dark" speech is inherently a demand for others to take your view of things. They must agree with you, do things your way, or be punished in some way.

I vaguely recall this criticism from you before. Regardless, let's do it again.

My demand for limiting DFS is the opposite of a demand for others to take my view of things. Pragmatic rationalism is a demand for respect for facts, true truths and sound reasoning in a political context of democracy, civil liberties, the rule of law and service to the public interest. There is vast room for disagreements within those broad constraints, especially democracy, civil liberties, the rule of law and service to the public interest, all four of which I believe are essentially contested concepts. But notice, there is a lot less room for disagreements over facts and intermediate room for disagreements over true truths and sound reasoning.

So, on the one hand, my pragmatic rationalism is intended to at least partly (noticeably) purge some lies and irrationality from politics in defense of democracy and the public interest. Pragmatic rationalism frees minds, allowing freedom of thought and freedom of choice.

On the other hand, consider the mental framework and reality that purveyors of DFS use to win their arguments. They are usually corrupt authoritarians who deceive, distract, confuse, enrage, terrify, derationalize, polarize and bamboozle people to get what they want in defense of the elite's interests. DFS politics traps minds, infringing on freedom of thought and limiting choices.

What political framework do you prefer, pro-democracy pragmatic rationalism, anti-democracy DFS irrationalism, or something else? If something else, exactly what?

What DFS politics looks like

What pragmatic rationalism politics looks like

News bits: Christian nationalists hate atheists; Climate change technology; The failing rule of law

The Friendly Atheist reports about an atheist unfriendly Oregon state lawmaker trashing Muslims and, gasp!, evil atheists: 

Oregon lawmaker tries to walk back comment 

that atheists are unfit for public office

State Rep. E. Werner Reschke now says he was “grossly taken out of context.” He was not

State Rep. E. Werner Reschke made the comments earlier this month during an interview with Jason Rapert, the Christian Nationalist who now runs a group called the “National Association of Christian Lawmakers.” Reschke serves as the Oregon “chair” for NACL.

Rapert asked a softball question about why Christians needed to get involved in government, and Reschke’s response was telling for all the wrong reasons. Instead of saying Christians had a spiritual duty to shape society (or something like that), he argued that certain non-Christians were unfit for public life and didn’t deserve to be in positions of power.

He began by saying he admired the supposed Christian faith of the Founding Fathers before segueing into the people who shouldn’t be in government:

… “Those are the type of people that you want in government making tough decisions during tough times,” Reschke continued. “You don’t want a materialist. You don’t want an atheist. You don’t want a Muslim. You want somebody who understands what truth is and understands the nature of man, the nature of government, and the nature of God.”

“If you don’t understand those things, you’re gonna get things wrong,” he concluded. “In Oregon … we have a lot of people who are godless, unfortunately, leading the way and it’s the blind leading the blind.”

He’s not subtle about his feelings. He doesn’t believe atheists or Muslims are fit to hold public office—the former because they have no religion and the latter because they’re the wrong religion.  

In a statement to Oregon Public Broadcasting, Reschke said his words were “grossly taken out of context.” But he didn’t bother clarifying what he actually meant to say.

As an atheist, my fee-fees are hurt. (sad face 🥺 aww) I was gonna run for president. . . . OK, now I’m over it. 😊

I guess Reschke, also known to his friends as the Grinning Liar, believes that in his infallible knowledge of God, he can lie to us and say he did not say what he said. Funny how it was “taken out of context” after it blows up in his face. That’s how it always works with these arrogant, shamelessly lying Christian nationalist scumbags. I can smell the Grinning Liar’s moral rot all the way down here in SoCal. Now, let me tell you how I really feel . . . . . 

One can only wonder who Grinning learned this fine rhetorical tactic from. Oh yeah. My bad, I forgot:

A peanut in the gallery observed: Anyone who believes they can telepathically communicate with an extradimensional eldritch being is unfit for public office.

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The NYT reports:

It’s come to this. With Earth at its hottest point in recorded history, and humans doing far from enough to stop its overheating, a small but growing number of astronomers and physicists are proposing a potential fix that could have leaped from the pages of science fiction: The equivalent of a giant beach umbrella, floating in outer space.

The idea is to create a huge sunshade and send it to a far away point between the Earth and the sun to block a small but crucial amount of solar radiation, enough to counter global warming. Scientists have calculated that if just shy of 2 percent of the sun’s radiation is blocked, that would be enough to cool the planet by 1.5 degrees Celsius, or 2.7 Fahrenheit, and keep Earth within manageable climate boundaries.

To block the necessary amount of solar radiation, the shade would have to be about a million square miles, roughly the size of Argentina, Dr. Rozen said. A shade that big would weigh at least 2.5 million tons — too heavy to launch into space, he said. So, the project would have to involve a series of smaller shades. They would not completely block the sun’s light but rather cast slightly diffused shade onto Earth, he said.

It was 1989 when James Early of the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory suggested a “space-based solar shield” positioned near a fixed point between the Earth and the sun called Lagrange Point One, or L1, some 932,000 miles away, four times the average distance between the Earth and the moon. There, the gravitational pulls from the Earth and sun cancel each other out.

A fully operational sunshade would have to be resilient and reversible, Dr. Szapudi said. In his proposed design, he said 99 percent of its weight would come from the asteroid, helping offset the cost. It would still likely carry a price tag of trillions of dollars, an amount that is far less than what is spent on military weapons, he said.  

“Saving the Earth and giving up 10 percent of your weapons to destroy things is actually a pretty good deal in my book,” Dr. Szapudi said.

Here, one can see the price we pay for not being politically able to deal with climate change. If there had been a carbon tax put in place decades ago, significant money would be coming in to help accelerate research and other efforts to reduce climate change, assuming congress didn’t just piss the money away on crap. That’s always a concern when government is corrupt and incompetent. A pox on our failed two-party political system.

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A long article that WaPo published (here not paylled off) and other recent news items collectively give off a vibe that the criminal lawsuit against DJT in Georgia is on the verge of collapse. It seems that prosecutor Fanni Willis has screwed the pooch by being in a sex relationship with an outside prosecutor she brought in to prosecute Trump. The WaPo article comments:

In a bombshell legal filing on Jan. 8, Roman’s attorney alleged that Fulton County District Attorney Fani T. Willis (D), who is heading the prosecution, is in a romantic relationship with Nathan Wade, an outside lawyer she hired for the case. While Wade’s firm was receiving more than $650,000 in public funds, Wade — who has been embroiled in a messy divorce — was paying for vacations with Willis in the Caribbean and elsewhere, according to Roman, who alleges that Willis improperly benefited.

Roman is a radical right authoritarian activist and professional political dirt digger. Maybe the Georgia case will fall apart, but it is still too early to know. At this point, there is still too much the public has not been made aware of. I just get a real bad vibe from what has happened and is happening now. Radical right authoritarian state legislators are just itching to quash the lawsuit and this gives them an excuse. A news source in Atlanta reported: 

2 Georgia senators propose changing Georgia law to void Trump’s charges 

Brandon Beach, Colton Moore want to amend Georgia’s RICO statute to prohibit prosecuting some racketeering charges. 

The legislation would be retroactive and therefore apply to Trump’s case. On Monday, Georgia House members passed a bill reviving a commission with powers to discipline and remove prosecutors, a move Democrats warn is aimed at disrupting Willis’ prosecution.

Civil liberties: Freedom of thought and the morality of deceit rhetoric

Emotions in the dark free speech tool box

The issue

In the last few months, freedom of thought as a civil liberty has been mentioned. It is easy to dismiss it as a serious concern. However, it is obviously a serious concern if one has some grasp of things like human cognitive biology, social behavior, perceiving and thinking. Psychologist Simon McCarthy-Jones (Trinity College, Dublin, Ireland) summarizes the issue in his 2024 book, FreeThinking: Protecting Freedom Of Thought Amidst The New Battle For The Mind:

Controlling bodies gives power but controlling minds grants dominion. For this reason, there always has been and always will be a battle for our minds. It is a fight we cannot afford to lose.

The 21st century had seen a new combatant in the battle for the mind: social media companies. These companies had not just seized our minds, they had polluted them. .... something had to be done. But what?

The UN journeyed to the land where secular gods reside -- international human rights law. The deity they summoned was the right to freedom of thought, sired in 1948 by the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. 

Human rights law gave [freedom of thought] the status of an absolute right. In contrast, most other rights, such as privacy, free speech and assembly, are qualified rights. .... But absolute rights, such as freedom of thought, can never be violated, under any circumstances, for any reason.

There was, however, a significant problem. The right to free speech had been endlessly debated, discussed and developed in the courts. Free thought -- not so much. .... [quoting Bismark commenting on Napoleon III] “At a distance it is something, but close to it is nothing at all.”

The law had put the cart before the horse by placing speech before thought. .... what good is free speech if you are unable to think? Speech in the absence of free thought is platitude, received wisdom, the party line.

It was beyond bizarre that the international community had not spelt out what the right to freedom of thought meant in practice.

Law review article after law review article, court after court pondered free speech when free thought was clearly the issue. .... There was some scholarly pioneering work on the right to freedom of thought and its potential relevance to technology, neuroscience and the digital world, but this was rare.

On 19 October 2021 the UN finally dusted off this “forgotten freedom” and began to build it a body. .... This was the first attempt, at the level of the UN, to spell out what the right to freedom of thought should involve.

In other words, there is no significant body of law that articulates or defends freedom of thought.

Brief thoughts about free thought & morality 

If one thinks about it a bit, the fact that DFS (dark free speech: lies, slanders, flawed or crackpot logic, fomenting irrational emotions, exclusive tribalism, etc.) is legal and almost always dominant in authoritarian politics and commerce everywhere. But a moral issue jumps right out. When a person who has been deceived or derationalized[1] by DFS acts in ways they would not have acted, their right to free thought has been violated. In the process, power flowed from the deceived or derationalized person to the deceiver-derationalizer. The power flow usually (~99% of the time?) favors the person, group or interest who used DFS. That’s usually the main point of using DFS in the first place. 

In the US, much or most of America’s political right has radicalized and turned authoritarian. Most now openly support a dictator wannabe, making them authoritarians to a non-trivial extent. The rhetoric the authoritarian movement employs relies heavily on DFS to win minds. By doing so, authoritarians violate freedom of thought. 

In my opinion, that amounts to use of tactics that are immoral, or evil when people are actually or foreseeably hurt or killed. It’s not rocket science. Either one can see the immorality-evil or one can’t or won’t. If a person is derationalized, tribal or even cult minded, seeing the immorality-evil of violating freedom of thought is usually almost completely impossible. Sometimes a major shock can restore a reasonable grasp on reality in the mind of the deceived and violated.

Qs: Should freedom of thought get some legal protection, or is it a hopeless endeavor doomed to failure? If so how, e.g., tax businesses and interests for their reliance on DFS? Social protection, e.g., institutionalized bias against politicians, people, groups and interests that use DFS?

Footnote: 

1. Derationalize (apparently a real word, maybe): to deprive of the power of reason or of reasoning; to convert from a mostly rational into a mostly irrational state of mind

If their guard is down, many people, probably most, can be derationalized to a significant extent by a couple of rhetorical DFS tools, usually employed in some combination. One is outright lying via lies of commission or omission (hiding inconvenient fact and truth). Another is fomenting irrational or unwarranted negative emotions. That is usually in the form of irrational, unwarranted fear, anger, bigotry, hate, sadness, moral outrage, racism, disgust, distrust, confusion, etc. Lying and slandering or defaming people or groups (a subset of lies) is a popular way of provoking negative emotions. 

Another is to appeal to flawed reasoning. That usually amounts to using irrationality to foment more irrationality. Crackpot conspiracy theories and logic flaws, often coupled with lies and slanders are popular with the DFS crowd. One example, Hillary was running a child sex-trafficking operation out of the basement of a pizza joint. Some people actually believed that obviously false nonsense. Ditto for COVID vaccines being toxic and/or ineffective. 

The other major DFS tactic is to appeal to human tribal instincts. By creating a tribe (or cult), real or imagined, most people can be derationalized and manipulated more easily. DFS used to foment tribalism is usually a means to exclude others by fomenting a self-righteous “us versus them” mentality. Authoritarian leaders tend to focus on their tribe while slandering or attacking opposition groups and interests. Immigrants, racial minorities, non-heterosexual people and believers in the wrong ideology or religion (or no religion) are perennially popular authoritarian targets.

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US sees signs Iran is worried about escalating proxy attacks amid heightened tensions

 CNN

 — 

US officials believe there are signs that Iranian leadership is nervous about some of the actions of its proxy groups in Iraq, Syria and Yemen, according to multiple people familiar with US intelligence, as attacks from militia groups threaten to disrupt the global economyand significantly up the risk of direct confrontation with the United States.

The drone attack that killed three American soldiers at a US outpost in Jordan, which the US has attributed to the Iran-backed umbrella group Islamic Resistance in Iraq, caught Tehran by surprise and worried political leadership there, officials told CNN, citing US intelligence.

Iran-backed militants have launched over 160 attacks on US forces since October. And while Iran has long funded, equipped, and trained its proxy militias in the region with the goal of attacking Americans, the strike from this past weekend was the

first to kill US service members since the near daily assaults began four months ago.

https://amp.cnn.com/cnn/2024/02/01/politics/us-intelligence-iran-nervous-escalating-proxy-attacks/index.html