California Free Press

Off the Top of My Head

Will Freedom of Speech Be the Death Knell of the American Empire?

by John Lawrence

Over the course of history empires have come and gone. The Assyrian Empire, the Persian Empire, the Roman Empire, the Ottoman Empire. One of the hallmarks of the American Empire - and the US is a veritable empire - is Freedom of Speech. Freedom of Speech is something that some other countries don't tolerate, but in America it is tolerated even when it provides an avenue for misinformation and disinformation. Social media has just become one big rumor mill that threatens to bring the whole edifice of American democracy down. When Americans can't trust their government and government spokespeople as to what's really happening, we're in big trouble. The recent disasters of Hurricane Helene and Hurricane Milton have offered ample opportunities for those who spread lies and rumors to operate. Just for comparison, in countries where there is not Freedom of Speech,how much misinformation aimed at the government would be tolerated? Not much. For instance, in Russia, they would be sent to the gulag. In America, Freedom of Speech is causing the levers of government to spin out of control. It's a question of stability verses freedom. China, for instance, values stability more than freedom. In the US there is major instability because unlimited freedom of speech is entertained.

AP News reported: After the deluge, the lies: Misinformation and hoaxes about Helene cloud the recovery,

WASHINGTON (AP) — The facts emerging from Hurricane Helene’s destruction are heartrending: Businesses and homes destroyed, whole communities nearly wiped out, hundreds of lives lost, hundreds of people missing.

Yet this devastation and despair is not enough for the extremist groups, disinformation agents, hucksters and politicians who are exploiting the disaster to spread false claims and conspiracy theories about it and the government’s response.

The question is is unlimited freedom of speech something that should be tolerated at the expense of the stability of American democracy? Obviously, a country like Russia does not tolerate it. What needs to be understood is that throughout most of history it was anathema to criticize a monarch or emperor or autocrat whether in Russia or anywhere else. European history from the demise of the Roman Empire was filled with autocratic monarchs and kings who wouldn't tolerate freedom of speech. Russian history in particular has never known political leaders other than autocrats whether they be Ivan the Terrible, Peter the Great, Catherine the Great, Stalin or Putin. American democracy is a relatively new experiment brought into existence primarily by the French Enlightenment. Freedom versus stability is something worth considering, and where should be the line between them such that people have as much freedom as possible while not threatening the stability of the empire.

The question is should lies and misinformation and disinformation be tolerated by the American government when unlimited freedom threatens its very demise. January 6 is a testament to the fact that lies almost brought the government down. Would censorship of misinformation and disinformation be something worth considering? Should unlimited freedom of speech be curtailed? It's a sad state of affairs when people are biting the hand that feeds them due to freedom of speech which allows for the lies being perpetrated by those seeking political advantage. Social media needs to be reined in. Censorship is a dirty word but America is tolerating lies and disinformation at its peril. Freedom of Speech does not encompass crying Fire in a crowded theater, but much more than that should be circumscribed.

Off the Top of My Head

Theatre of the Absurd: Trump and the US Legal System

by John Lawrence

The judge in the hush money case, Juan Merchan, placed a gag order on Trump barring him from commenting publicly about witnesses, prosecutors, court staff and jurors. Only thing is he didn't bar Trump from commenting publicly about himself or his family. Of course Trump commenced to doing just that. Trump said, “Judge Juan Merchan is totally compromised, and should be removed from this TRUMP Non-Case immediately. His Daughter, Loren, is a Rabid Trump Hater, who has admitted to having conversations with her father about me, and yet he gagged me.” So now Trump's lawyers want to litigate the gag order which Trump, theoretically, did not violate since the judge did not include himself and his daughter in it. It doesn't get more absurd than this. First of all how stupid is the judge not to include himself and his family and everybody else in the gag order? Trump's lawyers say that the judge is violating Trump's First Amendment rights. So now let's litigate that. Let's litigate the gag order, and, if it isn't decided in Trump's favor, his lawyers will appeal it to a higher court. And if that higher court doesn't rule in Trump's favor, they will appeal it to an even higher court. This whole strategy is aimed at befuddling and delaying any action that would finally find Trump guilty of anything. Trump is making a fool of the judge and his family, and will probably never pay any price for it.

In this Theatre of the Absurd, one might humbly ask why did it take three years for any of these dozens of indictments to result in a trial? Now they're up against the next election cycle. It didn't have to be this way. Why weren't these trials expedited in the first place? Why does it take forever to get anything done in the US legal system? This makes it pretty easy for Trump to delay, delay and delay. Why are these guys so negligent with respect to time and so tardy to get anything done? This makes a mockery of the legal system if nothing can get brought to fruition as long as some wealthy guy can hire a bunch of lawyers to delay the whole process. Ionesco had nothing on the US legal system. Neither did Kafka. Kafka's literary endeavors typically featured isolated protagonists facing bizarre or surrealistic predicaments and incomprehensible socio-bureaucratic powers. Sound familiar?

Not only is Trump making a mockery of the whole legal system, he is making a mockery of US capitalism as well. While Trump is slipping the surly bonds of the US legal system, he is laughing all the way to the bank with the help of Wall Street. How is it possible that, while pundits are salivating over whether Trump can pay his legal bills, all of a sudden his social media mouthpiece, Truth Social, is going public which could net Trump billions of dollars. So he may not have his First Amendment rights, but who cares as long as Trump can make billions of dollars by his rights in the capitalist system to have Wall Street do an IPO for him and get investors, many of whom are probably rich Trump supporters, to gleefully invest in something which will probably make him and them billionaires? So there is money in misinformation and disinformation and hate speech. What else is new and why is the US legal and financial system supporting it? After all First Amendment rights combined with capitalism can be a toxic stew which the American legal and financial system is only too happy to condone or at least condone while some pundits wring their hands decrying it. That's their First Amendment rights - to complain while Trump escapes punishment and laughs all the way to the bank. And he might get to be President too! Only in America.

Off the Top of My Head

Democracy and Fanaticism Cannot Coexist

by John Lawrence

Democracy presupposes that rational actors with different interests can peacefully resolve their differences by means of some rules based system which includes, for example, voting. The rule of law represents the congealed rationality of bygone days. However, when major actors in a political system are irrational and when their followers become fanatics, democracy is probably imperiled. Today we have one of the candidates for the highest office in the land who is irrational and his followers are fanatically devoted to him. It's hard to conceive why any rational society much less a democracy would let someone who arguably tried to overthrow that democracy run again for the highest office in the land. Take Richard Nixon for example. What if after he resigned he had decided to run for President in the next election cycle? Unthinkable, you say. Maybe so, but Richard Nixon's offenses were minuscule compared to Trump's. It seems that nothing in the American Constitution or rule of law is preventing someone who tried to overthrow that Constitution from taking power again. It should be cut and dried as the situation evidently was in Richard Nixon's case. Nixon was the only President who resigned from the Presidency, but nothing in the Constitution would have prevented him from running again. Why didn't he?

The leaders of autocratic societies are laughing up their sleeves at this American dilemma. Are Americans so tolerant of free speech that they entertain not only the speech but the candidacy of a person who tried to overthrow the Constitution of that society? Any society can be measured on a scale the end points of which are total freedom and total stability. Some societies, notably more autocratic ones, value stability more than freedom. Others value freedom more than stability. Obviously the US belongs to the latter variety. However, there is a point at which too much freedom threatens the viability of that society itself. Has the US gone beyond that point? Arguably, yes, when its allies cannot even rely on the President's word and policies involving war and peace. President Biden has committed himself to supporting the Ukrainians in their war with Russia. America's allies in Europe are all on the same page with this policy. Who's not? The American House of Representatives who must vote on the expenditure of money for this cause. Obviously, Biden looks weak if he cannot even deliver what he has promised as the leader of the Free World. European democracies are looking askance.

Other societies have no such problems. For example, the Chinese society values stability much more than they value freedom. It would be very unlikely that the Chinese would countermand a policy expounded by Xi Jinping. President Biden is in the position that a carefully thought out policy involving the preservation of democracy in Ukraine is being countermanded by a man who not only tried to overthrow democracy in the US, but is running for President again and is telling Congress not to vote the money for the continuance of Biden's policy in Ukraine. It's the tail wagging the dog. Despite 91 criminal indictments, the US system is so free that it cannot prevent this from happening. It goes to show that the American Presidency is weaker than the Presidencies of almost every European country. At least in Europe, for the most part, their societies are going along with supporting Ukraine financially. They also in the past looked up to the American President for leadership. Now they are finding that hard to do.

Trump has broke all the rules and created a followership of cult like fanatics who relish this fact. Trump and his followers are not rational actors willing to resolve their differences with the rest of the American population in a civilized manner following the traditional rule of law. Despite the fact that Biden has done more for the US than very few other Presidents, Trump is ahead in the polls to become the next President of the US. Rational actors and their followers should have favored a President in his reelection bid over a person who attempted to overthrow the American Constitution, but they're not. Hence, a good percentage of Americans are not rational actors to whom the rules of law of a 235 old Republic mean nothing. American politics has become a politics of fanaticism and American freedom is tolerating it. Too much freedom and too little stability in a political system does not bode well for the long range viability of that system. In addition the upcoming election for President will come down to very narrow margins in a handful of battleground states. Has the archaic American system finally hamstrung itself to the extent that the popular vote will mean nothing  ... again?

Off the Top of My Head

The Negativity of the Republican party Preceded Trump. He Just Came to Embody It.

by John Lawrence

The vitriol expressed towards Barack Obama by the Republican party existed before Trump even entered the race. The controversy regarding Obama's birth certificate is something that Trump just latched on to and capitalized on as his entree into national politics. He saw an opportunity and he acted on it. During Barack Obama's campaign for president in 2008, throughout his presidency and afterwards, there was extensive news coverage of Obama's religious preference, birthplace, and of the individuals questioning his religious belief and citizenship – efforts eventually known as the "birther movement", by which name it is widely referred to across media. Conspiracy theories proliferated during Obama's run for the Presidency. There were some that encouraged the electoral college not to certify Obama. Activists unsuccessfully lobbied Republican members of Congress to reject the 2008 Electoral College vote and block Obama's election when it came before Congress for certification on January 8, 2009. This set the stage for Trump's unsuccessful attempt to manipulate the electoral college after the 2020 election in which he lost to Joe Biden. Republican finagling with the voting system is nothing new. Neither is their promotion of conspiracy theories in order to defeat their opponents and gain power in the US government.

Donald Trump predicated his run for the Presidency in 2016 on lies and deception. That should have been enough to disqualify him right there. But it wasn't and lies and deception became a staple of Republican, and, therefore, US politics. Lies and deception were mainstreamed and normalized. The New York Times weighed in thusly:

[The fact that Obama was not born in the US] was not true in 2011, when Donald J. Trump mischievously began to question President Obama’s birthplace aloud in television interviews. “I’m starting to think that he was not born here,” he said at the time.

It was not true in 2012, when he took to Twitter to declare that “an ‘extremely credible source’” had called his office to inform him that Mr. Obama’s birth certificate was “a fraud.”

It was not true in 2014, when Mr. Trump invited hackers to “please hack Obama’s college records (destroyed?) and check ‘place of birth.’”

It was never true, any of it. Mr. Obama’s citizenship was never in question. No credible evidence ever suggested otherwise.

In fact, it took Mr. Trump much longer than that: Mr. Obama released his short-form birth certificate from the Hawaii Department of Health in 2008. Most of the world moved on.

But not Mr. Trump.

He nurtured the conspiracy like a poisonous flower, watering and feeding it with an ardor that still baffles and embarrasses many around him.

Mr. Trump called up like-minded sowers of the same corrosive rumor, asking them for advice on how to take a falsehood and make it mainstream in 2011, as he weighed his own run for the White House.

And there you have the essence of corruption in American politics. The fact that anyone can base a political campaign on something that he or she knows to be a lie just because they can get a large portion of the electorate to believe in it is part and parcel of the American system. And now, despite the fact that there is plenty of evidence including 91 indictments that Trump perpetrated a hoax on the American public, still a large number of the American people still believes in him. He has created a personality cult around himself based on lies and deception yet the American system of government so far has not been able to prevent him from possibly attaining the office of President of the United States again! Surely, this is free speech run amok. The First Amendment should not entertain the possibility that lies and conspiracy theories should be left to fester and confuse the American public. Free speech should not allow that lies and deception are allowed into the political arena so that a politician can actually win office by convincing people to believe them. The cult centered around Trump has progressed or degenerated to the point that his believers have their own egos invested in the lies, and so are reluctant to disabuse themselves of them for fear of losing their self identity. It is easier to go on believing what they thought to be true, even though these beliefs have been thoroughly debunked, than it is to admit that they were fooled.

Rudy Giuliani said it best:

"Over the next 10 days, we get to see the machines that are crooked, the ballots that are fraudulent, and if we’re wrong, we will be made fools of. But if we’re right, a lot of them will go to jail. Let’s have trial by combat. I’m willing to stake my reputation, the President is willing to stake his reputation, on the fact that we’re going to find criminality there."

They were wrong and they have been made fools of. However, a large percentage of the American people are not willing to admit that they have been made fools of. Their collective egos will not entertain that possibility. In order not to think of oneself as a fool, one must go on believing in the lies and deception that Trump is still allowed to spew. His rallies are reminiscent of the rallies of another would be dictator who gained traction with the German people in the 1930s. And still there is no provision in the American constitution or the rule of law that would prevent the dictatorship of Donald Trump from taking place.

Off the Top of My Head

The Elevation of Personal Beliefs Above Objective Truth

by John Lawrence

I saw an amazing interview involving a health care worker who refused to get vaccinated even though it means she will lose her job. Talk about obstinacy. She admitted to being Catholic and even the authority of the Catholic church, whose Pope himself got vaccinated and recommended that others follow his example, was not enough to sway her towards getting the shot. So she's denying the authority of the whole medical science system and the Pope of the Catholic church, elevating her own personal beliefs above those authorities, while at the same time being willing to lose her livelihood. Is this a gigantic child's tantrum or what? Did this person stomp her feet and refuse to eat her pablum? Has she been totally captivated by Fox news and social media? She must be basing her refusal on something. The knowledge that statistically very few vaccinated people have died with COVID while the vast majority of the current deaths are among the unvaccinated evidently means nothing to her.

We've seen this phenomenon before. Strong leaders can even lead willing participants to their deaths. Rolling Stone reported:

"Until the September 11th attacks, the tragedy in Jonestown on November 18th, 1978 represented the largest number of American civilian casualties in a single non-natural event. It is unfathomable now, as it was then, that more than 900 Americans – members of a San Francisco-based religious group called the Peoples Temple – died after drinking poison at the urging of their leader, the Reverend Jim Jones, in a secluded South American jungle settlement. Photographs taken after the carnage forever document the sheer enormity of the event: the bodies of hundreds of people, including children, lying face down in the grass."

We have to ask "how could the Jonestown massacre been prevented?" So could Jim Jones' rights of free speech been curtailed? Could the Peoples Temple have been dissolved by authorities as detrimental to human welfare? Of course to do any of these things would have violated our Constitution and people's rights of free speech and religion. It comes to mind that China wouldn't have any problem doing both if the authorities there felt it was in the people's and/or the country's interest to do so. So is our Constitution flawed when it comes to letting massive deceptions of the American public go on or is it people's right to allow themselves to be deceived which results in their losing their livelihood or even their life?

Where I come down on this is to disallow snake oil salesmen from doing their jobs. Basically, I would censor social media especially as it pertains to the proliferation of lies and untruths. I would censor the purveying of misinformation. This lady that denied the authority of both the Pope and the consensus of medical science probably got her mentality altered by social media which is known to proliferate misinformation. Obviously, Facebook, Instagram and others are not doing enough to police themselves for obvious reasons. Their profit model depends on the proliferation of lies and mistruths. If they weeded out every lie being purveyed on Facebook, it would drastically cut their profits. Misinformation and lies especially if conveyed in a flambuoyant fashion get way more hits than does the bland truth and valid information. Sensationalism sells and makes big profits for social media as well as tabloid newspapers such as the National Enquirer.

Wikipedia explains sensationalism as follows:

"In journalism (and more specifically, the mass media), sensationalism is a type of editorial tactic. Events and topics in news stories are selected and worded to excite the greatest number of readers and viewers. This style of news reporting encourages biased or emotionally loaded impressions of events rather than neutrality, and may cause a manipulation to the truth of a story. Sensationalism may rely on reports about generally insignificant matters and portray them as a major influence on society, or biased presentations of newsworthy topics, in a trivial, or tabloid manner, contrary to general assumptions of professional journalistic standards."

"Some tactics include being deliberately obtuse, appealing to emotions, being controversial, intentionally omitting facts and information, being loud and self-centered, and acting to obtain attention. Trivial information and events are sometimes misrepresented and exaggerated as important or significant, and often include stories about the actions of individuals and small groups of people, the content of which is often insignificant and irrelevant to the macro-level day-to-day events occurring globally."

Some people are more easily manipulated than others. The example of the lady in the interview that denied the authority of both medical science and the Catholic church doesn't bode well for unlimited freedom of speech and religion. You can't yell "fire" in a crowded theater, but freedom of speech should have a much greater threshold than that. Lies and misinformation in social media at least need to be fact checked by an authority whether governmental or quasi-governmental or otherwise so that every time the misinformation pops up, the fact check also pops up. This in and of itself is not censorship, but it is an intrusion into private business, a regulatory effort to prevent the general public from being hoodwinked. China would have no problem with this and no problem with outright censorship. If the US is to maintain itself as a cohesive society with everyone moving in more or less of a positive direction, some sort of restraint on lies and misinformation needs to be put in place.

Off the Top of My Head

A Miasma of Misinformation

by John Lawrence

This is how Fareed Zakaria characterized the current state of vaccination rhetoric. 12 people on Facebook are pushing anti Vax information, and making money doing it. Needless to say, Facebook is making money sponsoring their "free speech." The question is does government have the right to effectively censor Facebook and tell them to get these 12 people off their social media. Guess not according to our Constitution. Rephrased the question might be does the government have the right to tell Facebook to diminish their profits by getting these 12 people off their social media. Unwritten rule: government doesn't have the right to tell any private company to diminish their profits by making changes to their business model. So we are in a quandary. A pandemic is raging and killing Americans. Yet the government is powerless to do things that would bring the pandemic to an end, and Facebook has financial incentives not to get the anti vaxxers off their social media. Let's be clear. If they wanted to do so, it could be accomplished in a nano second. Technology has the capability to identify and terminate any account espousing anti vaxxing.

So is there something wrong with our Constitution that it prevents government from doing much about the twin pandemics of anti vaxxing speech and gun violence. I guess the courts are supposed to clarify that, but so far they haven't or they haven't done so in a way that has solved these twin problems. So these twin pandemics could stymy us in perpetuity. This is so much wasted energy. How can our society successfully recover from the pandemic and get back to work full steam ahead if we are being retarded in perpetuity by COVID despite having miraculously developed an effective vaccine against it? How can our society get on with the business of healing the sick, alleviating poverty, educating the masses and saving the planet from the ravages of climate change if we have to perpetually deal with foolishness and ignorance on the part of people who assert their right of free speech even if that speech represents misinformation? How can we get on with business if a certain segment of society is proliferating and utilizing firearms to kill one another? We can't. We're stuck. Stupidity and ignorance rule the day.

Just 12 People Are Behind Most Vaccine Hoaxes On Social Media, Research Shows. This article on on NPR goes on:

"Researchers have found just 12 people are responsible for the bulk of the misleading claims and outright lies about COVID-19 vaccines that proliferate on Facebook, Instagram and Twitter.

"The 'Disinformation Dozen' produce 65% of the shares of anti-vaccine misinformation on social media platforms," said Imran Ahmed, chief executive officer of the Center for Countering Digital Hate, which identified the accounts.

"Now the vaccine rollout is reaching a critical stage in which most adults who want the vaccine have gotten it, but many others are holding out, these 12 influential social media users stand to have an outsize impact on the outcome.

"After this story published on Thursday, Facebook said it had taken down more of the accounts run by these 12 individuals.

"These figures are well-known to both researchers and the social networks. They include anti-vaccine activists, alternative health entrepreneurs and physicians. Some of them run multiple accounts across the different platforms. They often promote "natural health." Some even sell supplements and books.

"Many of the messages about the COVID-19 vaccines being widely spread online mirror what's been said in the past about other vaccines by peddlers of health misinformation."

Sending children back to school unvaccinated is a disaster waiting to happen. COVID is watching and waiting. While other countries beg for the vaccine, in the good ole US, where there is a vaccine glut, people are saying "No thank you. I just don't feel I want to do it. My feeling is it's not in my best interests." People are feeling too much and not thinking. So what did they learn in school? Not much I guess.

Off the Top of My Head

Can Too Much Freedom Be Toxic?

by John Lawrence

When liberty isn't balance by responsibility or concern for others, it can quickly get toxic. There can be too much liberty in a society, and that is taking place when a super market cashier gets murdered over her request for a customer to wear a mask. The non-maskers and non-vaxxers who say that their liberty trumps any responsibility to society have demonstrated that the US has emphasized liberty to the exclusion of anything else. What are reasonable limits to liberty?

Justin Holt writes in an article "What are reasonable limits to liberty?": "in the absence of a political order, our liberty is boundless, but a limitless liberty is self-canceling. If we can do anything, so can everyone else; thus, nothing can be done which is enduring and dependable. Second, in order to have enduring and dependable liberties, our range of action must be limited. For example, in order for property to exist, the actions of others to use this particular property must be limited. Third, these limitations on our actions provide a liberty that is fruitful, because our actions can be guaranteed to be enduring and dependable."

The general idea is that there is a private sphere in which full liberty is appropriate and a public sphere in which a citizen should defer to what is appropriate for the benefit of society. Where does a society draw this line? The US may draw it in one place and a society like China or Russia may draw it in a different place. The US has been verging on chaos while China values stability and continuity and draws the line in a different place. Even Russia draws the line differently. How much chaos is supported by free speech is almost out of control in the US. Free speech in the US makes possible what other countries might consider sedition. Clearly, what happened on January 6 was seditious. Sedition is defined as overt conduct, such as speech and organization, that tends toward rebellion against the established order. Speech on social media by organized right wing groups such as the Oath Keepers and Proud Boys was clearly seditious prior to the Januray 6 insurrection as was Trump's incitement to riot on that day. The US is very lenient on these issues as no one in that riot is being charged with sedition which is a more serious crime than mere trespassing.

What most people don't understand is that China and Russia as well as other societies draw the line in a much stricter place regarding sedition. What the US would call human rights, another society might call sedition. Other societies value stability and continuity a lot more than the US does. And then the US criticizes those societies based on its own values of free speech which resulted in a resurrection on January 6. Seditious speech on social media was tolerated by the US when it should have been sanctioned. While Joe Biden can call Putin a killer, according to public opinion surveys conducted by NGO Levada Center, Putin's approval rating was 60% in July 2020, and the highest of any leader in the world. This is not taken into account by US politicians and media. Clearly, the majority of the Russian people are very pleased with Putin's job performance. Also, while the US considers that Navalny has a human right to free speech, Russia draws the line on what is free speech and what is seditious speech in a different place. So while Joe Biden criticizes Russia on its treatment of Navalny, Putin has every right in the world to point out how free speech in the US led to the January 6 insurrection. According to Pew Research: "Russians are as satisfied with their country’s overall direction as they have been since Pew Research Center began polling Russia in 2002. A majority (58%) of Russians are satisfied with the way things are going in their country, while 37% report being dissatisfied." As for gun crime in Russia, NPR reports:

"It's illegal for Russian citizens to own automatic and semi-automatic guns. It's possible to apply for a handgun or shotgun license, though citizens are required to provide reasons such as hunting or target shooting. Applicants face strict background checks, including criminal history, a full psychological evaluation and a medical exam. They must pass a test on firearm laws and safety. Each weapon is then registered by the police during a home visit. Police take bullet patterns, test bullets and cartridges so bullets can be matched if the gun is used in a crime. A license lasts five years, after which applicants must go through the whole process again."

Pew Research reports similar approval ratings in China: "A broad majority of Chinese (89%) think things are going well with their economy, making them the happiest on this measure compared with all other 43 countries surveyed this year. And they believe things will only get better. Eight-in-ten say the economy will continue to improve over the next 12 months. And 85% think the younger generation will be better off financially than their parents. This optimism stands in stark contrast to findings in Europe and the U.S., where widespread majorities believe their children will be worse off going forward." Is everything perfect there? No, but a majority of Chinese value stability and continuity above free speech. Furthermore, in the People's Republic of China, access by the general public to firearms is subject to some of the strictest control measures in the world. With the exception of individuals with hunting permits and some ethnic minorities, civilian firearm ownership is restricted to non-individual entities. The result is a very low incidence of gun deaths although stabbings make up some of the difference. Still one can do a lot more damage with an AK-47 than they can with a knife.

Societies and governments survive by virtue of the approval of a majority of its citizens. Isn't that what democracy is all about - majority rule? Or at least majority approval of whatever form of government is ruling? The US interpretation of free speech led us to the January 6 insurrection because seditious speech was tolerated as free speech. Freedom gets toxic when citizens think they have free rein to do whatever they want without regard for others. At that point a society loses its cohesiveness and becomes unstable. The US has almost gotten to that point both in terms of the toleration of seditious speech combined with a toleration of gun violence based on the Second Amendment. The founders meant this amendment to apply to militias which were a well defined entity in the founders' day. They later became the National Guard so that the meaning of militia was lost with the result of misinterpretation of the Second Amendment and the uncontrolled proliferation of guns. So, in my opinion, the First and Second Amendments have both become toxic and need to be reformed and redefined.

Off the Top of My Head

Future Generations Will Analyze This Era and Judge Whether Autocracy or Democracy Was More Successful

by John Lawrence

So far autocracy is winning. The vast majority of the Chinese people are on the same page as the Chinese government while the US is a nation divided - one half diametrically opposed to the other half. The Constitution itself needs to be revised as its First and Second amendments are causing many of the problems. The Second amendment is contributing to the US being the mass murder capitol of the world, but the First amendment is also insidious as it has morphed into something perverted and toxic in the form of social media and spun out of control allowing the spread of vicious gossip and lies gone viral. This has given vent to the worst impulses among the American people. Facebook's very business model has contributed mightily to this outcome as it allows hate groups to identify one another and come together on a common platform provided all too profitably by Facebook.

Hillary Clinton, the former secretary of state warns of the danger to democracy of lies flourishing online – and says big tech’s wings must be clipped in an article in The Guardian. She of course has been the victim of outrageous character assassination perpetrated by lies on social media over the course of 30 years or more. The Guardian reports:

"Her bid for the White House was engulfed by a tidal wave of fabricated news and false conspiracy theories. Now Hillary Clinton is calling for a “global reckoning” with disinformation that includes reining in the power of big tech.

"The former secretary of state and first lady warns that the breakdown of a shared truth, and the divisiveness that surely follows, poses a danger to democracy at a moment when China is selling the conceit that autocracy works."

Uncontrolled social media makes more money by perpetrating lies than it does the truth because the truth is often boring, bu lies especially when shared by a large group of people are often very entertaining, and the American people demand constantly to be entertained. Maybe this is because their lives are otherwise quite boring. Anyway boredom is the crux of the matter. The “Pizzagate” conspiracy theory, which made the preposterous claim that Clinton ran a child sex trafficking ring at a Washington pizza restaurant, entertained the masses in a viral manner. This segment of society loves them a reality show TV star like Donald Trump or even a B movie star like Ronald Reagan. They would rather have the impersonation of a competent leader than a competent leader him or herself, but then Hitler was very entertaining as well. So are most autocrats. Social media represents the First amendment run amok.

The Guardian continues:

"Far-right Republicans have become openly anti-democratic, endorsing Trump’s falsehoods and seeking to suppress voters of color.

"The traditional the-truth-is-somewhere-in-the-middle approach will no longer do, Clinton argues.

“They’ve got to rid themselves of both-sidesism,” she says. “It is not the same to say something critical of somebody on the other side of the aisle and to instigate an attack on the Capitol and to vote against certifying the election. Those are not comparable, and it goes back to the problem of the press actually coming to grips with how out of bounds and dangerous the new political philosophy on the right happens to be.”

"The press cannot be expected to restore a common baseline of truth on its own, however.

“The technology platforms are so much more powerful than any organ of the so-called mainstream press, and I do think that there has to be not just an American reckoning but a global reckoning with the disinformation, with the monopolistic power and control, with the lack of accountability that the platforms currently enjoy,” Clinton said."

News shows on TV need sponsors and sponsors want eyeballs glued to the tube. What is more gluing than some outrageous lie such as the ones Qanon perpetrates. So the "business of America is business" crowd is out there perpetrating lies because that is more profitable than perpetrating the boring truth. Entertainment is everything. We are entertained to death and that had resulted prepandemic in a full employment society where the lower 50% serve, bartend, cater, cook, work as baristas, housekeep, provide security, take tickets for the upper 50%. Profitable business decisions have made lies and deception profitable. Every day during the Trump administration, the media covered Trump's outrageous lies and behavior because it was more profitable than reporting the dull facts. Even Trump's adulterous affairs were "forgiven" because they made him a more vivid character providing juicy gossipy entertainment even for the tsk tsk crowd.

In Amusing Ourselves to Death, Neil Postman argued presciently 35 years ago that television was reshaping our culture and trivializing public life—news, politics, religion, education, and business—by turning it into entertainment. He warned that we would become so inundated with irrelevant information that we’d lose sight of what was important—even worse, we wouldn’t care as long as we felt entertained. With the proliferation of digital media today and worries about excessive “screen time,” his analysis still resonates.

Hillary added: “In particular Facebook, which has the worst track record for enabling mistruths, misinformation, extremism, conspiracy, for goodness’ sake, even genocide in Myanmar against the Rohingya. So governments are going to have to decide right now that the platforms have to be held to some kind of standard, and it’s tricky.” So do the Chinese have a better idea to control the out of control lies perpetrated in the West? For one thing they wouldn't stand for it. Freedom of speech has morphed into something sinister and out of control. The same could be said about the Second Amendment. Maybe the moral of the story is that constitutions need to be updated at least once a century in order to keep up with new technological developments. The US Constitution is 233 years old.

Off the Top of My Head

Congressional Republicans That Supported Insurrection Should Be Censured

by John Lawrence, January 10, 2021

Although it takes a two thirds majority to expel someone from the House or Senate, it only takes a majority to censure. Therefore, Ted Cruz, Josh Hawley and Kevin McCarthy at the very least should be censured. They will lose their committee chairs and be publicly shamed because the politician must stand before his peers to listen to the censure resolution. Meanwhile, Trump should be impeached in the House, but there should be no trial in the Senate because that would be a media circus of which Trump would be the star, and this would steal Joe Biden's thunder just as he assumes the office of President of the United States. The page needs to be turned and Trump should be blacklisted from every form of media exposure. Twitter, Facebook and others have already banned him for life which is the best thing that could have happened. Right wing app Parler has been deplatformed. Rudy Giuliani and Don Junior need to be prosecuted for inciting to riot for the words they spoke at Trump's Save America rally that preceded the insurrection. "Trial by combat"? Indeed. Long story short, Trump should be denied any media exposure whatsoever. The focus should be on Joe Biden's Presidency and the reckonings of those that have committed prosecutorial crimes needs to be done offstage, so to speak.

We need a breath of fresh air come January 20 while in the background those who have committed crimes connected with the insurrection need to be brought to justice. Every one of the rioters need to serve jail time or be fined - even those who crossed the barriers but did not go inside the Capitol. Those who went inside the Capitol need to be dealt more severe penalties. None of these rioters should be left off the hook. The myth that these assholes are Patriots needs to be dispelled. The only ones who are innocent in my opinion are those who didn't cross the line that the barriers represented. I'm sure that over time they all will be penalized in one form or other because there is so much video and social media evidence including their own bragging on social media. The FBI has their work cut out for them. In the meantime security needs to be ramped up at state Capitals all across the country, and gun laws need to be augmented and strengthened. Probably the only thing that saved the Capitol from an armed insurrection was the fact that so many of them flew to Trump's event and weren't allowed to bring guns on the plane. You can't have people with machine guns threatening state Capitals or office holders of a party they disagree with. We've seen too much of that already. Security around Joe Biden and Kamala Harris needs to be extremely tight. We don't want what happened to Abraham Lincoln happening to either of them.

At the same time Joe Biden and his Democratic allies in Congress have to get a humungus aid package passed and into the hands of the American people - all of them - so that there are tangible benefits for all to see and benefit from including Trump, hopefully former, supporters. The coronavirus must be brought under control. The ineffective US intelligence agencies have a budget of about $75 billion and yet they had no intelligence relating to what an average American could plainly size up: a Trump rally attracting tens of thousands on the same day that Congress certified the election results. I wrote previously how like James Bond's arch villains, Trump would show up January 6 for one last stand even when we all thought the election was finally, after repeated certifications at multiple levels, over. Bond's villains do not give up and neither did Trump after he had tried every other trick in the book to overturn the election. I'm sure he had plans for the inauguration on January 20 as well. That's why security at the inauguration needs to be extremely tight.

Social media by and large has finally done the right thing banning Trump and right wing wack jobs and conspiracy theorists. But it is obviously too late. They should have done this long ago. There are much needed reforms that need to be undertaken regarding social media. They have in fact aided and abetted the worst impulses of American society as their algorithms favored conspiracy theories and other fantastic falsehoods as they brought more eyeballs to the platforms than did the plain unvarnished truth. We have to reckon with a model in the media that is basically centered on entertainment including the news. Bringing eyeballs to the media - all media - is what advertising is all about. Advertisers won't pay and media corporations won't make any money from sober analysis because it's not entertaining enough and people demand to be entertained. Although Trump's lies are being finally called out all over the media, let us not forget that lies perpetrated via the media are nothing new. The Willie Horton ads promulgated for George H W Bush's 1988 Presidential campaign typify the lying that political candidates have always partaken of with Trump just being the latest purveyor.

"Horton, an African-American man, was a convicted murderer who raped a white woman and stabbed her partner while furloughed from prison under a Massachusetts program in place when Dukakis, the Democratic nominee, was governor. The TV ad is now considered one of the most racially divisive in modern political history because it played into white fear and African-American stereotypes. In it, an off-screen narrator tells the story of Horton’s crimes while pictures of Bush and Dukakis and a menacing mug shot of Horton flash across the screen. The narrator notes that Bush supports the death penalty for murderers."

Clearly, there should be thought given to bringing about truth in media and what can be done to insure that the American people aren't sold a pack of lies by politicians or in any other kind of advertising. American culture has also been brutalized and vulgarized because this has been shown by advertisers to attract the most eyeballs. Violence in media runs rampant. It's almost like you have to watch movies from Europe to see something which doesn't contain violence and usually gun violence of the most graphic sort which pervades US entertainment. This is the stuff that media corporations produce because they think it's the most lucrative. Politicians supported Trump's lies because they thought it was the best way to get elected or reelected. Other societies have not put up with this crap. Violence and lies, although they may be entertaining, need to be restrained if America is ever to attain some degree of collective mental health. I for one will send up a cheer for sober analysis.

Off the Top of My Head

About Lying

by John Lawrence, September 16, 2020

To be blunt lying is as American as cherry pie. Lawyers lie even if they know their client is guilty. Prosecutors lie even if they know the defendant is innocent. In fact the best lawyers are the ones who can lie with the straightest faces as if they were telling a profound truth. Ads on TV lie all the time. About the only thing you can't claim for a product is that it will cure cancer. That's a no no. But for anything else it's caveat emptor - buyer beware. The same holds for politics. I'm not a fan of President Trump, but I find it naive that some newscasters are astounded that Trump lies routinely. Political ads lie routinely. Facebook posts lie routinely. If you did away with lying, you would do away with half or more of public discourse. That's why fact checking is so important. Some people want to believe lies because they are sexier than the truth.

Then we get to conspiracy theories. Basically they are whole congeries of lies. They are lies upon lies that somehow manage to create a story. This isn't hard to do. Works of fiction are by definition not reality, but they make sense because they tell a story. So do conspiracy theories. They just do not represent reality. They are lies based upon lies. They are whole multilevel structures of lies. Getting to the basis of what's true, what's factual, what represents reality is the work of all of us. American culture does not make it easy when so much of it is based on lies. There are a few people we can trust to tell the truth. Dr Fauci is one. So is Bill Gates. But when there is a truth teller among us, the first thing that some people want to do is to cast doubt on their veracity. They want to make up conspiracy theories about them. It seems that some people find the truth to be too bland, too unsexy.

What this boils down to is the Nazification of American culture. Hitler supplied the conspiracy theories that the Germans needed to assuage their feelings of defeat over the First World War. It was not your fault, Hitler told them. You were betrayed by the Jews.Hitler gave them pageantry, campaign rallies complete with torchlight parades, symbols like the Nazi flag, a rationale why they found themselves in such miserable circumstances. He created a culture that was fun and sexy, one that gave Germans something to look forward to after they became immersed in their Germanness and rid the world of certain nonGermans. Hitler gave them entertainment; he gave them something to cheer about. He was an exiting public speaker.

American demagogues have done much the same thing. They have taken their approach right out of Hitler's playbook. Concoct a reality that is more entertaining than factual reality. Give them someone to blame for their lack of success. Whether it was Father Coughlin, Joe McCarthy, George Wallace or Donald Trump, their tactics and techniques are similar. They cater to a downtrodden group which has seen better days and is resentful of the fact that they have landed up where they are. They are highly entertaining. They give their followers something to cheer about. Entertaining crowds is their forte. They encourage conspiracy theories especially about their perceived enemies, the ones responsible for their being where they perceive they are. They look forward to a future utopia when their enemies have been vanquished and they will take their true place in history, the place they were destined to achieve. Destiny is theirs once they rid the world of undesirables.

Which brings us back to lying and Donald Trump. Since he lies so consistently, it's easy to discern the truth. It's usually the opposite of what he says. A good liar will tell the truth about 50% of the time. Then you never know whether he is telling the truth or lying. Lying usually works with people who have no critical thinking ability. They can't tell truth from fiction because they just accept unquestioningly what their leader tells them. A free society demands fact checking. Facebook, Instagram and all the social media should employ watchdogs to fact check posts so they don't get out of hand. Hate speech should just be taken down. The First Amendment doesn't apply to private property so Facebook can do whatever they want with posts on their platform. Twitter is taking a more aggressive approach with fact checking even fact checking the President. This will throw cold water on the cult like atmosphere Trump and other right wingers are trying t create.

'A Misbegotten, Warped Freedom Obsession Is Killing Us': Video of Trumpian Anti-Mask Jerks Goes Viral

Published on Friday, May 22, 2020

by Common Dreams

"Freedom is wasted on people who think coughing on people is freedom."

by Julia Conley, staff writer

 

93 Comments

A counter-protestor holds a sign during the Michigan Conservative Coalition-organized "Operation Haircut" outside the Michigan State Capitol in Lansing, Michigan on May 20, 2020. (Photo: Jeff Kowalsky/AFP via Getty Images)

Author Anand Giridharadas on Friday shared on social media what he called an "end-of-empire" video featuring a compilation of Americans refusing to wear face masks in public places, purposefully coughing on others, and claiming their "freedom" is being trampled by public health guidance urging social distancing during the Covid-19 pandemic.

"A misbegotten, warped freedom obsession is killing us," Giridharadas tweeted. 

A misbegotten, warped freedom obsession is killing us. pic.twitter.com/KbYaTVtR0O

— Anand Giridharadas (@AnandWrites) May 22, 2020

In the video, one woman curses at and tries to hit a store employee after being refused entry for not wearing a face mask; another screams at workers and reaches over a plastic barricade to assault them; a man tells a Costco employee he doesn't have to wear a mask because he "woke up in a free country," and one woman tells a grocery store manager that she can't wear a mask due to a medical condition and that she can't use a delivery service because she wants to buy "private" items.

Several people also cough on and spit at essential employees. 

"Freedom is wasted on people who think coughing on people is freedom," Giridharadas said.

The video follows a number of small but well-publicized demonstrations by people calling on state officials to fully reopen the economy and end all guidance urging social distancing and mask-wearing to prevent the spread of Covid-19. 

Many of the anti-quarantine protests are organized and promoted by conservative groups with ties to Trump administration officials, including the Convention of States, whose past supporters include immigration official Ken Cuccinelli and HUD Secretary Ben Carson; and the Michigan Freedom Fund, which Education Secretary Betsy DeVos has donated to regularly. 

Contrary to the message pushed by the demonstrations and the people in the video, the vast majority of Americans support safety measures to stop the spread of Covid-19. 

A HuffPost/YouGov survey published this week showed 62% of respondents said wearing a face mask is a matter of public health, not personal preference. More than half of those surveyed said they are currently wearing a mask whenever they are in a public place where they might come into contact with others.

Large majorities of respondents from across the political spectrum reported that they view mask-wearing as "respectful," not a sign of "weakness" or unnecessary fear of the virus. 

If President Donald Trump and other right-wing politicians demanding an end to public safety measures have their way, Giridharadas tweeted, images of the vocal minority shown in the video will illustrate the downfall of U.S. society in its current state. 

Now I've delayed your snappy comeback by three hours. Go back to thinking!

— Anand Giridharadas (@AnandWrites) May 22, 2020

"If we somehow save ourselves and come back, they will be forgotten eventually," he wrote. "But if we continue to decay and fall, these will be studied in history classes in some society saner than ours."

---

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Off the Top of My Head

Are We All In This Together or Do My First Amendment Rights Guarantee That I Don't Have to Be?

by John Lawrence, May24, 2020

Is freedom an absolute right? If it is, the government can't tell you to wear a mask or can it? Can the government create laws or rules or do my First Amendment rights take precedence? Some people say it is asking too much to ask that everyone act in the best interests of society. Are we about promoting the public good or only our own selfish good? John Stuart Mill said, "There is no difficulty in proving any ethical standard whatever to work ill if we suppose universal idiocy to be conjoined with it..." It would be pretty hard to have any social cohesion if everyone felt they had a right to do their own thing whatever the circumstances. Some societies have struck a different balance between personal freedom and the individual's obligations to society.

The Chinese city of Wuhan ended its lock down April 7 almost a month ago after 76 days sealed off from the world. On January 23 11 million people were put under lock down to contain the quickly spreading coronavirus. On February 10, Trump said, "“Now, the virus that we're talking about having to do — you know, a lot of people think that goes away in April with the heat — as the heat comes in. Typically, that will go away in April. We're in great shape though. We have 12 cases — 11 cases, and many of them are in good shape now.” So even after Wuhan was completely locked down, Trump was downplaying the coronavirus just as it was spreading in the US. Instead of it going away in April, it caused almost 100,000  deaths in April and May. He, like Nero, fiddled while the US burned.

On February 14 Trump reiterated that only 12 people in the US had been infected. Meanwhile, during the month of February Trump was doing multiple fundraising events and campaign rallies. February 26 was the first day regular briefings on the virus started. Trump used these opportunities mostly to congratulate himself on what a great job he was doing to contain the spread of the virus. Trump said, “But we have it so well under control. I mean, we really have done a very good job. When you have 15 people, and the 15 within a couple of days is going to be down to close to zero, that's a pretty good job we've done. We have done an incredible job. We’re going to continue,” he said. “It’s going to disappear. One day — it’s like a miracle — it will disappear. And from our shores, we — you know, it could get worse before it gets better. It could maybe go away. We’ll see what happens.” Spoken like a true idiot.

At the present time we have approximately 100,000 deaths in the US from COBID-19. China and South Korea both of which took very aggressive action early on have opened up although they continue to take precautions and contact trace aggressively should another case show up. The US with half its states still trending upwards on new cases is making an attempt to open up regardless of the consequences. Montgomery, Al has no ICU beds available in the midst of this reopening. It will probably end up being a mess. In any case the economy is not going to spike up to where it was before the coronavirus hit. Trump will probably go down as the most incompetent President in history more interested in praising himself than in doing what was necessary to protect the American people.

Furthermore, Trump has exacerbated the situation by encouraging his idiot supporters to flaunt their First Amendment rights. They want business as usual because it's their right. They want to be free to spread the virus because they could give a shit whether they transmit it to anyone else. Their freedom is more important than not infecting some other person. Other societies and cultures have more of a caring attitude towards their neighbors. Rights are balanced more reasonably with obligations. Those societies' economies will probably recover a lot more quickly. Those societies did the right thing in the first place.

Can Anyone Stop Facebook from Poisoning Democracy?

Published on

Wednesday, October 16, 2019

by

Common Dreams

While the social media giant wraps itself in the banner of free expression and political speech, it serves more as a scrim to hide its continued spread of political disinformation to tens of millions of voters in advance of the 2020 elections.

by

Timothy Karr

 29 Comments

One hundred cardboard cutouts of Facebook founder and CEO Mark Zuckerberg stand outside the US Capitol in Washington, DC, April 10, 2018. - Advocacy group Avaaz is calling attention to what the groups says are hundreds of millions of fake accounts still spreading disinformation on Facebook. (Photo: Saul Loeb/AFP/Getty Images)

Freedom (to lie) isn’t free. For the campaign to re-elect Donald Trump it costs $1.5 million a week. And that’s just last week’s tab.

In exchange, Trump’s team gets to spread false and misleading political ads across Facebook’s social network. This includes a 30-second ad that makes the unsubstantiated claim that former Vice President Biden used his influence to block an investigation of a Ukrainian energy company with ties to his son. CNN rejected the ad, noting it contained inaccuracies. But it passed muster with Facebook, Google, Twitter and YouTube, where it’s been viewed hundreds of thousands of times.

"Those naive enough to expect Facebook to do the right thing are ignoring the company’s long history of doing the exact opposite."

The 2020 election cycle is shaping up to be very lucrative for all the leading tech platforms. Digital political-ad spending is expected to top $2.7 billion before Election Day, according to industry forecasts. Presidential candidates have already spent more than $70 million on Facebook and Google placements, according to data firm Acronym.

Facebook flip flop

All of this cash is great news for online platforms, which are going out of their way to accommodate the rush of campaign ads.

Last month, Facebook changed its policies against misleading ads to give politicians and their campaigns free rein to lie in ads posted on the massive social network. Why bother with fact-checking when there’s easy money in deceptive attack ads?

Under most circumstances, the FCC requires television and radio broadcasters to air political ads by federal candidates; they can’t make decisions based on the content of those candidate ads, whether they’re truthful or not.

Like TV and radio stations, online platforms have no obligation to truth-test political advertising. Yet Facebook once promised to do more than that, pledging that politicians must abide by the same standards as every other advertiser on its site, including the rule that “prohibits ads that include claims debunked by third-party fact checkers.”

That’s changed, and Facebook is painting itself as a champion of First-Amendment freedoms to justify the switch.

“Our approach is grounded in Facebook’s fundamental belief in free expression, respect for the democratic process, and the belief that, in mature democracies with a free press, political speech is already arguably the most scrutinized speech there is,” Facebook’s Katie Harbath explained to the Biden campaign after the company refused to take down the misleading Trump 2020 ad featuring Biden’s son.

But Facebook’s laissez-faire attitude toward political speech has more to do with politics and profits than principle. And it differs dramatically from an earlier commitment by founder Mark Zuckerberg, who told the Senate last year that Facebook wasn't doing enough to prevent its technology “from being used for harm.”

“It's not enough to just give people a voice,” he said. “We need to make sure that people aren't using it to harm other people or to spread misinformation.”

To that end Facebook has deployed A.I. tools that Zuckerberg claims do a better job of identifying accounts that may be trying to interfere in elections. He also pledged to put people first: “My top priority has always been our social mission of connecting people, building community and bringing the world closer together. Advertisers and developers will never take priority over that.”

Until they do, that is.

Facebook’s anti-democracy bias

Zuck’s words aren’t enough for Sen. Elizabeth Warren, who has some of her own: “Facebook has incredible power to affect elections and our national debate,” the presidential candidate tweeted last Monday, noting that the company is taking “deliberate steps to help one candidate intentionally mislead the American people.”

Facebook’s policy change followed a White House meeting between Zuckerberg and Trump in late September. “What did they talk about?” Warren asks. Zuckerberg’s press office won’t say; neither will the White House.

In the meantime, that new and improved A.I. is blocking legitimate news.

Investigative journalist Judd Legum, who first uncovered Facebook’s policy reversal on political ads, last Tuesday reported that Facebook had buried newsworthy posts from a public-radio station in Juneau, Alaska. Facebook claimed that the headline to a post titled “Confused about Juneau's municipal ballot measures? You're not alone,” was clickbait, which it forbids.

Last year, Facebook blocked news reports about a hack of its users’ data. Many users found that they couldn’t share stories from legitimate news outlets including the Guardian, Sacramento Bee, and Associated Press.

Despite the chorus from the right claiming anti-conservative bias at the social network, Facebook has a disturbing habit of content-moderation decisions that disproportionately go against social-justice advocates and vulnerable populations. Last year, it blocked an event page for organizers planning a counter-march against a white-supremacist rally that took place in Washington, D.C. The company also removed a post about racism from a prominent Black Lives Matter activist and journalist, though Facebook later apologized and rescinded the block.

The platform has also helped advertisers discriminate. A 2016 ProPublica investigation found that a Facebook ad-targeting tool allowed realtors to restrict who could see housing-related ads based on their “Ethnic Affinities.”

ProPublica later reported that advertisers could use Facebook’s tools to target ads based on people’s self-reported jobs, even if the job was “Jew hater.”

Facebook claims to have subsequently tweaked its tech to prevent advertisers from targeting groups or individuals in ways that could be considered discriminatory. Still, it has no problem with political-advertising content that targets vulnerable communities.

According to research by Media Matters, the company allowed the Trump campaign’s Facebook page to run more than 2,000 ads describing immigrants of color — particularly people from Central and South America — as an “invasion,” a term that white-supremacist groups in the United States frequently use in this context.

Poisoning the well

If all of this is leaving you angry and confused, you’re not alone.

Facebook’s promises to do better typically amount to little in practice. If things continue at this rate, one thing is certain: Facebook will play a significant role in poisoning the well of our democracy… again.

Sen. Warren has called for a new round of congressional hearings and an investigation so Facebook executives can explain what they’re doing to prevent a repeat of 2016 election interference and disinformation. But it’s difficult to see how this might result in new guidelines to curtail deceptive ads in time for it to matter. And existing legislative proposals, like Sen. Amy Klobuchar’s worthy Honest Ads Act, focus on disclosure of funders and preventing foreign meddling in U.S. elections. They would do little to stem the flood of misleading political ads coming from known, homegrown candidates themselves. 

To date, Congress has advanced no privacy legislation that protects voters from having their online data harvested without their consent for targeting by dishonest political campaigns.

Unless Warren or others plan to introduce new legislation, containing provisions that no one has articulated clearly to this point, there seems very little of legal substance for Congress to discuss at an upcoming hearing with Facebook — certainly nothing that that would effectively bar politicians from peddling lies online.

And while Facebook wraps itself in the banner of free expression and political speech, it serves more as a scrim to hide its continued spread of political disinformation to tens of millions of voters in advance of the 2020 elections.

Those naive enough to expect Facebook to do the right thing are ignoring the company’s long history of doing the exact opposite. Facebook now boasts nearly 2.5 billion active users; these users generate four new petabytes of data every day and click “like” 4 million times every minute. Facebook has become too massive to govern itself, and politicians seem too overwhelmed to step into the maelstrom.

But whether and how lawmakers even can step in without running afoul of other cherished principles and legal protections is debatable. 

Beyond fixing Facebook

The only real solution to Facebook is one that billions of don’t seem ready to commit to: leaving the social platform altogether.

In the interim, we must consider ways to help create its alternative: content-sharing platforms that don’t hammer at the foundations of democracy.

"Silicon Valley is incapable of cleaning up its toxic mess. More democratic media must help improve political participation, deepen discourse and increase voter turnout."Earlier this year, Craig Aaron and I proposed a tax on the targeted-advertising revenues that are the economic engine fueling the most dominant online platforms. Proceeds from this tax, estimated at $2 billion a year, would go to a “public-interest media endowment” to support local, independent and noncommercial journalism. Additional funds would help incubate new ideas for gathering and distributing news content, preferably those that don’t rely on the clickbait economy and political-advertising budgets to survive. 

All of us must think beyond fixing Facebook to a social-media solution of, by and for the people — not one that protects the powerful and spreads their lies. What we accomplish by the end of 2020 will help determine whether the future of our democracy brightens or dims, and whether our media system becomes an agent of civic engagement or alienation.

To do this requires a dramatic change in the way online platforms work today. Silicon Valley is incapable of cleaning up its toxic mess. More democratic media must help improve political participation, deepen discourse and increase voter turnout. Transparency about political ads is a key element of this shift, but so are efforts to return working journalists to civic-minded beats and limit the damaging effects of disinformation.

These changes must be an intrinsic part of the broader movement to restore democratic norms. A part of that is changing business as usual at platforms that profit from deception.

Timothy Karr is the senior director of strategy for Free Press Action Fund, the advocacy organization that fights for everyone’s rights to connect and communicate. Follow him on Twitter: @TimKarr.

Our work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 License. Feel free to republish and share widely.

Off the Top of My Head

China and the US: Cohesiveness VS Divisiveness

by John Lawrence, August 7, 2019

Obama famously said, "We are not the blue states of America and the red states of America. We are the United States of America." I'm sorry Mr. Obama, but you are wrong, wrong, wrong. We are the Disunited States of America. China, on the other hand, moves forward seemingly with one unified agenda and with one voice. Maybe that's because they're a one party state. Maybe that's because they've cultivated and nurtured a unified people. Maybe because they're followers of Confucius. Maybe it's because they don't tolerate any dissension. I don't know. All I know is whatever they're doing, it's working. Meanwhile, the US political system is in gridlock.

Many of the problems inherent in the US today are solvable if the country and its leaders spoke with one mind. But the two party system has created a broad chasm and has led to gridlock. Take immigration policy for example. There is just no agreement because each party has its own agenda. There is no unification. There is such a thing as a rational immigration party on which a majority of the people could agree. But the leaders of the Republican party don't want a rational immigration policy. They want to leave the whole subject of immigration up in the air so they can make political hay out of it. It serves their interests not to solve the problem of immigration.

As one element of immigration policy that both parties could agree upon, let's take border security. Most people would agree that a secure border is desirable. A secure border is certainly possible with not even state of the art technology. The border could be secured with the technology found in most present day cars - radars and cameras. So why aren't they doing it? Answer is simple: there's no money in it. It would seem that the primary responsibility of the military would be to protect the nation's borders. However, the Posse Comitatus Act is a United States federal law signed on June 18, 1878, by President Rutherford B. Hayes. The purpose of the act – in concert with the Insurrection Act of 1807 – is to limit the powers of the federal government in using federal military personnel to enforce domestic policies within the United States. It has been interpreted as removing the Army and Air Force from any responsibility of protecting US borders, but my interpretation is that this was not the original intent of the act.

The military doesn't want to be involved with protecting the borders because it could be done so cheaply and with a very limited (but substantially increased) number of personnel. No the military is about multibillion dollar aircraft carriers and multibillion dollar airplanes. The USS Gerald Ford aircraft carrier costs more than $13 billion and that's just to build it, not to maintain it. Here's an example of how the US and China do business. Each has developed an advanced aircraft with similar capabilities. The American F-22 production was axed because of its high cost - US$62 billion for the whole project, which equates to US $339 million per aircraft. The Chinese J-20's research and development cost was estimated to be more than 30 billion yuan (US$4.4 billion), with a cost per aircraft of US$100-110 million. So the US accomplished its goal of spending multiples of billions of dollars and then scrapping the airplane. China's costs were much cheaper and they actually have an advanced airplane at their disposal.

So border security would be a trivially expensive problem to solve if the military actually did their job and protected the borders but .. it's not their job, man. Their job is to spend billions and billions of dollars on advanced weaponry whether or not it is ever fully functional. Meanwhile, Republicans have a political football they can toss around and work up the racists. Solving the immigration problem would deprive them of that.

So freedom has produced gridlock and Chinese philosophy has produced a society that moves forward with more or less one voice and one agenda. One of Confucius' teachings was a variant of the Golden Rule, sometimes called the "Silver Rule" owing to its negative form: "What you do not wish for yourself, do not do to others." Confucius's moral system was based upon empathy and understanding others, rather than divinely ordained rules. Confucius asserts that virtue is a mean between extremes. For example, the properly generous person gives the right amount—not too much and not too little. While the Chinese have adopted a superior variant of capitalism, they remain politically a one party system, a one philosophy system. They have free elections at the local level, and then those leaders select the leaders at the next higher level and so on. The US political system had gotten us to the point where no problem is solvable not because it's inherently unsolvable but because our political leaders in one party, namely the Republican party, are in a position to block any solutions, and it is in their political interests to do so.

Freedom has culminated in gridlock, and an unlimited Second Amendment has culminated in mass shootings. I don't think China would tolerate these outcomes. Instead they are moving ahead with their Belt and Road Initiative peacefully building infrastructure throughout the world at the same time that the US is trying to control the world with its outsized military and the threat of sanctions. The US threatens a country's economic development by the use of sanctions; China is ameliorating economic development by building infrastructure around the world. Which country has the more humane policies?

Why Isn't Hate Group Website Taken Down?

by John Lawrence

The creator of the website 8chan is where all the haters and white supremacists post their manifestos. Even the creator of the site who doesn't own it any more wants it taken down. It exemplifies the problem that social media is bringing to the fore which is is there a limit to free speech? Should some types of speech, namely hate speech, be banned? The US is stuck with two freedoms which are increasingly problematical: free speech and right to own a gun, any gun. These two "freedoms" should not be absolute as most societies would concur. Hate speech on social media should not be tolerated. Is this censorship? You betcha. Should ownership of an assault rifle like the AK-47 be banned? You betcha although the gun nuts would disagree. They don't want any limits on gun ownership nor do they want any limits on their free hate speech.

The US Constitution is coming up against limits which are actually destroying the country unless those limits are acknowledged and action taken. The US Constitution is reaching its limits of usefulness and should be revised like many other countries have done without creating a crisis. Gun control is essential unless the US wants to have a mass murder a day or more than one a day. Gun ownership needs to be cracked down on. There are too many angry men out there with toxic agendas. Their "cells" need to be taken down. They are as evil as Ku Klux Klan cells or any other terrorist cell or organization. The web needs to be monitored and hate sites taken down, but is Facebook doing this? Facebook can't be trusted because they are a private entity not really beholden to the government. Their objective is to make as much money as possible for their shareholders, and taking down a site eliminates all the money they would be making from that site.

TPM reported:

The founder of the site 8chan, where a shooter may have posted a racist, anti-immigrant screed before killing 20 people at a Walmart in El Paso, called for the messaging board to be shut down on Sunday.

Fredrick Brennan, who created the site in 2013, told the New York Times that the current owner of the unmoderated, often hate-filled chat site needs to shutter it.

“Shut the site down,” Brennan said. “It’s not doing the world any good. It’s a complete negative to everybody except the users that are there.”

“And you know what? It’s a negative to them, too,” he added. “They just don’t realize it.”

Investigators believe that Patrick Crusius, the suspected gunman, may be behind a hate-filled manifesto that was posted on 8chan shortly before he allegedly began shooting up the Walmart.

8chan was also where the New Zealand mosque shooter and the San Diego synagogue shooter posted their plans for violence earlier this year.

I speculate that China wouldn't hesitate to take down hate oriented websites. There's no absolute right of free speech there, and the government has the last word, not some private corporation. They wouldn't stand for it one minute, and the perpetrator of hate speech would be in jail no fooling around with protecting his or her rights. So how many hate filled websites will go up in the next election mainly targeting Democrats? Should a website which espouses "Lock Her Up" be tolerated? Be legal? There is no government censorship in America so anything goes no matter how untrue, no matter how hateful, no matter how far removed from the issues. And can anyone anywhere in the world contribute to Facebook posts. In particular who is in charge of distinguishing whether or not a Russian entity would put up an ad or a post like "Lock Her Up" or "Send Her Back" or whether it was put up by an American? Does it make any difference? Is Facebook policing this? I don't think so. So it's the wild west and anyone anywhere in the world is free to join in.

Michael Moore's Speech in Madison, WI

 

Julian Assange Interview

 

Michael Moore Explains Why He Stands With Julian Assange & WikiLeaks