Defense against the dark free speech arts update

Jargon Alert! 

DADA: defense against dark free speech arts

Much or maybe most of the American public is ignorant and unprepared to deal with the onslaught of powerful, modern radical right authoritarian DFS (dark free speech). Toxic social media is a significant factor in fomenting unwarranted distrust, lies, slander and truly deranged crackpottery. Solid evidence of social ignorance and mental weakness is the stunning degree of public support for DJT, the GOP and the tactics of MAGA. The authoritarian onslaught is based mostly on bigotry, lies irrationality and other DFS-fomented emotions and false beliefs. Despite MAGA’s obvious appeal based on deceit and irrationality, tens of millions of adult Americans cannot see what is clearly in front of them. Those mostly defenseless minds have fallen to the power of DFS.

My limited knowledge of the state of DAGA science and public education leads me to believe that the forces engaged in DAGA is fragmented, weak and mostly ineffective. Teaching of the cognitive and social sciences for mental defense is dismal in public education. The MSM is mostly in failure mode when it comes to dealing with the threat. Academics aware of the problem are few and their influence in educating the public is miniscule. 

An incremental no-brainer bit of new research exemplifies the crappy, primitive state of American DADA:

To make children better fact-checkers, expose them to 

more misinformation — with oversight

“We need to give children experience flexing these skepticism muscles and using these critical thinking skills within this online context,” a UC Berkeley psychology researcher said.

In an era when online misinformation is seemingly everywhere and objective facts are often in dispute, UC Berkeley psychologists in a new study have presented a somewhat paradoxical partial solution: Expose young children to more misinformation online — not less.

Doing so in limited circumstances, and with careful oversight and education, can help children gain the tools they’ll need to sort fact from fiction online, said Evan Orticio, a Ph.D. student in UC Berkeley’s Department of Psychology and lead author of a paper published today (Thursday, Oct. 10) in the journal Nature Human Behavior.

Orticio argues that, given children’s natural skepticism and early exposure to the internet’s boundless misinformation, it is crucial for adults to teach them practical fact-checking skills. Instead of attempting to completely sanitize their online environment, he said adults should focus on equipping children with tools to critically assess the information they encounter.

Zorpy eyeballs fact check exercise

“Children can adapt their level of skepticism according to the quality of information they’ve seen before in a digital context,” Orticio said. “They can leverage their expectations of how this digital environment works to make reasonable adjustments to how much they trust or distrust information at face value — even if they know next to nothing about the content itself.”

Think about that. People in power bumble and fumble with the impossible task of sanitizing what children see online. That basically deprives them of any chance to learn to self-defend against DFS. Unfortunately, this study was based on a small sample size (N = 122) of 4–7-year-old children exposed to falsity. At most, this is just another hint at doing what has been obvious to me for years, a major, multi-year effort in mandatory public education in DADA.

An analogy is in the hygiene hypothesis: The idea that exposure to germs is beneficial for children's immune system development has been largely validated by scientific research, rather than debunked. This concept, known as the “hygiene hypothesis,” has gained substantial support from multiple studies over the years.

Exposure to germs teaches children’s immune system how to effectively respond with limited damage to healthy cells and tissues. For years, my intuition, based on some evidence, has been that exposure to DFS teaches minds how to more effectively respond with emotional manipulation and false beliefs that DFS is designed to foment. The presence of DADA in American society is low to nil. 

The research paper’s abstract reinforces my argument:

A simulation suggests that children’s behavior is adaptive, because increased fact-checking in more dubious environments supports the discovery of potential misinformation. Importantly, children were least diligent at fact-checking a new claim when all prior information was true, suggesting that sanitizing children’s informational environments may inadvertently dampen their natural skepticism. Instead, these findings support the counterintuitive possibility that exposing children to some nonsense may scaffold vigilance towards more subtle misinformation in the future.

A counterintuitive possibility?? Wrong mindset scientists! Wrong, wrong wrong, damn it!! It should have been an intuitive possibility, especially in view of existing data. Sigh. I rest my case. End of rant.

Why defense of state from church is desperately needed

Bigotry: obstinate or unreasonable attachment to a belief, opinion, or faction, in particular prejudice against a person or people on the basis of their membership of a particular group; bigotry includes hate of people who support secularism and church-state separation 

This terrifying 10 minute video makes very clear what Christian nationalism is and would do to us if it gets the power. The video is described like this: “Father James Altman calls out the hypocrisies of Church hierarchy and their destructive leftist politicization of the Catholic Church that has slapped faithful Catholics in the face and led many others astray. Altman also explains the basis of human nature and our purpose in life.” 

“You cannot be a Democrat 

and a Catholic. Period.”

I can literally feel the sanctimonious, uncontrolled rage and hate that drives Father Altman’s vicious lies, slanders, intolerance and bigotry. Our tax code subsidizes hateful, bigoted theocratic filth like this. We are supporting major efforts to destroy our democracy, civil liberties, secular rule of law, secular education and freedom of choice to live as we please. 

We all know what this election is about and the consequences of a loss to DJT, MAGA, the GOP and all three strains of kleptocratic American authoritarianism.** The elites who have worked hard together for decades to put us here, on the verge of losing our democracy.

** Kleptocratic dictatorship with DJT as an above-the-law dictator for life, kleptocratic, unregulated capitalist plutocracy and kleptocratic Christian nationalist theocracy.

Q: Does Altman really speak for all Catholics and God himself, or just the aggressive kleptocratic theocrats?

Pulse checking the public; Misc. headlines

Responses to reporting by The New Republic hints at growing anger at MAGA: 

Donald Trump has once again evoked Nazi rhetoric.

At a rally in Aurora, Colorado, on Friday, the Republican presidential nominee weaponized violent and dehumanizing language to describe immigrants, referring to them as the “enemy from within” while advocating for harsher criminal punishments for the vulnerable demographic, including promising the death penalty.


“But I protect you from outside enemies. But you know I always say, we have the outside enemies, so you can say China, you can say Russia, you can say Kim Jong Un … if you have a smart president it’s no problem,” Trump said. “It’s the enemy from within.

“All the scum we have to deal with that hate our country,” he continued. “That’s a bigger enemy than China and Russia.… Everyday Americans like Cindy are living in fear all because Kamala Harris decided to empty the slums and prison cells of Caracas, and many other places. Happening all over the world.”

“They took the criminals out of Caracas, and they put them along your border, and they said if you ever come back, we’re going to kill you,” Trump said.

“Think of that!” he continued. “We have to live with these animals. But we won’t live with them for long!”

At that, one person in the crowd shouted, “Kill them!”

One disgruntled peanut gallery denizen commented:

Jesus Fucking Christ. This deranged lunatic is legitimately trying his damnedest to get something to pop off before Election Day, ain’t he? He wants chaos. He wants death. He wants bloodshed. At this point I don’t think he cares if he wins the election, because it doesn’t matter. This is not going to be a peaceful election. Fuck you MAGAs for promoting this level of domestic terrorism.

That got ~8,300 upvotes. Another peanut commented, but with only 146 upvotes:

I think he's so demented at this point he thinks he's pulling an actual Hitler. And he's stupid enough to have no comprehension of the actual nuances of the situations. Sadly he's going to get a lot of people hurt and killed proving it.

This peanut says, with ~1,100 upvotes:

Hitler used those exact words to help justify what he did. Trump is using the same words to justify what he'll do, and his supporters will also use those words to justify violence against the "enemy from within."

Last peanut:

Lemme guess, this isn't being covered by ABC, CBS, CNN, NBC, NYT WSJ, or any other legacy media outlet. Fucking cowards need to remember "The only thing necessary for the triumph of evil is for good men to do nothing"

My professional pulse check assessment: Some people are getting pissed off at DJT and MAGA.

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Pastors for Trump founder says Antichrist will be a “homosexual of Jewish descent” — Trump called it a "great honor" to be endorsed by the founder's group (MAGA is anti-Semitic)

More Than a Third of Nikki Haley Voters Plan To Back Harris in November, Polling Suggests

The Justice Department says Virginia is illegally striking voters off of voter rolls

J.D. Vance Says Trump Was Right to Try to Steal the Election, Because of Twitter

Failed GOP candidate claims Hurricane Helene was created to derail Mark Robinson’s campaign

-- Democrats apparently have "huge" machines that "spit clouds," which they are using to stop the "black Nazi" from becoming governor. “Like the whole thing with North Carolina, I know though it’s a grab for the land — land grab and they want the lithium,” Kandiss Taylor, who ran for governor of Georgia in 2022, said on the October 5 edition of her podcast, Jesus. Guns. And Babies.

'Sleeper agent' bots on X fuel US election misinformation, study says -- American Sunlight Project analyzed nearly 1,200 accounts, a long-standing network that generated more than 100 million posts as of July, including pro-Kremlin propaganda, content favoring Republican nominee Donald Trump, and misinformation about Harris's campaign. The accounts, some of which have escaped detection and moderation on the site for as long as 15 years, retweeted such content within seconds of its posting, indicating bot activity, the group said in a report shared with AFP ahead of its public release.

"This dude will even outsource God": Walz blasts Trump for making Bibles in China 

An AI summary of Project 2025's authoritarian and kleptocratic goals and tactics

This 13 minute video asks ChatGPT to identify and summarize the most important policy goals laid out in Project 2025. I skimmed some of it and concluded the document is genuinely authoritarian and kleptocratic. Project 2025 directly supports and empowers all three strains of modern American radical right authoritarianism, i.e., kleptocratic dictatorship, kleptocratic, unregulated capitalist plutocracy and kleptocratic Christian nationalist theocracy. In my opinion, all three strains of American authoritarianism are kleptocratic by virtue of being anti-transparency in government, which the video briefly mentions. The video does not mention kleptocracy or corruption per se, which I consider to be a major weakness in this particular analysis. And, the narrator has an annoying voice but that is just me.

The AI assessment of Project 2025 identifies and discusses these five topics:

Thanks to Larry Motuz for bringing this video to my attention. 

The tactic of siccing AI on Project 2025 prompted me to ask Perplexity specifically about corruption:

Q: Does Project 2025 inherently establish conditions in government that favor corruption, such as limiting transparency or controlling the independent media?

A: Project 2025 appears to propose several measures that could potentially increase the risk of corruption and reduce government accountability:

1. Firing independent Inspectors General: Project 2025 calls for firing 74 independent Inspectors General who oversee federal operations and detect fraud, waste, and misconduct. It proposes replacing them with politically loyal appointees, which could reduce independent oversight.

2. Replacing civil servants with political appointees: The plan includes creating a new "Schedule F" that would allow firing up to 50,000 civil service employees and replacing them with partisan political operatives. This could reduce the independence and expertise of government agencies.

3. Limiting prosecution of campaign finance violations: Project 2025 proposes directing the Department of Justice to defer decisions on prosecuting campaign finance law violations to the Federal Election Commission, potentially reducing enforcement.

4. Reducing donor transparency: The plan calls for allowing more money in politics while reducing transparency around political donations.

5. Weaponizing the Department of Justice: Project 2025 proposes using the DOJ to target local elected officials and election administrators for partisan reasons.

6. Controlling investigations: It suggests having political appointees review and potentially terminate FBI investigations deemed "contrary to the national interest," which could be used to protect allies and target opponents.

Those measures would seriously reduce government transparency by obliterating independent oversight. Project 2025 proposes a gigantic incentive for corruption by basically making corruption and bribery even more legal than the USSC has made recently done. The document proposes concentrating power in the hands of political appointees loyal to the administration instead of professional career bureaucrats loyal to the public interest and the rule of law. The plan appears designed to give a future administration more control over traditionally independent government functions and reduce checks on executive power. And, there is this follow-up Q&A:

Q: What, if anything, does Project 2025 specifically say about transparency in government operations?

A: Project 2025 does not appear to explicitly address government transparency as a key focus. However, several aspects of the plan could potentially reduce transparency and accountability in government operations:

1. Firing independent Inspectors General: Project 2025 proposes replacing 74 independent Inspectors General, who oversee federal operations and detect fraud and misconduct, with politically loyal appointees. This could reduce independent oversight and transparency of government agencies.

 

2. Etc.

Here, one sees the weakness in AI. AI treats Trump and MAGA elites like normal people. They are nowhere close to normal. They are ruthless, radical right authoritarian kleptocrats. In view of the reality of Trump and MAGA elites, Perplexity unreasonably softens its answer with milquetoast language like “the plan could potentially reduce transparency and accountability.” Could potentially reduce transparency and accountability?? Like hell. With people like Trump and his corrupt thugs in power, implementing Project 2025 absolutely will eliminate essentially all transparency and accountability. 

That is the reasoning that leads me to usually including qualifiers like corrupt, deeply corrupt and especially kleptocratic to describe Trump, MAGA elites and what GOP elites generally stand for. 

In my opinion, most of the GOP rank and file are different with their disinformed, manipulated and betrayed minds. They are being used and will be abused if they get what they want. Unfortunately, we are collateral damage that will get the same or worse treatment.

Regarding the Authoritarian Playbook

Introduction

This 6:34 video of Roger Stone supporting open attacks on the election makes it explicit that MAGA plans to steal the the 2024 election if DJT loses. This is the reality of American radical right authoritarianism. Its scope and depth has grown far, far beyond just Trump. The elites running the MAGA wealth and power movement are fueled mostly by lies, slanders, bullshit, crackpottery, rage, hate and what appears to be non-trivial, actual belief in some of their own lies, slanders, bullshit and crackpottery. American authoritarianism has deep roots and a lot of infrastructure in place. The Trump cadre of authoritarian elites** are planning to make their run at kleptocratic dictatorship with Trump as a callous, kleptocratic, above-the-law dictator for life.

** The Trump cadre of elites are the kleptocratic autocrats among MAGA elites. The kleptocratic plutocrats and kleptocratic Christian nationalist theocrats are also in play. A lot of elite authoritarians appear to be sympathetic two or all three strains. The extent of coordination between the three strains of American radical right authoritarianism is unclear to me, but significant coordination exists. Perplexity:

While the extent of explicit coordination is difficult to quantify, there are clear overlapping interests and mutually reinforcing actions between these groups that pose a threat to American democracy and civil liberties.

Stone: “They use the election system to harass you when you’re in office,

but this is about an election. We gotta fight it out on a state-to-state basis.”

☠️☠️☠️☠️☠️☠️☠️☠️☠️☠️☠️☠️☠️☠️☠️

The Authoritarian Playbook

A nonpartisan, anti-authoritarianism group, Protect Democracy has posted the Authoritarian Playbook as a guide for journalists to spot and understand the tactics authoritarians use to gain power against a democracy. 

Protect Democracy describes itself as “a cross-ideological nonprofit group dedicated to defeating the authoritarian threat, building more resilient democratic institutions, and protecting our freedom and liberal democracy.” The group relies on experts, advocates, litigation, legislative and communications strategies, technology, research, and analysis in its work. The point is to make a stand in defense of free and fair elections, the rule of law, fact-based debate, and a better democracy.

The group describes its playbook like this:

Authoritarian takeovers rarely happen overnight. Today’s authoritarian playbook is a process that happens piecemeal and is hard to distinguish from normal political jockeying.

Our report, The Authoritarian Playbook: How reporters can contextualize and cover authoritarian threats as distinct from politics-as-usual outlines the seven fundamental tactics used by aspiring authoritarians, describes examples from in and outside the United States, and offers a framework journalists can use to differentiate between politics-as-usual and something more dangerous to democracy.

Before the 1990s, authoritarian leaders bent on upending democracy typically came to power forcefully and swiftly, often by means of a military coup d’etat. The moment democracy ceased to exist could be time-stamped and reported on with a block headline.

Yet for at least the last 30 years, the threats to democracy have evolved. Today, democracy more often dies gradually, as the institutional, legal, and political constraints on authoritarian leaders are chipped away, one by one. This has happened, or is happening, in countries including Russia, Venezuela, Hungary, the Philippines, Poland, Nicaragua, India, Turkey — and the United States.

By using “salami tactics,” slicing away at democracy a sliver at a time, modern authoritarians still cement themselves in power, but they do so incrementally and gradually. Sometimes their actions are deliberate and calculated, but sometimes they are opportunistic, myopic, or even bumbling. There is no longer a singular bright line that countries cross between democracy and authoritarianism. But the outcome is still the same.

This presents a unique challenge for journalists, who are committed to providing the public much-needed information and context about important news. Contemporary democratic breakdowns are far more difficult to identify because — in snapshots — they can mimic the typical acts of political jockeying to gain advantage that are routine even in healthy democracies. But especially as these acts accumulate and intensify, hard-nosed politics can cross a line into authoritarian threats. Unfortunately, there is no simple bright-line answer or mechanical test to distinguish between the two.

At the same time, because authoritarianism worldwide tends to follow clear and consistent patterns, we can use these patterns to separate the signal from the noise. This basic framework — the authoritarian playbook — can help isolate clear and immediate dangers to democracy from partisan outrage, political hyperbole, and sensational spin.

The press has a foundational role to play in how democratic systems hold leaders accountable, and doing so requires clarity about the gravity and implications of their actions. Understanding and recognizing the authoritarian playbook as a whole can help journalists not only decide what to cover as threats to democracy, but can also help enrich and contextualize coverage about how the individual components of the playbook fit together. Americans suspect that their democracy is at risk. But by identifying and connecting individual threats to democracy to the global whole, reporting can help inform voters about more than just what is happening — it can tell them what the news means.

Covering the authoritarian danger requires that the press do two things: understand the interlocking components of the playbook itself, and distinguish between normal political jockeying and genuine authoritarian moves. This briefing is designed to help journalists do just that.

The analytic framework for authoritarianism is this:

Since the MSM fails to do this way too

often, we have to do it for ourselves

Perplexity summarizes the 7 main tactics the Authoritarian Playbook describes:

Weaponizing Fear: Authoritarian leaders embrace a language of violence, promote a punitive culture, and leverage military might domestically. They aim to make critics believe they'll face harm for opposing the regime.

Targeting Outsiders: They stoke xenophobia by demonizing immigrants and foreigners, blaming domestic problems on these scapegoats, and portraying political opponents as sympathetic to these perceived enemies.

Undermining Institutions: This involves taking over courts, eliminating checks and balances, undoing established treaties and legislation that limit executive power, and weakening protections for free and fair elections.

Rewriting History: Authoritarian leaders exert control over schools and media to indoctrinate the public with beliefs that reinforce their power.

Exploiting Religion: They appeal to the religious majority while targeting minorities, often conflating national identity with religious identity.

Dividing and Conquering: Using hate speech and encouraging violent actors to widen social rifts, they manufacture crises to seize more power.

Eroding Truth: They attack the press as an "enemy of the people," dismiss negative reports as "fake news," counter legitimate information with disinformation, and overwhelm the media landscape with endless scandals and contradictions.

Additional Tactics

• Politicizing Independent Institutions: Authoritarians attack and seek to capture institutions that typically operate independently from partisan politics, such as law enforcement and central banking.

• Aggrandizing Executive Power: They work to weaken legislatures, courts, and other institutions designed to provide checks and balances, often justifying this expansion of power through cults of personality.

• Corrupting Elections: While maintaining the facade of elections, they tilt rules against opponents, suppress votes, and may even overturn results.

• Stoking Violence: Many authoritarians deliberately inflame violence to create fear, division, and feelings of insecurity.

By employing these tactics, authoritarian leaders aim to consolidate their power, suppress opposition, and erode democratic norms and institutions. These tactics are often employed gradually and in combination, making them difficult to distinguish from normal political maneuvering. The playbook emphasizes that modern authoritarians frequently come to power through seemingly democratic means before slowly eroding democratic norms and institutions

A 9:16 video about the authoritarian playbook.

It's the final countdown..............

24 days to go!!

How will YOU be spending the next 24 days?

Like this..................?

If so, you might want to check this out..........

https://www.270towin.com/2024-countdown-clock/

It is definitely gonna be a nail-biter...........

https://www.270towin.com/maps/consensus-2024-presidential-election-forecast

OR will you be a SNOWFLAKE and watch the ups and downs like this................?

Let's keep our fingers crossed..................

https://www.270towin.com/news/2024/10/04/legal-us-prediction-markets-president-live_1670.html

See what I mean by nail-biter? Better stock up on popcorn (and beer, whiskey, or whatever your medicine is)