In defense of dark free speech: Another radical right judge goes rogue

Recent rogue Supreme Court cases continue to show the unprincipled, authoritarianism of the radical right. Major lawsuits have been decided based on (i) fake, non-existent evidence of damages, (ii) parties that lack standing, (iii) blatant rejection of settled precedent (stare decisis in legalese), (iv) made-up, cherry picked tests for legality, and (v) barely-existent or non-existent legal basis for a decision. 

The authoritarian rot in the federal courts is spreading and deepening. The newest example is from a federal trial court judge who, without any recognized legal basis has relied on a false, crackpot conspiracy theory to attack federal efforts to deal with dark free speech in social media. The conspiracy alleges the federal government has conspired with social media to suppress 'conservative' free speech online. That crackpottery is close to the same level of depravity as the debunked '2020 election was stolen' crackpottery. The NYT writes:

Federal Judge Limits Biden Officials’ Contacts With Social Media Sites

A federal judge in Louisiana on Tuesday restricted the Biden administration from communicating with social media platforms about broad swaths of content online, a ruling that could curtail efforts to combat false and misleading narratives about the coronavirus pandemic and other issues.

The order, which could have significant First Amendment implications, is a major development in a fierce legal fight over the boundaries and limits of speech online.

It was a victory for Republicans who have often accused social media sites like Facebook, Twitter and YouTube of disproportionately taking down right-leaning content, sometimes in collaboration with government. Democrats say the platforms have failed to adequately police misinformation and hateful speech, leading to dangerous outcomes, including violence.

Rogue dictator party Trump judge Doughty

The radical right's effort to defend and promote dark free speech

Like dictators and plutocrats of the past, America's radical right authoritarian movement recognizes the necessity of allowing unfettered dark free speech to flourish to disinform, divide and distract the public. The rise and influence of big social media as a speech platform makes it necessary for the dictators, theocrats and plutocrats to inject their poison there. Honest speech is a major barrier and antidote to dark free speech. Simply put, social media has to be poisoned to advance the authoritarian's anti-democracy and anti-inconvenient truth agenda.

In his ruling, Trump judge Terry Doughty (US District Court in Louisiana) imposed an injunction that the Department of Health and Human Services, FBI and some other agencies, could not talk to social media companies for “the purpose of urging, encouraging, pressuring, or inducing in any manner the removal, deletion, suppression, or reduction of content containing protected free speech.” The rogue wrote that “if the allegations made by plaintiffs are true, the present case arguably involves the most massive attack against free speech in United States’ history. The plaintiffs are likely to succeed on the merits in establishing that the government has used its power to silence the opposition.”

So far, there is no solid evidence of any federal government effort to collude with social media to illegally suppress radical right dark free speech. The Biden administration knows that under current law, it cannot interfere with what content social media sites allow on their platforms. At most, some publicly available emails and text messages were instances where federal officials complained to social media executives about influential crackpots spreading disinformation, particularly involving the coronavirus pandemic. Complaining about dark free speech does not amount to suppression of anyone's free speech, dark or honest.

The judge’s order also bars federal agencies from communicating with anti-dark free speech groups. Those groups include the Election Integrity Partnership, the Virality Project and the Stanford Internet Observatory. Those groups have been advocating removal of protected dark free speech speech online, e.g., anti-vaccine lies, various radical right fake conspiracy theories, etc.

Alleging the government has suppressed conservative speech online is a bullshit lie on a staggering scale. It is in the same class of bullshittery as the 2020 election was stolen lie. The point of this lawsuit is to revoke the capacity of big social media to police the content on their own sites. In the past and at present, the 1st Amendment free speech clause was intended to keep government from silencing speech, not private entities like social media platforms. 

Other radical right states have filed federal lawsuits to achieve the same goal. For example, Republican attorneys general in Texas and Florida are now defending in courts state laws that prevent internet sites from taking down certain political content. All of these lawsuits are intended to reach the Supreme Court in the hope that it will rule that dark free speech cannot be restricted on big social media sites. In addition to that, radical Republicans in the House are also fight to defend and expand the influence of  dark free speech as best they can. The House is inundating anti-dark free speech universities and think tanks with oppressive requests for information and subpoenas. 

In view of the mountain of evidence, there is no reasonable basis to deny or mistake this for anything other than what it is. The dictator party (GOP), authoritarian radical right extremists and various crackpot groups are fighting hard to expand the scope and influence of dark free speech in society and politics. This is another major prong in the American authoritarian attack on democracy, inconvenient truth and an informed electorate. 

Qs: Does defense of dark free speech feel like a small, medium or large concern or threat related to defense of democracy and inconvenient truth? Is this just a kerfuffle in a teapot, or something much more dangerous? 

Neuroscience: Brain synchrony

From the We're on the Same Wavelength Files: A Scientific American article:

Brain Waves Synchronize when People Interact

The minds of social species are strikingly resonant

Collective neuroscience, as some practitioners call it, is a rapidly growing field of research. An early, consistent finding is that when people converse or share an experience, their brain waves synchronize. Neurons in corresponding locations of the different brains fire at the same time, creating matching patterns, like dancers moving together. Auditory and visual areas respond to shape, sound and movement in similar ways, whereas higher-order brain areas seem to behave similarly during more challenging tasks such as making meaning out of something seen or heard. The experience of “being on the same wavelength” as another person is real, and it is visible in the activity of the brain.

Such work is beginning to reveal new levels of richness and complexity in sociability. In classrooms where students are engaged with the teacher, for example, their patterns of brain processing begin to align with that teacher's—and greater alignment may mean better learning. Neural waves in certain brain regions of people listening to a musical performance match those of the performer—the greater the synchrony, the greater the enjoyment. Couples exhibit higher degrees of brain synchrony than nonromantic pairs, as do close friends compared with more distant acquaintances.

But how does synchrony happen? Much about the phenomenon remains mysterious—even scientists occasionally use the word “magic” when talking about it.

Given that synchronized experiences are often enjoyable, researchers suspect this phenomenon is beneficial: it helps us interact and may have facilitated the evolution of sociality. This new kind of brain research might also illuminate why we don't always “click” with someone or why social isolation is so harmful to physical and mental health.

The article goes on to describe an experiment where a person in one of two fMRI machines 130 miles apart were talking to each other in 30 second time periods. They made up an evolving story in their time allotments. Over time, their brains came into synchrony.

It that magic? Of course not. As the image above indicates, when people do not interact, their brains do not synchronize. From the jointly made-up story experiment, it is clear that brain synchrony can arise from two people talking over the phone. One can imagine that synchrony can also arise from watching other people. 

So, when I talk about politics originating in cognitive biology and social behavior, don't underestimate the social behavior part. This line of research shows that social interaction directly influences cognitive biology when brain synchrony comes into play.

Think about that a moment. Consider a person unconsciously cognitively biased about an issue talking politics with an person unbiased, e.g., unfamiliar, with that issue. Could the unconscious biased brain influence the unbiased brain via synchrony? I can't see why that would be impossible. And, consider the data from bats summarized in the picture below:

Friend bat brains synchronize  

more than non-friend brains

Can you see where some of the origin of the things we call tribalism and cultism might come from? I can. In-group brains synchronize better than out-group brains.

In my opinion, if one does not understand at least some cognitive biology and social behavior science, one cannot understand politics. 

News bits: AOC comments on tyranny; Digital tyranny commentary; Digital tyranny update

An article in The Hill quotes AOC's comments about a rising threat of authoritarianism coming from the US Supreme Court:

Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-N.Y.) on Sunday warned of an “authoritarian expansion of power” by the Supreme Court after it released several controversial opinions in it’s last week of the term.

“The courts, if they were to proceed without any check on their power, without any balance on their power, then we will start to see an undemocratic and, frankly, dangerous authoritarian expansion of power in the Supreme Court,” Ocasio-Cortez said on CNN’s “State of the Union.”

“Which is what we are seeing now, from the overturning of abortion rights to the ruling that discrimination and, frankly, stripping the full personhood and dignity of LGBTQ people in the United States. … These are the types of rulings that signal a dangerous creep towards authoritarianism and centralization of power in the court,” the New York Democrat said.

Note her argument that the court is centralizing power in itself. A couple of law experts who analyzed the flow of power coming from the radical decisions find a pattern of generally withdrawing power from the executive and legislative branches and from citizen's civil liberties. 

Power then generally flows to special interests, including brass knuckles capitalists, Christian nationalists, kleptocrats and the Republican Party itself. The power flows are not precisely controlled, but the general thrust is toward some form of corrupt authoritarianism, corrupt Christian theocracy and corrupt single-party politics dominated by Republican elites.

Thoughts of the day: Always keep eyes fixed on where power flows from and to. Look for winners and losers. Authoritarians rarely or never look for win-win power flow scenarios. They play zero sum politics and look for win-lose scenarios.

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Digital tyranny commentary

Several posts here have focused on the sophisticated, all-encompassing digital tyranny that China has pioneered. Chinese dictators have achieved a relatively complete development and implementation of total digital tyranny. It's not just a matter of putting cameras up everywhere to watch for possible political opposition. The goal of the tyrants is far more encompassing and intrusive. 

In China, every cell phone must be trackable for location, purchases and identity of people who communicate or go online to do anything. Every cell phone contains means, e.g., apps, designed to monitor everything and to coerce people to perceive, act and think in support of what the dictators tell them to see, do and believe. Digital tyranny amounts to a vast, sophisticated social engineering project. This is cutting edge cognitive biology and sociology/social behavior science put in service to authoritarianism. There is nothing like this anywhere else on Earth. 

The Nazis in 1930s and 1940s Germany would die of envy at what the Chinese have been able to do and are clearly going to do. What the Chinese dictators are trying to do is build a tyranny that cannot be challenged from the inside. It is hard to imagine how the Chinese people could rise up and overthrow the dictators when every move they make and every person they interact with is monitored.

The BBC writes in a 2019 article: 

The Chinese Communist Party has gained the ability to spy on more than 100 million citizens via a heavily promoted official app, a report suggests. Analysis of the Study the Great Nation app found hidden elements that could help monitor use and copy data, said phone security experts Cure 53. The app gives the government "super-user" access, the security firm said.

The app pushes out official news and images and encourages people to earn points by reading articles, commenting on them and playing quizzes about China and its leader, Xi Jinping. Use of the app is mandatory among party officials and civil servants and it is tied to wages in some workplaces. Starting this month, native journalists must pass a test on the life of President Xi, delivered via the app, in order to obtain a press card which enables them to do their jobs.

On behalf of the Open Technology Fund, which campaigns on human rights issues, Germany cyber-security firm Cure 53 took apart the Android version of the app and said it found many undocumented and hidden features. In its lengthy report, Cure 53 said Study the Great Nation had "extensive logging" abilities and seemed to try to build up a list of the popular apps an individual had installed on their phone.

The app also weakened encryption used to scramble data and messages, making it easy for a government to crack security. "The app contains code resembling a back door, which is able to run arbitrary commands with super-user privileges," said the report.

Adam Lynn, research director at the Open Technology Fund, told the Washington Post, which broke the story: "It's very, very uncommon for an application to require that level of access to the device, and there's no reason to have these privileges unless you're doing something you're not supposed to be."

In China, there is nothing the Chinese government does that it is not supposed to be doing. That's what dictatorship is. 

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Digital tyranny update

Putin has taken note of the ongoing advance in dictator tactics and technology in China. Since Putin started his mass murder and destruction campaign in the Ukraine, he has vastly stepped up his efforts to set up his own digital tyranny infrastructure in Russia. The NYT writes:

Cracking Down on Dissent, Russia Seeds a Surveillance Supply Chain

Russia is incubating a cottage industry of new digital surveillance tools to suppress domestic opposition to the war in Ukraine

As the war in Ukraine unfolded last year, Russia’s best digital spies turned to new tools to fight an enemy on another front: those inside its own borders who opposed the war.

To aid an internal crackdown, Russian authorities had amassed an arsenal of technologies to track the online lives of citizens. After it invaded Ukraine, its demand grew for more surveillance tools. That helped stoke a cottage industry of tech contractors, which built products that have become a powerful — and novel — means of digital surveillance.

The technologies have given the police and Russia’s Federal Security Service, better known as the F.S.B., access to a buffet of snooping capabilities focused on the day-to-day use of phones and websites. The tools offer ways to track certain kinds of activity on encrypted apps like WhatsApp and Signal, monitor the locations of phones, identify anonymous social media users and break into people’s accounts, according to documents from Russian surveillance providers obtained by The New York Times, as well as security experts, digital activists and a person involved with the country’s digital surveillance operations.

President Vladimir V. Putin is leaning more on technology to wield political power as Russia faces military setbacks in Ukraine, bruising economic sanctions and leadership challenges after an uprising led by Yevgeny V. Prigozhin, the commander of the Wagner paramilitary group. In doing so, Russia — which once lagged authoritarian regimes like China and Iran in using modern technology to exert control — is quickly catching up.

“It’s made people very paranoid, because if you communicate with anyone in Russia, you can’t be sure whether it’s secure or not. They are monitoring traffic very actively,” said Alena Popova, a Russian opposition political figure and digital rights activist. “It used to be only for activists. Now they have expanded it to anyone who disagrees with the war.”

The authorities are “essentially incubating a new cohort of Russian companies that have sprung up as a result of the state’s repressive interests,” said Adrian Shahbaz, a vice president of research and analysis at the pro-democracy advocacy group Freedom House, who studies online oppression. “The spillover effects will be felt first in the surrounding region, then potentially the world.”

Take heart…

You’re not slower, you’re maybe just smarter. 😮

Interesting article on BigThink.com a couple of days ago, challenging how IQ has always been measured. 

Bottom line: Faster information processing (i.e., “thinking speed”) is not necessarily the key to intelligence.

Key Takeaways:

• A new study challenges the belief that higher intelligence scores are associated with faster information processing.
• It also reveals a link between problem-solving ability and differences in brain connectivity and synchrony between the frontal and parietal lobes.
• The findings suggest that there is a tradeoff between speed and accuracy in cognitive processes, highlighting the importance of slower and more effortful thinking for solving difficult problems and making better decisions. 

Full article here.

I don’t know but this article makes me, and my frequent second-guessing, feel kinda good.  How about you?  Any IQ stories to tell us about?  Have you ever been measured?  When, where?

Democratic justices blast majority opinion on student debt

This is an unusual situation where Democratic Supreme Court justices harshly criticize radical right Republicans for judicial over-reach to say the least. Elena Kagan wrote the Democratic dissent in JOSEPH R. BIDEN, PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES, ET AL., PETITIONERS v. NEBRASKA, ET AL.  The issue in the case is whether the Secretary of Education has authority under the Higher Education Relief Opportunities for Students Act of 2003 (HEROES Act) to depart from the existing provisions of the Education Act and establish a student loan forgiveness program that will cancel about $430 billion in debt principal and affect nearly all borrowers. In her dissent, Kagan wrote:

In every respect, the Court today exceeds its proper, limited role in our Nation’s governance.

I

The Court’s first overreach in this case is deciding it at all. Under Article III of the Constitution, a plaintiff must have standing to challenge a government action. And that requires a personal stake—an injury in fact. We do not allow plaintiffs to bring suit just because they oppose a policy. Neither do we allow plaintiffs to rely on injuries suffered by others. Those rules may sound technical, but they enforce “fundamental limits on federal judicial power.” Allen v. Wright, 468 U. S. 737, 750 (1984). They keep courts acting like courts. Or stated the other way around, they prevent courts from acting like this Court does today.

If the plaintiff has no such stake, a court must stop in its tracks. To decide the case is to exceed the permissible boundaries of the judicial role. That is what the Court does today.

The plaintiffs here are six States: Arkansas, Iowa, Kansas, Missouri, Nebraska, and South Carolina. They oppose the Secretary’s loan cancellation plan on varied policy and legal grounds. But as everyone agrees, those objections are just general grievances; they do not show the particularized injury needed to bring suit. And the States have no straightforward way of making that showing—of explaining how they are harmed by a plan that reduces individual borrowers’ federal student-loan debt. So the States have thrown no fewer than four different theories of injury against the wall, hoping that a court anxious to get to the merits will say that one of them sticks.  The most that can be said of the theory the majority selects, proffered solely by Missouri, is that it is less risible [laughable] than the others. It still contravenes a bedrock principle of standing law—that a plaintiff cannot ride on someone else’s injury.

II

The majority finds no firmer ground when it reaches the merits. The statute Congress enacted gives the Secretary broad authority to respond to national emergencies. 

The majority picks the statute apart piece by piece in an attempt to escape the meaning of the whole. But the whole—the expansive delegation—is so apparent that the majority has no choice but to justify its holding on extrastatutory grounds. So the majority resorts, as is becoming the norm, to its so-called major-questions doctrine.

The tell comes in the last part of the majority’s opinion. When a court is confident in its interpretation of a statute’s text, it spells out its reading and hits the send button. Not this Court, not today. This Court needs a whole other chapter to explain why it is striking down the Secretary’s plan. And that chapter is not about the statute Congress passed and the President signed, in their representation of many millions of citizens. It instead expresses the Court’s own “concerns over the exercise of administrative power.”

But assume the opposite; there is, even on that view, nothing like those circumstances here. (Or, to quote the majority quoting me, those “case[s are] distinguishable from this one.” Ante, at 23.) In this case, the Secretary responsible for carrying out the student-loan programs forgave student loans in a national emergency under the core provision of a recently enacted statute empowering him to provide student-loan relief in national emergencies. Today’s decision thus moves the goalposts for triggering the major-questions doctrine. Who knows—by next year, the Secretary of Health and Human Services may be found unable to implement the Medicare program under a broad delegation because of his actions’ (enormous) “economic impact.”

Similarly unavailing is the majority’s reliance on the controversy surrounding the program. Student-loan cancellation, the majority says, “raises questions that are personal and emotionally charged,” precipitating “profound debate across the country.” Ante, at 22. I have no quarrel with that description. Student-loan forgiveness, and responses to COVID generally, have joined the list of issues on which this Nation is divided. But that provides yet more reason for the Court to adhere to its properly limited role.

From the first page to the last, today’s opinion departs from the demands of judicial restraint. At the behest of a party that has suffered no injury, the majority decides a contested public policy issue properly belonging to the politically accountable branches and the people they represent. In saying so, and saying so strongly, I do not at all “disparage[]” those who disagree. Ante, at 26. The majority is right to make that point, as well as to say that “[r]easonable minds” are found on both sides of this case. Ante, at 25. And there is surely nothing personal in the dispute here. But Justices throughout history have raised the alarm when the Court has overreached—when it has “exceed[ed] its proper, limited role in our Nation’s governance.” Supra, at 1. It would have been “disturbing,” and indeed damaging, if they had not. Ante, at 25. The same is true in our own day.[1]

The majority’s opinion begins by distorting standing doctrine to create a case fit for judicial resolution. But there is no such case here, by any ordinary measure. The Secretary’s plan has not injured the plaintiff-States, however much they oppose it. And in that respect, Missouri is no different from any of the others.

What one sees here is an indication of the radical right's increasing reliance on the major questions doctrine. That doctrine allows the Supreme Court to bring congressionally delegated spending authority for major laws into question. That means that congress can write a law and delegate authority about how the spending is implemented to the federal agency involved, e.g., loan forgiveness in a national emergency as is the case here.

When Kagan mentioned the possibility of nullification of spending authority for Medicare, she was not pulling that out of thin air. One of the core targets for radical right government domestic spending haters is Medicare, along with Medicaid and social security. The student loan forgiveness at issue here is fairly small game, ~$430 billion. What the radicals really want to hunt is the bigger game like Medicare, Medicaid and social security. This case marks a precedent on the road to killing the really big targets.

In essence, what Kagan is doing here is bluntly warning us about what is to come if the radical right remains dominant in the Supreme Court.  

Footnote:

1. The Hill writes about the response of the radical right chief justice Roberts to Kagan's bitter dissent:

Roberts takes aim at liberal justices in 

defending Supreme Court’s legitimacy

Chief Justice John Roberts’s majority opinion striking down the Biden administration’s student debt relief plan ended with a note taking aim at the court’s liberal justices in defending the Supreme Court’s legitimacy.

Roberts, in response, took issue with Kagan’s take.

“It has become a disturbing feature of some recent opinions to criticize the decisions with which they disagree as going beyond the proper role of the judiciary,” Roberts wrote.

Kagan’s dissent was joined by fellow liberal Justices Sonia Sotomayor and Ketanji Brown Jackson. Kagan read portions of her dissent aloud from the bench, a rare occurrence that signals the significance of the justices’ disagreement.

“Reasonable minds may disagree with our analysis — in fact, at least three do,” Roberts wrote in his student debt decision, referencing the dissent.

Can you feel the temperature rising in the Supreme Court? I can. At least Roberts and Kagan are still openly saying they are not criticizing each other personally. They are just disagreeing on what this court is doing. For some that criticism can be seen as questioning the court's legitimacy because, e.g., it makes the Republicans on the court look like partisans taking an active part in advancing the Republican Party and its dominant ideology agendas.

News bits: Potential impacts of affirmative action; On the Schiff censure; Gene therapy update

A NYT article discusses the limited impact that affirmative action has had in college admissions for Black and Latino students in view of the vast magnitude of underlying problems for most students. The NYT writes:

But the effect of race-conscious admissions was always limited to a relatively small number of students. For the vast majority, these schools are not an option — academically or financially.

Many head straight into the work force after high school or attend less selective universities that do not weigh race and ethnicity in admissions. At least a third of all undergraduate students — including half of Hispanic undergraduates — attend community colleges, which typically allow open enrollment.

“This is the unseen group,” said Josh Tovar, the principal at Memorial Pathway Academy, a high school for at-risk students and new immigrants in Garland, Texas. “Everyone sees the kid that is No. 1 ranked with 110 G.P.A. going to M.I.T. No one sees my boy that doesn’t have parents — that lives with Grandma, that came to me at 17, with five credits, and graduates.”

Fewer than 200 selective universities are thought to practice race-conscious admissions, conferring degrees on about 10,000 to 15,000 students each year who might not otherwise have been accepted, according to a rough estimate by Sean Reardon, a sociologist at Stanford University. That represents about 2 percent of all Black, Hispanic or Native American students in four-year colleges.  

Yet, for many students, the biggest barriers are practical: applying to, paying for and completing college.

Based on that, it's reasonable to think that the greatest impacts would include (i) on high score minority students who the top 200 schools can no longer target for acceptance based on race, (ii) academically typical minority students who wind up in for-profit schools that pile huge debt on their students, and (iii) in view of the Supreme Court's ruling, employers who now feel pressure to shy away from affirmative action in their hiring practices. 

Something about this does not feel good. It points to a sick society, broken families and lives and lots of financial distress. Time will tell how this plays out.  

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The House of Recriminations update: A report I read yesterday asserted that House Republicans voted twice to censure Adam Schiff because they are mad at him. The first vote failed because 20 Republicans refused to go along with censure. Upon hearing about that, DJT flew into a rage and publicly threatened to primary all 20 of those Republicans in 2024. In the second vote, all 20 voted to censure Schiff. Some of the Republican nitwits referred to censure as a vote to censor. 

Also on the House of Recriminations agenda is impeaching Joe Biden and several members of his administration. We have some real idiots and thugs in congress.

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Gene therapy update: The WaPo writes about a new gene therapy approval:

The Food and Drug Administration on Thursday approved a treatment that uses gene therapy to treat severe hemophilia A, a rare and sometimes fatal blood disorder.

The new drug, Roctavian, could save people with the severe form of the disease from a lifetime of frequent injections. The drug’s maker expects about 2,500 of the estimated 6,500 Americans with severe hemophilia A to be eligible to receive the drug with its initial approval.

Roctavian will cost $2.9 million for a single infusion; Hemgenix, which treats another form of hemophilia, costs $3.5 million per use, according to Reuters. Still, scientists say the technology will be a crucial part of 21st century medicine.

Gene therapies are often too expensive for the patients they could help, said Fyodor Urnov, a genetics professor at the University of California at Berkeley.

He sees several paths to lowering the cost of gene therapies. The field is new, and the infrastructure to produce treatments may get cheaper. There’s also a need for “academic, nonprofit paths to developing and delivering” genetics-based medicine, Urnov said.

I agree that there is an urgent need for “academic, nonprofit paths to developing and delivering” genetics-based medicine (and all other kinds of medicine). Honestly, how can it be possible for new gene therapies and drugs be a crucial part of 21st century medicine at the prices capitalists demand and get. That's just plain nuts. The capitalist for-profit system does not work except for the few capitalist elites who benefit a lot. 

Although Urnov says that the gene therapy is new, that's malarkey. My dissertation research in the 1990s was related to developing gene therapies. The field is not close to new. It has been painfully slow to develop, in part because of the cost and partly because of biological and technical complexity. Recent technical advances are opening treatment possibilities, but unless costs are contained, this will remain mostly medicine for rich people. This is something that capitalism cannot and will not deal with equitably.