I remember the chortling over the banning of Alex Jones and the worry by a few sincere anti-war folks that anti-establishment left sites would get the boot too. This proved true, but needless to say the VOX readers of the world saw no reason to be bothered.
If Biden is elected, there will soon be a call for military action in Syria. And there will be an accompanying effort to screen out anti-war people as subversives working for Russia, be they right or left. And people like Matt Taibbi will be appalled, wondering if the left realizes what it has done with its promotion of state-encouraged tech-driven censorship. The left and right wings of the military industrial complex, though, will quietly open the champagne and celebrate how concessions won to sideline the far left and far right allow the state to control the most powerful communication tool in the world in the United States. And the same people who denounce China and/or Russia will laud the muzzling of dissent in America.
So is a true conservative...but I think we can agree that both organized parties have become about little other than power/control.
It's why I think the only solution is to devolve power back to the states. At that level, there's a chance of occasional sanity. In DC, I no longer think such a chance exists.
I'm more or less with you. My pulse quickens at the thought of those states at the poles of dysfunction (California, maybe Mississippi) being given near-total sovereignty, but a lot of places would thrive or at least be better off.
I don’t think you can stop crazy anymore. And if the people in various places want it, let them have it, as long as it doesn’t violate a limited reading of the Constitution (limited by the text of the doc that is).
I agree with your comment generally but I don't believe Biden will be any tougher on Syria than Obama was when the Iranians told him to back down. Biden has all but pledged to be Obama's third term from a foreign policy standpoint.
Why should any president "be tough on Syria?" The US has no right to pull off coups, attack sovereign countries, decided elected presidents can be replaced by the US, and tell the rest of the world to do as we say or else they will be sorry. The best foreign policy the US could have is to stay out of other countries' business. It's about time everyone on earth turned against this arrogant, idiotic country.
"The best foreign policy the US could have is to stay out of other countries' business." AMEN, brother. This is the most important issue for our country.
IT's kind of why Trump got elected... These stuffed suits who "lead" us, are nothing more than than ruddy grifters. All they know how to do is act pretty for the camera and take money from donors. That's all they know.
To wit: They've kept us in endless war since 9/11 and have no plans of stopping any time soon. They dance and dine while the whole ship goes down.
Nope. There hasn't been a justified war we've started or entered since WWII, and even in that case, there's more than meets the eye. For example, the US (Standard Oil) kept right on sending Germany oil because they didn't have their own, in order for the Germans to fight more successfully against Russia (our ally, but behind closed door, our future enemy, thus the cold war). And in that stupid cold war, the plan to bomb 66 cities/towns in Russia with 204 nuclear weapons was set aside at the last minute. Daniel Ellsberg was in the room at the time and has just written a book on this strange idea to genocide an entire country. There's no way to justify what this country stands for: ultimate total hegemony of all the world. Thank god, all empires eventually fall. But, heck, not to worry, climate destruction will take out humanity first.
A bunch of Russian Oligarchs are not as much of a threat to Europe and the world as the USSR was. Not even close. They've been neutered.
Sure, for the handful of justifiable military actions the US has been involved in since WWII there are SCADS more that were profit only, and at the behest of very rich industries, but the fact remains -The cold war was won, for what that's worth.
Trouble is, they committed all manner of heinous war crimes while it went on. Unforgivable.
Hey, Rome wasn't built in a day and it didn't collapse in a day, either. Give it time, friend. It'll be over soon enough.
"handful of justifiable military actions the US has been involved in..." Name one.
BTW, our kids can't survive if there's no ice left, no trees, no uncontaminated water and air. Chris Hedges says we seek and moved toward life or toward death. We seek and are headed for death. Someone else said, "No hope knows no fear." I don't believe that. I fear greatly for the children, all the children.
I'm getting out of this thread. Nice talking with you. Rob
Wasn't there just a slew of leaked documents about the gas attack in Syria detailing how military contractor's & US intelligence used an army of "journalists" to feed fake stories to everyone from the BBC to Al Jazeera about a gas attack that never really happened?
Syria is obstructing a gas pipeline. That's why the US wants Assad out. No other reason.
Who, in their right mind, thinks the prime function of the military industrial complex is to protect America?
Or even the secondary function?
If Democrats really think Trump is a threat why did they gleefully sign off on his military budget increases?
Increase his spying powers?
Only makes sense if this is all just political theater meant to flummox the rubes.
You are so right. There were three attacks, none by Bashar al Assad. The first was proven by the UN investigative team; I heard Carla del Ponte, the lead, say it was the rebels (paid by the US)...never heard from her again, of course. The second was proven to be NOT Assad by none other than Sy Hersh..who couldn't get his report printed by the NYT, WaPo, The New Yorker or the UK Guardian. Finally, it was printed by Deir Walt (sp?) in Germany where I read it. The third I witnessed myself when the White Helmet types began coldwater hosing little kids who naturally started crying; the hosers were screaming, "chemicals," though the doctors inside the hospital where the kids were dragged said clearly there were no chemicals. It's a sad day when Democracy Now! and the New Yorker, famous for fact checking, falls for propaganda, just as they did for Russiagate. Thanks for writing. RR
I looked for evidence of leaked documents you describe and did not find any. Please provide a link to that story, specifically how "US intelligence used an army of "journalists" to feed fake stories."
I wasn't the commentator who said something about pipes. Here's the source you wanted regarding my comment. "Leaked Docs Expose Massive Syria Propaganda Operation by Western Govt Contractors & Media" October 12, 2020 The GrayzoneProject Ben Norton
You can trust Ben Norton, Max Blumenthal, Aaron Mate, et.al., you don't find on MSM. [Syria was set up by the usual false flags, as was Russiagate.]
You may also want to see this one: "Russiagate on Both Sides of the Duopoly: Former Intel Officials Try To Downplay Ratcliffe’s Russiagate Releases," by Dave DeCamp, a new reporter to me but the article is valid.
While it's certain that the Pentagon wants to maintain a permanent presence in the Middle East, and continuously plays one side against the other to maintain access to key installations, the President has openly rebuked that decades-long standing policy, if only rhetorically and not in practice. There are reasons why the leadership at the Pentagon despise Trump.
"...a recent Washington Post warning that we are being targeted by a foreign campaign of “perception hacking,” or “manipulating people into thinking they are being manipulated,” represent just a few examples of Approved™ nonsense."
I'm related through marriage to a very smart, analytical person who nevertheless believes every bit of nonsense that is produced by these major journalistic institutions. When I fact-checked him on the convention week fiction that Melania cut down Jackie Kennedy's cherry trees, a story he regurgitated uncritically, I was told I was being petty. He has told me that reality is the exact opposite of what I think. I know I'm in good company.
How can we have a conversation when most people would rather believe lies that support their chosen narrative, and instead of objectively settling the score, the Fourth Estate is often the source of untruth, and anyone who dares to question it gets accused of gaslighting?
That sounds pretty toxic, and very depressing. The last four years of constant orange man bad attacks have destroyed mutual trust. I don’t even like Donald Trump, but I find myself defending him most of the time simply because the attacks are so outrageous.
The attack on Melania was insane. I listened to the tape and thought “what’s the scandal”?
It wasn’t until I saw the very selective editing of quotes that are understood the “newsworthiness” of the tape. The disingenuousness of the media is vomit inducing.
I love how we’re constantly told that we’re living under an existential threat, but the same people are suddenly defending the sanctity of freaking Christmas decorations at the White House
Watch in a couple months when the same outlets start mocking the "War on Christmas" zealots for losing their squash over atheist displays planted next to nativity scenes in parks, etc.
It is indeed increasingly hard to have a conversation. I'm right of center but not far right (save maybe on federalism). The people I know to the far right say crazy stuff and claim it as fact and so do the people on the far left.
In my opinion, it is driven by the premise that we have increasingly ceded control of almost every aspect of our lives to the government. Thus, both sides believe the stakes are so high that being in control is more important than anything else. We have arrived at the place where the end is perceived to be so important that it justifies any means.
If Trump is reelected, the world is not going to end. Taxes will be a little lower, regulation a little looser, and no major new trillion dollar programs will pass (except for maybe an infrastructure bill). If Biden is elected, the world is not going to end. Taxes will be a little higher, regulations tighter and the deficit wider despite the higher taxes. I genuinely hope court packing doesn't happen under Biden. It is honestly my only fear, not for its proximate outcome on the Court but for the end of SCOTUS as a body that is seen as anything other than a political power play.
Regardless of the outcome, most of our lives will not be massively affected. Some will in both cases for both the positive and the negative. It is failure to accept this fundamental "truth" (as I see it) that is driving the insanity and the inability to engage in constructive dialog.
Social media makes it worse by feeding us a steady diet of the echo chamber and by becoming another element of the political power game.
But the issue isn't social media or the media at all. The issue is that we've convinced ourselves that every thing that happens, particularly in DC is of existential importance.
I'm not sure I follow you here. I too know people who are close to the far ends of the spectrum, not really any neo-Nazis or straight up Marxist anarchists, but I don't hear crazy conspiratorial stuff from the real lefties. That's the mainstream, centrist "liberal" Democrats who are pushing the Russiagate, Ukrainegate, and "Vlad controls Trump" nonsense. From my experience, my right-leaning friends are way more likely to engage in conspiratorial thinking as though everything is a huge plot and the Democrat party is somehow involved in child sex trafficking. Pizzagate was when it first started, like Matt said. They kept telling me to wait that all of the code words and child abuse in D.C. pizza restaurant basement would come to light and their views would be proven to be right. It never happened. Just like the "storm" or whatever it is with Q people. Won't happen. Trump is a swamp creature too, just from a different faction and not against inviting members of the other factions to join him. I mean, John Bolton? Elliott Abrams?
But I digress - do you have examples of lefties who are pushing conspiracy theories or is it really just the center/center-right Democrats and the Russia bogus you're talking about?
To me, it’s all one giant center right corporatist cabal is the biggest conspiracy theory of all...pushed frequently on the far left and by you by inference just now.
LOL come on. The "far" left is who pushes the "theory" that in fact there are a small number of large corporations who work, as Taibbi states in this and many other articles, with various governments including the U.S., Israel, U.K. and China? Or that when you look at real world history, and that of the United States, there has always been a concerted, often conspiratorial push to destroy labor, the anti-war movement, the left in general and any major action groups that start to gain traction and threaten corporate, police/surveillance state supremacy? But calling it a conspiracy theory doesn't insult me or the point at all. Nobody smart ever said there weren't real conspiracies. Of course there are; people and organizations conspire to get what they want and harm the people and organizations they don't like. But most often it comes down to Occam's Razor - you really have to draw a line when some of them start getting a little too bizarre (such as Qanon, the Pizzagaters, and the farther fringes of the 911 Truthers). I fully stand by my "conspiracy theory" that we live in an inverted totalitarian managed democracy and that there is a "cabal" (even if not working directly together or even directly at all times) who in fact are the ones who ultimately "manage" the aforementioned "democracy."
So I guess I'm still waiting for an answer - Any examples of "far left" conspiracy theories that have actually gained the amount of traction that Qanon or Pizzagate have - and - which turned out to have absolutely no merit? You seemed to have very specific examples in mind and the "conspiracy theory" I just discussed with you is certainly not one of them. So let's have it - give me a "far left" individual/organization/theory that has any prominence or is well known.
I question if you know what the term conspiracy theory means. Critical Race Theory is a sociological theory. As with all scientific theories, it is argued for and championed by it's supporters, and has competing theories that are studied and championed by other researchers. That's science, not conspiracy.
Nothing in your rant of a response gives one any level of confidence that you understand what the term conspiracy theory means. Sociology is a scientific discipline which means its publishings are subject to peer review, unlike news media or 4chan. If one has a hypotheses and finds data to support their assertions, that data is scrutinized by fellow scientists. If any of the data is found to be suspect (or cherry-picked), that scientist will be black-listed and in the findings will be redacted. If you have any evidence that a scientific journal has published tarnished data, I encourage you to contact the editors of that journal. I can assure you that the journal will take any credible claims, that can be backed up with evidence, seriously.
Well I'm a mostly(?) straight dude who, in general, likes Trump's policies but not his personality, but who at the same time is very very afraid of what Biden represents. So I think we are on the same page, kinda.
I'm a straight, married, Libertarian dude with three kids and dislike Trump personally but like what I see out of the Administration. What's more, I look at what I see from the Left and can't imagine voting for it. Just under four years ago Trump was elected and the Left and their media handlers claimed he would start WW3, was Hitler, was a despot, a dictator in waiting, would cause world economic ruin, would strip gays of their rights, abortions would be back to being done in dark alleys, our allies would hate us and that he would be personally enriching himself and his family. And that was just the first hour of CNN on day 1.
Yes, I'd like to chop his finger off so he'd stop Tweeting. Yes, I wish he'd knock-off the "nobody has ever seen this before" and "perhaps greatest ever" nonsense. And yes, he should stop picking stupid fights with nobodies. But, he has been under attack since day 1 by an organized cabal of people intent on overturning an election. And what's more, he's had 24x7 negative coverage by 90% of the media.
Despite having some Left leans in terms of social policy, Trump could roast puppies and eat them on stage and there's still no way I could vote for what I've seen out of the Democrat Party for the past four years and, in particular, the last 7 months. I am not going to vote to condone riots, looting, racism and the breakdown of law and order.
If it's a man who want's a job he will go with Trump. What you do in your bedroom is your own business. If you want to vote on who you THINK likes you more, you can do that too.
For someone who abhors postmodernism, his writing style is exactly that. You know what post-postmoderists hate more than anything? People who try to show how much smarter they are than everybody else by over-writing. Geesh.
Regardless, I think you're on to a helpful idea, but the major impediment to that future is the reality that most people are too stupid and/or too lazy to think for themselves in a political context. And of the rest, the influencers usually have a horse in the race. You can't teach people how to think if they don't want to learn or are incapable of putting in the work to find objective truth in an ever murkier and volatile information cloud, and of course half the point is that it's too difficult for us to figure it out on our own, so let's pick a side and trust them unquestioningly.
Taibbi's comments section is one of the few mediums I've encountered where people - many of us - speak honestly. I believe that's a function of Matt's integrity coming through his work.
Far from my own experience. I'm not the type of person who "loses" other people to anything other than actual wars and crime/police violence, so right up front I think it's the definition of a "first world problem" for a person to claim they've "lost" members of their friend group or family to a ridiculous political conspiracy theory. The USA is, right now, killing innocents abroad - inflicting REAL LOSS - economic and human lives in too many countries to count. And like it was on Bush and Obama, now it's on Trump. He's not working with "Q" and he's not going to preside over any day of reckoning.
Again, I digress. The reason you've probably "lost" more people to the Russiagate nonsense is that the corporate, center-right, mainstream news media has glommed onto that story and pushed it like it's nobody's business for nearly 4 years now. It just has so much reach. And unlike Q, you won't get booted off Facebook or de-platformed anywhere else for pushing THAT particular line of garbage and innuendo. But that gets into altogether different territory that one of Matt's recent articles touched on too. CNN, CBS, MSNBC - all of the so-called liberal mainstream corporate media outlets thrive when they have a heel like Trump to focus on. All the better if it can tap into decades old programming about the evil reds. In essence, what it entails is the center using right-wing McCarthyist tactics to suck people into non-existent scandals and conspiracies that, if you repeat them often and loudly enough, will gain all the traction it needs to ensure months to years of ratings booms.
But back to your point - I wholly disagree. Q is a far greater "line in the sand" type phenomenon than Russiagate, itself a laughable but typical PR campaign waged by the Intelligence Community and the corporate media assets it has always infiltrated since WWI at least. Sorry for your experience, but even most Russiagaters I know aren't as passionate or down the rabbit hole as the Q-anoners that make up a good portion of my social media friends and acquaintances.
Well, first, I still have all my friends. Thanks for your kind consideration of my social circle because of my pithy, off-hand remark about having friends that have fallen for Russiagate. They're still my friends. If I ditched every friend that thought differently than I did, I'd have no friends.
But to the more important point I was trying to make, you're wrong to think Qanon is a phenomenon with more real-world impact than Russiagate. Russiagate was just used as a soft coup in the USA. Just this week, "Russian disinformation" was employed by the US to silence whistleblowers in the OPCW Syrian chemical attack testimony at the UN. (Just ask Aaron Mate). Russiagate is essential in the PR campaign against Julian Assange to justify his extradition to the US. The same entities that advanced Russiagate (Intelligence services, media) are coordinating with Facebook to ban Qanon. I could go on and on and on regarding the global impact of Russiagate. It's adorable that you think Russiagate is nothing more than "laughable PR." Qanon is ridiculous and yes, a handful of legislators have gone down that rabbit hole. Nearly EVERY Democratic legislator operates under the assumption that Russia is why we have Trump.
Good for you for keeping those weirdo Qanon friends of yours though!
You totally misunderstood what I said. What I said can be summarized as follows: Russiagate had far greater reach (you don't seem to get that we are agreeing here) because it was trumpeted non-stop by the establishment Democrats, Intelligence Community and corporate media for 3+ years. It had FAR greater reach through every possible channel than Q anon does (so far). Hence, I said it's hardly a surprise that you would encounter way more people in your personal life who have bought into it. I never once said that it was merely a "PR camaign" if you actually read what I wrote. And finally, yes, I stand by both my empirical observation (that Russiagate had far greater "official" and accepted reach) and my personal anecdotal experience (that people who buy into Russiagate make up a much wider spectrum of those who buy into Qanon, but that it's much more specific and they're more likely to have differing views on other topics - not so much with Qanon simply because it tries to cover so much scope. In fact, in that way "Q" is really trying to be a "theory of everything" and hence its proponents have drawn a line in the sand because to accept the core tenet, they have to accept all the other crazy stuff that surrounds it). Hope that helps.
" Russiagate was just used as a soft coup in the USA."
I do not think that you're clear on the meaning of the word "coup."
"Soft coup" is an oxymoron in the first place. But the Democratic Party hasn't even managed to increase its influence in the Capitol or on the Presidency, much less shifting into a position of dominance and control over the levers of State power. Their attempt at impeachment was successfully countered (which was entirely predictable.) It's questionable whether the Democrats will even reap a net benefit from their Russiagate efforts at the ballot box, when all the votes are finally counted.
Exactly. The hard core Russiagate crowd are mostly pissed off Hillary voters who never would have considered voting for anyone but a Democrat anyway. If anything, Russiagate has pissed off people who might be more motivated to vote for Trump now, even if they didn't the first time. Russiagate - if you take it on its face (in the way it's presented by MSM) - was a massive PR failure for the Democrats and "Intelligence Community." Personally I think it was part of a more complex plot to use political theater to distract the whole country, Trump supporters included, from the ongoing theft and wealth transfer to the uber-rich and corporations/banks/MIC. In other words, Russiagate/Ukrainegate were DESIGNED TO "FAIL."
Come on. Trump gave the GOP everything they care about from a President: a massive income tax cut that mostly went to the wealthy; a huge business tax cut; nearly $1 trillion increase in military spending, much of it in weapons procurement; all of the tax cuts and spending put on the credit card, inflating the debt and deficit and thereby proving that "government doesn't work" and "there's no money left" when the economy eventually goes south again and control returns to the Democrats; a Supreme Court judge whose vote can be counted on to overturn Roe v. Wade, the ACCA, and favor the other items on the GOP wish list; 50 appellate judges that are all reliably biased toward the Republican wish list; and a repeal of various environmental standards that impede the hoarding of profits- and the political influence it buys- by the GOP-dominated fossil fuels industry (annual revenues larger than the Federal government.) Thankfully, most of the gutted regulations have not been in place long enough to do much damage to the future of the natural world. But with another term of Trump, the absence of EPA headwaters protections and gutted power plant emission rules will empower the $hort-term gain>>long term pain, privatize the profits>>socialize the costs game plan of today's GOP in classic style.
This explains the lockstep fealty of the Republicans in Congress (and most of their financial backers) toward Donald Trump. They'll put with anything, to get results like those.
Meanwhile- what Trump initiative were the Democrats able to stop? What part of their own agenda were they able to get past the Republican Senate, and Trump's veto pen? Trump walked away from negotiating the second stimulus bill, leaving a lot of formerly full-time working Americans are the end of their rope. It's to be taken for granted that he's framing this as an act of heroism against the extortionate Democrats. Although that narrative has recently taken a back seat to Trump's by now predictable confusion-hypnosis topic swerve into imperious demands for Justice Department indictments of Obama, Biden, the Clintons, every usual suspect in the Democratic Congress, various FBI heads, et. al. Like the White Queen, in Alice in Wonderland- "Off With Their Heads!" Although I've always found Trump's affect to be more along the lines of the Reverend Jim Jones. An impression that his most recent TV performances have only served to confirm.
In that regard, it should be enlightening to find out how Teh Donzo splits the difference when he's inevitably asked about his reaction to the recent roundup of armed would-be insurrectionists in Michigan who are currently charged by Federal and State law enforcement agencies with various minor infractions, like planning to kidnap the Governor there. Donald Trump has always exhibited a marked preference for finding a way to get two entirely opposite statements on the record, when the duties of high office demand that he offer his views on events of that sort.
The increase in military spending from fiscal 2016 to fiscal 2020 is approximate $130 billion, not $1 trillion. It's closer to $200 trillion if you include VA, foreign aid, etc. But still nowhere near a trillion.
https://www.usgovernmentspending.com/rev/google_vis.php?title=Recent Defense Spending&units=b&size=800_600&legend=Military defense-total_Veterans-total_Foreign military aid-total_Foreign economic aid-total&year=2000_2020&sname=US&bar=1&stack=1&col=g&source=a_a_a_a_a_a_a_a_a_a_a_a_a_a_a_a_a_a_a_a_g&spending0=294.36_304.73_348.46_404.73_455.81_495.29_521.82_551.26_616.07_661.01_693.49_705.55_677.85_633.45_603.46_589.66_593.37_598.72_631.13_686.00_718.85&spending1=47.40_45.36_51.34_57.85_61.23_71.30_70.82_73.86_85.79_96.48_109.27_128.20_125.57_140.13_150.75_160.83_175.94_177.37_180.21_201.24_209.22&spending2=6.39_6.56_7.91_8.62_8.37_7.90_7.81_7.98_9.48_6.25_11.36_12.04_11.46_9.95_11.38_12.91_11.31_12.24_11.42_11.23_17.12&spending3=10.83_9.93_14.41_12.58_18.50_26.67_21.69_20.50_19.38_31.28_33.83_33.64_25.34_36.51_35.50_39.13_34.00_34.07_37.58_41.51_50.34
The federal government's revenues are far larger than US fossil fuel companies. Comparing a global company list to the revenue of the US government is a false comparison, which I suspect you know well.
Disagree with you here. How has it sabotaged his term? Exactly what was it that he would have gotten done had there been no impeachment? Like what precisely was on the table that got sidelined because of Russiagate, policy wise? I agree that it was used as an attempted "soft coup" but it failed and only made Trump's case stronger - that the Democrats, "swamp" and mainstream media are conspiring against him and trying to force him out of office. IF anything, you could argue that COVID-19 sabotaged his first term simply by coming into being, but those people who think that Qanon is legit also tend to believe in the "plandemic" hoax as well, so it becomes just another excuse for why Trump might lose in his re-election bid.
Thanks for your reply. Allow me briefly respond: how did Russiagate sabotage the Trump presidency? First, the outrageous takedown of Mike Flynn deprived Trump of a National Security Advisor who, it is said, knew where the bodies were buried. (so to speak) in the intel community and posed a threat to exposing them. Second, Russiagate prevented what might have been a valuable truce in the New Cold War with Russia. Funny how making peace with our adversaries something liberals are now opposed to. Third, the Russiagate Hoax forced Trump to expend enormous amounts of time, energy, and political capital fighting it. No one can say what would have been done, but it seems reasonable to assume the Hoax did function as a roadblock. There's more, but I'm limited time-wise.
Bottom line: the Russiagate torpedo severely damaged the SS Trump, leaving it listing but still afloat. I think that qualifies as "sabotage."
The "Gates" are just part of the continuous SMEAR campaign that has been very successful. Now they want to suggest that the President is unable to lead due to mental disorder and just before the election. It doesn't have to be true. It's the kind of colossal gossip their constituency enjoys and it does the trick. That's what the first part of Matts essay was about, how Biden was protected and everyone they don't like is left twisting in the wind.
Every single paper was part of the un named "official" said. That's how Russiagate was perpetuated. Hillary paid the spy, Steel, for dirt on Trump. That went no where. The papers harped and harped on the Trump tower meeting and believed every word of the "Dossier" right down to the, still repeated, "Golden Shower".
Flynn should be exonerated for having been crushed in the JudicialGate, carte blanch bias.
It was the DNC backed by Hillary who couldn't bear to lose to Trump so had to invent interference by Putin (the most stable president in the world). The DNC are so stupid, they TWICE booted Sanders, the only person who could have beaten Trump and who could beat him now. The DNC would rather have Trump than Sanders. Why? Because Sanders actually cares about the citizens of this country. My God, can't have anyone like that. Biden is not a good choice.
The Democrats didn't boot Bernie out of stupidity. When a group of powerful, well connected people make a choice that seems obviously wrong and stupid to you, go back and reexamine your assumptions. Collectively they probably know more than you do, and then some. Maybe they care about things that you don't care about. Maybe they don't care about things that you do care about. Maybe they lie about the things they care about. Also, Bernie went willingly. He was never in it to win it. His job like all fake opposition was to pace and lead stragglers back to the herd.
"The Democrats didn't boot Bernie out of stupidity." No, they booted him out of greed; i.e., keeping the status quo for: big pharma and for-profit medical care (can't let the people have universal healthcare), the MIC, the bankers, the weapon manufactures (forever wars), Israel (can't let those pesky Palestinians have any civil rights), and generally power, money and control. Bernie didn't go "willingly." Obama dragged him into the White House and talked at him for three hours, finally, just wearing him down. (Bernie shouldn't have caved.) He was "in it to win it." I should "reexamine...assumptions?" I don't make assumptions. I ferret out facts, a steady job these days. Try reading more Matt Taibbi, Max Blumenthal (the Grayzone Project), Aaron Mate (Push Back), Mondoweiss, the electronic intifada, CounterPunch, Seymour Hersh, Stephen F. Cohen, Consortium News, Craig Murray, John Pilger...you know, real reporters, not stenographers such as, say, Rachel Maddow. Whatever you do, skip the MSM.
Can we please stop using the absurd term 'the left"? There is no and has never been a true left in America. What we have is moderate-right and batshit-crazy right, both corrupt.
I can't use moderate right to describe someone who is NOT right. How about:
Anti individualism?
Anti American Tradition
For Big Government
Anti Business.
Welfare state.
What's a good word for all that? I'll use it.
The world does not see the US Right opposing the US right. The Democrats are not the least bit right in any of their ideals. Only their representatives are right in their personal lives like Nance investing in Crowdstrike. Just look at the personal worth of members of Congress. That doesn't in any way represent their constituency. Nancy should be on welfare if she truly represents those who vote for her.
The ideals of the "Left" have not changed because people THINK that's what they are voting for. Everyone on the right knows exactly who they're voting for and why.
Left is supposed to be for Unions yet 5 states went right to work under Obama and he replaced US workers with foreign born lowering middle and lower income wages. Why are they for more visas an migrants? What is the political and economic reason. Most of all, how does it help laborers?
"Medicare for all"? That's a program paid in ADVANCE by workers. How do you allow people (who are not working and may never have paid into it) to take part in that program? Will Social Security (retirement) still be viable?
That's a bait and switch. Is that what progressive means - getting rid of the old stuff. Nancy wouldn't donate her retirement to subsidize 20,000,000 new citizens living in the shadows. but that's what she expects others to do.
And isn't that what communism is, making everyone equal? The "Anti American Traditionalists" think Trumpers are communists. What are they teaching in school? Individualism is just the opposite.
Masking their faces is perfect as they have finally reached Hurd Anonymity, and they are ready for the NEW NORM. Until Biden get's in, then all MSM COVID news will meticulously stop being reported because he healed everyone and all their money and headlines will be put into more investigations (Instead of infrastructure) and jailing Trump.
So what's the word?
The Hurd Party
The Commoners Party
The Justice Party
Perhaps they need to decide who they are. After all they voted for the people who chose Hillary over Bernie (who I campaigned for).
Long time reader, first time poster. I don't claim to be an expert on many things, especially public policy, but I've followed the relationship between free speech and technology for many years.
I'm wondering if this piece was provoked by some of the recent proposals to repeal (or at least heavily modify) section 230. Even if not, I'd like to say something on the topic, because it's closely related and people may be thinking about it. For those not familiar, section 230 of the Communications Decency Act says (more or less) that you can't sue a website for content posted by the user. Instead, you have to sue the user who posted it.
Right now, if post a comment here that says something like "Governor Bill Bribetaker takes bribes", Bill Bribetaker can't sue Matt for defamation. Matt might politely comply with a request to take my post down, but Bill Bribetaker can't sue Matt, Bill Bribetaker has to sue ME. If Bill Bribetaker tries to sue Matt, Matt can point to section 230 and ask Bill Bribetaker politely but firmly to leave. That's what section 230 does. It does that whether Matt chooses to moderate his comments section or not, even if that moderation is completely arbitrary and capricious.
Why does this matter for what we might colloquially call Big Tech? That's Facebook, Google, Twitter, Reddit, etc. Well, it means they have the legal power to be arbitrary and capricious in moderating their comments. Legally speaking, they could take down all pro-Trump posts while leaving anti-Trump posts up, or vice versa. There is entirely reasonable concern over this when a small handful of sites have so much power over national political discourse.
Both Trump and Biden have publicly stated their desire to repeal section 230. We may be screwed either way on this one. It's easy for politicians to score points by promising to Do Something™ about the unchecked power of Big Tech. It's understandable to want to go along with that. Fight the temptation. Don't allow politicians to smear their grubby little hands all over 230. What will happen is that the internet will turn into cable TV, where you can only access information that's been approved and published the media-priests. (For what it's worth, I don't count Matt in that category, and that's a compliment.)
Now as Matt has correctly identified, that kind of censorship is already unofficially in progress with Big Tech run sites. But at least other sites still EXIST. If for some reason you want to discuss the possibility that humble patriot and water filter salesman Alex Jones is right about the Illuminati lizard people, there are places you can go to do that. That may not hold. If the so-called solution to the current information monopoly turns out to be a 230 repeal, Big Tech will be all that's left. Smaller websites with user submitted content will vanish overnight, because they won't be able to afford the legal liability. And when I say user submitted content, I mean ANYTHING. Photos, comment sections, discussion boards, all of it. Gone. Big Tech will be damaged in the short term, but will survive through deep pockets and legal black magic, and all their competition will be de facto eliminated by law. Forever.
What do we do instead? I'm not sure. I don't think that (for example) conventional anti-trust laws will help here. Social networking sites may be a form of natural monopoly. Why does everyone use Facebook? Because everyone uses Facebook. If you want to communicate, you have to go where people are already communicating. Kill Facebook, and something else will consolidate in its place.
I don't have an answer, but it seems to me that the way to approach the problem is to recognize that for better or worse, major social networking sites are the new public square, or at least a major segment of it. The President (whether you like him or not) uses Twitter to communicate with citizens. Court have declared he can't block his critics on Twitter. Twitter is recognized by law (incompletely, but still) as being an official political channel.
So how do we want to treat the public square? Well... I think it means allowing crazies with sandwich boards shouting that the end is near. There's some legal precedent for this. Pruneyard Shopping Center v. Robins declared that a mall had to allow political speech on private property. Maybe we should start thinking of Twitter like that?
The other thing I would propose is to remove the biggest obstacle to competition. Believe it or not, the thing we need to do is not allow VISA and Mastercard to refuse to do business with an individual or coporate entity unless they have committed a crime. If ithat sounds out of left field, let me explain. There have been repeated attempts to set up alternative social networking sites focused on free speech. Some have had some modest success, others not to much. But the single biggest obstacle is that if someone complains to your payment processor and gets you removed from it, you're done. If you get blacklisted by VISA or Mastercard (and they share info), you cease to exist. Period. End of. And that's what happens to sites focused on controversial speech. This leads to further consolidation into Big Tech sites. Start your own payment processor, you say? You CAN'T "start your own" payment processor. It's not anything resembling a free market. The banking regulation costs MILLIONS to comply with. It CANNOT be done. The barriers to entry are unfathomable.
On the off chance anybody is still with me... here's my point. I share in Matt's frustration, but I disagree with the assessment that this is the worst of all possible worlds. As bad as things are now, people have no earthly idea how much worse they can get if we don't handle this with EXTREME care. The most popular solution to this being floated right now is to repeal section 230, and it's as wrong as anything could possibly be. If 230 gets repealed, 80% of the internet will vanish overnight, and the sites everyone was worried about will have permanent lock in protected by the full force of the law.
Posting made up statistics stating with certainty about what will happen in the future is not a particularly compelling position. The sites already have “permanent” lock in. What comes after permanent? I stuck with you through the entire missive, and by the time you got to the end, it’s running on fumes. Anyone with a desire to make the world a better place will delete their FB account, not worry about what might happen to it.
I wouldn't be so sure that the current monopoly is permanent. I've seen a lot of sites come and go that were considered unassailable in their own day. People believed nothing could ever replace MySpace, then Facebook came along. I could go down a list of Yahoo, Geocities, etc.
But that becomes impossible if nobody can start a website because they're afraid of getting sued over a single user comment.
Many of those sites you speak of didn't have massive government backing like the big tech companies of today do. They weren't used as a tool by law enforcement, and Alphabet agencies like they are today. Those sites were in the early days of the Internet when your connection was measured in Kbps and you had awesome clanky sounds while you waited for your system to connect.
Today's systems are live and constantly on line and becoming ever more so as now your TV and even your toaster is wired into the world and feeding information about you and yours. Yes, today cannot be compared to yesterday.
You’re making the mistake of imagining what happened in the past is how it works in the future. Fukuyama imagined that history ended in the same manner. The original post by Taibbi and nearly all of the comments in here are an encyclopedia of non sequitur-ial imagining.
Well, let me ask you then. And I'm not asking rhetorically.
Suppose that anyone is allowed to sue a website for content posted by users. What do you think will happen? How would that change the internet?
And in your defense, yes, the 80% statistic is made up. The "vanish overnight" part isn't. I know at least one website on the extreme free speech side whose owner says that the day section 230 is repealed, he will shut down the website and vanish from the face of the earth due to the legal liability.
What do I think will happen? How would it change the internet? The answer to both questions is I honestly don’t care if social media platforms get sued out of existence. I live in China much of the year and go from ultimate tech censorship to ultimate open ended anything goes-ness. If it all went away something awful would happen, like folks would might become interested and involved in projects of their own creation, maybe plant a garden or talk to their neighbor, or meditate or race bicycles, or ANYTHING other than giving a shit about what happens on FB. And, thank you for your civil discourse. It’s refreshing. We both love Taibbi, or we wouldn’t be in here.
You didn't answer the whole question. Your point about social media is well taken, but would it bother you if substack had to shut down? Would that be a bad thing?
Lots of websites would shut down because they have to face the same legal framework that other companies face. Should we cry for them? I think not.
Facebook would not be one such company. They would be like google and every other large company. They would fight in court and pay when the lost and settle when they thought they needed to.
I would also like to include the NYT in the Vacuity Hall of Fame. They’re as complicit in the idiocy of Q-ness as FB, by continually pushing it into the faces of the blank minded looking for a distraction fix as if it’s some world sweeping movement. It’s not. And now Taibbi is writing about it, which is a disappointment. That Q is being “censored” on FB does not portend anything in particular, and making the jump from Q being banned to us being on the doorstep of totalitarian thought crushing restrictions is simply a bridge too far for me to cross.
I was actually thinking about including some of Techdirt's "Content moderation is impossible at scale" content in the original post, but I figured it was already too long.
I don't endorse everything Techdirt says, but they're absolutely right about that one.
The protocols thing is... a mixed bag. We already have test cases in the form of things like e-mail and IRC. They work... -ish. (Actually, e-mail is terrible, but nevermind.)
But even those can fragment. I can't seem to find the story at the moment, but there was something a couple years back where a Mastodon (I think?) group refused to federate with another group due to perceived extremist views.
Whether that's a bug or a feature depends on the individual.
Yeah, he is. If I have a point, it’s that it doesn’t matter. FB is testament to humans insatiable appetite for distraction. Censored, uncensored....doesn’t matter. In a world absent coherency, that anyone cares is the worrisome element.
I certainly could be. Then again, I live much of the year in China and understand content moderation on levels the average Westerner does not, what it does and does not do. That Q is being “censored” has all the world changing impact of a small potato popping in the microwave. That anyone would give much thought to it reinforces all my worst misanthropic tendencies. Of course Mr. Bob’s concerns are valid. Everyone’s concerns are valid. My own concerns are that people care about FB in all the wrong ways. Everyone is entirely free to do whatever they want, but it’s not incumbent on any platform to provide the megaphone for lunatic fringe conspiracy theories grounded in fantasyland.
"... but it’s not incumbent on any platform to provide the megaphone for lunatic fringe conspiracy theories grounded in fantasyland."
Here's the thing. I understand why that's a common position, but I still disagree with it. When any entity is SO MUCH a part of public discourse that politicians using it can't legally block anyone, that's a part of the public square. And part of being the public square means allowing crazy people to use it sometimes. That's just the cost of doing business. We may not like it that Facebook or Twitter have become a significant political platforms. I don't. I hardly ever use either, especially for anything related to politics. But a huge number of people do. That's where we are, and we're going to have to figure out how to deal with it.
As far as China, I plead ignorance. I have a decent handle on the technical aspects of Chinese censorship, but the social and legal ones, not so much. I wouldn't know where to begin making a comparison.
....because what “happens” is a distraction. My thesis is that nothing is happening, and that’s the problem. That FB and Twitter are now the platform for world governance discourse is enervating, as it’s neither politics or discourse. It’s a distraction. I have a very good handle on censorship in the PRC. On the front end, it is a maddening and restrictive environment on more levels than I care to describe. Once one gets past this sort of surface issue, something else happens, and it’s surprisingly elegant and exposes a lot of what is best about humans. That does not make me a proponent of totalitarian governments, but it does make me understand that limitations can sometimes lead to good things. This is anathema to a too broad swath of Americans, and it is our loss. I never imagined I would write something like the preceding, but a little experience in other environments can change one’s perspective. That folks put so much emphasis on the vacuity of FB and Twitter is the problem, not all the other stuff that seems to be at the crux of this thread.
So... you're saying that government surveillance and censorship on a massive scale leading to people being jailed or simply disappearing for what they say online is a *good* thing? You'll have to explain that one to me.
I remember the chortling over the banning of Alex Jones and the worry by a few sincere anti-war folks that anti-establishment left sites would get the boot too. This proved true, but needless to say the VOX readers of the world saw no reason to be bothered.
If Biden is elected, there will soon be a call for military action in Syria. And there will be an accompanying effort to screen out anti-war people as subversives working for Russia, be they right or left. And people like Matt Taibbi will be appalled, wondering if the left realizes what it has done with its promotion of state-encouraged tech-driven censorship. The left and right wings of the military industrial complex, though, will quietly open the champagne and celebrate how concessions won to sideline the far left and far right allow the state to control the most powerful communication tool in the world in the United States. And the same people who denounce China and/or Russia will laud the muzzling of dissent in America.
Right. It's why a true left is supposed to care about speech suppression happening to ANYONE. The precedent snowballs.
So is a true conservative...but I think we can agree that both organized parties have become about little other than power/control.
It's why I think the only solution is to devolve power back to the states. At that level, there's a chance of occasional sanity. In DC, I no longer think such a chance exists.
I'm more or less with you. My pulse quickens at the thought of those states at the poles of dysfunction (California, maybe Mississippi) being given near-total sovereignty, but a lot of places would thrive or at least be better off.
I don’t think you can stop crazy anymore. And if the people in various places want it, let them have it, as long as it doesn’t violate a limited reading of the Constitution (limited by the text of the doc that is).
Um, when last I looked, most of the left has repeatedly sold out to globalist over and over and over as well.
In fact, if you simply swapped "conservative" with "liberal" your statement would still be fully accurate.
I agree with you and raise you one truth.
I think we're on to something here, don't you?
I agree with your comment generally but I don't believe Biden will be any tougher on Syria than Obama was when the Iranians told him to back down. Biden has all but pledged to be Obama's third term from a foreign policy standpoint.
Why should any president "be tough on Syria?" The US has no right to pull off coups, attack sovereign countries, decided elected presidents can be replaced by the US, and tell the rest of the world to do as we say or else they will be sorry. The best foreign policy the US could have is to stay out of other countries' business. It's about time everyone on earth turned against this arrogant, idiotic country.
"The best foreign policy the US could have is to stay out of other countries' business." AMEN, brother. This is the most important issue for our country.
IT's kind of why Trump got elected... These stuffed suits who "lead" us, are nothing more than than ruddy grifters. All they know how to do is act pretty for the camera and take money from donors. That's all they know.
To wit: They've kept us in endless war since 9/11 and have no plans of stopping any time soon. They dance and dine while the whole ship goes down.
So the alternative is to allow forces to gather at the gates until they amass enough energy or power to just crash it?
Where would Europe be now if the US hadn't shored up the remaining allies with the Marshall Plan?
I shudder to think of how that may have ended up, but I don't sincerely support the US' pay to play military for hire antics across the globe.
What's the answer? Who knows? It's certainly some bizarre mix of the two.
Scott,
Nope. There hasn't been a justified war we've started or entered since WWII, and even in that case, there's more than meets the eye. For example, the US (Standard Oil) kept right on sending Germany oil because they didn't have their own, in order for the Germans to fight more successfully against Russia (our ally, but behind closed door, our future enemy, thus the cold war). And in that stupid cold war, the plan to bomb 66 cities/towns in Russia with 204 nuclear weapons was set aside at the last minute. Daniel Ellsberg was in the room at the time and has just written a book on this strange idea to genocide an entire country. There's no way to justify what this country stands for: ultimate total hegemony of all the world. Thank god, all empires eventually fall. But, heck, not to worry, climate destruction will take out humanity first.
Except... The Soviet Union collapsed.
Did you miss that?
A bunch of Russian Oligarchs are not as much of a threat to Europe and the world as the USSR was. Not even close. They've been neutered.
Sure, for the handful of justifiable military actions the US has been involved in since WWII there are SCADS more that were profit only, and at the behest of very rich industries, but the fact remains -The cold war was won, for what that's worth.
Trouble is, they committed all manner of heinous war crimes while it went on. Unforgivable.
Hey, Rome wasn't built in a day and it didn't collapse in a day, either. Give it time, friend. It'll be over soon enough.
Teach your kids how to survive.
"handful of justifiable military actions the US has been involved in..." Name one.
BTW, our kids can't survive if there's no ice left, no trees, no uncontaminated water and air. Chris Hedges says we seek and moved toward life or toward death. We seek and are headed for death. Someone else said, "No hope knows no fear." I don't believe that. I fear greatly for the children, all the children.
I'm getting out of this thread. Nice talking with you. Rob
Wasn't there just a slew of leaked documents about the gas attack in Syria detailing how military contractor's & US intelligence used an army of "journalists" to feed fake stories to everyone from the BBC to Al Jazeera about a gas attack that never really happened?
Syria is obstructing a gas pipeline. That's why the US wants Assad out. No other reason.
Who, in their right mind, thinks the prime function of the military industrial complex is to protect America?
Or even the secondary function?
If Democrats really think Trump is a threat why did they gleefully sign off on his military budget increases?
Increase his spying powers?
Only makes sense if this is all just political theater meant to flummox the rubes.
Spiderbaby,
You are so right. There were three attacks, none by Bashar al Assad. The first was proven by the UN investigative team; I heard Carla del Ponte, the lead, say it was the rebels (paid by the US)...never heard from her again, of course. The second was proven to be NOT Assad by none other than Sy Hersh..who couldn't get his report printed by the NYT, WaPo, The New Yorker or the UK Guardian. Finally, it was printed by Deir Walt (sp?) in Germany where I read it. The third I witnessed myself when the White Helmet types began coldwater hosing little kids who naturally started crying; the hosers were screaming, "chemicals," though the doctors inside the hospital where the kids were dragged said clearly there were no chemicals. It's a sad day when Democracy Now! and the New Yorker, famous for fact checking, falls for propaganda, just as they did for Russiagate. Thanks for writing. RR
I wish I could hit like ten times on this comment.
I would add only that they are playing 4D chess and using asymmetrical warfare on their own people in order to make it collapse faster.
I looked for evidence of leaked documents you describe and did not find any. Please provide a link to that story, specifically how "US intelligence used an army of "journalists" to feed fake stories."
I also looked into the gas pipeline angle, and found stories which support your assertion, but also found a later story which debunks it: https://truthout.org/articles/the-war-against-the-assad-regime-is-not-a-pipeline-war/
I wasn't the commentator who said something about pipes. Here's the source you wanted regarding my comment. "Leaked Docs Expose Massive Syria Propaganda Operation by Western Govt Contractors & Media" October 12, 2020 The GrayzoneProject Ben Norton
You can trust Ben Norton, Max Blumenthal, Aaron Mate, et.al., you don't find on MSM. [Syria was set up by the usual false flags, as was Russiagate.]
You may also want to see this one: "Russiagate on Both Sides of the Duopoly: Former Intel Officials Try To Downplay Ratcliffe’s Russiagate Releases," by Dave DeCamp, a new reporter to me but the article is valid.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=K-zG1t_qv3Q
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TnJYNCtwB60
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=K-zG1t_qv3Q
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TnJYNCtwB60
Bingo. They'd been building a pipeline so that Iran and Russia could move oil.
Notice how Russian warships showed up when Obama started setting up an invasion force -then they suddenly backed away from the red line?
Yeah, totally... if the Pentagon wanted open war with Syria, they'd be doing it right now -Trump or not.
The elected boob-in-chief is of no consequence.
While it's certain that the Pentagon wants to maintain a permanent presence in the Middle East, and continuously plays one side against the other to maintain access to key installations, the President has openly rebuked that decades-long standing policy, if only rhetorically and not in practice. There are reasons why the leadership at the Pentagon despise Trump.
so, you know this because you came here from the future?
I'm your groopie.
Excellent comment. Thank you for taking the time to write that.
"...a recent Washington Post warning that we are being targeted by a foreign campaign of “perception hacking,” or “manipulating people into thinking they are being manipulated,” represent just a few examples of Approved™ nonsense."
I'm related through marriage to a very smart, analytical person who nevertheless believes every bit of nonsense that is produced by these major journalistic institutions. When I fact-checked him on the convention week fiction that Melania cut down Jackie Kennedy's cherry trees, a story he regurgitated uncritically, I was told I was being petty. He has told me that reality is the exact opposite of what I think. I know I'm in good company.
How can we have a conversation when most people would rather believe lies that support their chosen narrative, and instead of objectively settling the score, the Fourth Estate is often the source of untruth, and anyone who dares to question it gets accused of gaslighting?
That sounds pretty toxic, and very depressing. The last four years of constant orange man bad attacks have destroyed mutual trust. I don’t even like Donald Trump, but I find myself defending him most of the time simply because the attacks are so outrageous.
The attack on Melania was insane. I listened to the tape and thought “what’s the scandal”?
It wasn’t until I saw the very selective editing of quotes that are understood the “newsworthiness” of the tape. The disingenuousness of the media is vomit inducing.
I find myself defending Donald Trump, too, and while also not liking him. I just can't stand intellectual dishonesty.
Cheers to you for that sentiment. Keep on. Old school liberals are a vanishing breed.
I love how we’re constantly told that we’re living under an existential threat, but the same people are suddenly defending the sanctity of freaking Christmas decorations at the White House
Watch in a couple months when the same outlets start mocking the "War on Christmas" zealots for losing their squash over atheist displays planted next to nativity scenes in parks, etc.
It is indeed increasingly hard to have a conversation. I'm right of center but not far right (save maybe on federalism). The people I know to the far right say crazy stuff and claim it as fact and so do the people on the far left.
In my opinion, it is driven by the premise that we have increasingly ceded control of almost every aspect of our lives to the government. Thus, both sides believe the stakes are so high that being in control is more important than anything else. We have arrived at the place where the end is perceived to be so important that it justifies any means.
If Trump is reelected, the world is not going to end. Taxes will be a little lower, regulation a little looser, and no major new trillion dollar programs will pass (except for maybe an infrastructure bill). If Biden is elected, the world is not going to end. Taxes will be a little higher, regulations tighter and the deficit wider despite the higher taxes. I genuinely hope court packing doesn't happen under Biden. It is honestly my only fear, not for its proximate outcome on the Court but for the end of SCOTUS as a body that is seen as anything other than a political power play.
Regardless of the outcome, most of our lives will not be massively affected. Some will in both cases for both the positive and the negative. It is failure to accept this fundamental "truth" (as I see it) that is driving the insanity and the inability to engage in constructive dialog.
Social media makes it worse by feeding us a steady diet of the echo chamber and by becoming another element of the political power game.
But the issue isn't social media or the media at all. The issue is that we've convinced ourselves that every thing that happens, particularly in DC is of existential importance.
I'm not sure I follow you here. I too know people who are close to the far ends of the spectrum, not really any neo-Nazis or straight up Marxist anarchists, but I don't hear crazy conspiratorial stuff from the real lefties. That's the mainstream, centrist "liberal" Democrats who are pushing the Russiagate, Ukrainegate, and "Vlad controls Trump" nonsense. From my experience, my right-leaning friends are way more likely to engage in conspiratorial thinking as though everything is a huge plot and the Democrat party is somehow involved in child sex trafficking. Pizzagate was when it first started, like Matt said. They kept telling me to wait that all of the code words and child abuse in D.C. pizza restaurant basement would come to light and their views would be proven to be right. It never happened. Just like the "storm" or whatever it is with Q people. Won't happen. Trump is a swamp creature too, just from a different faction and not against inviting members of the other factions to join him. I mean, John Bolton? Elliott Abrams?
But I digress - do you have examples of lefties who are pushing conspiracy theories or is it really just the center/center-right Democrats and the Russia bogus you're talking about?
To me, it’s all one giant center right corporatist cabal is the biggest conspiracy theory of all...pushed frequently on the far left and by you by inference just now.
LOL come on. The "far" left is who pushes the "theory" that in fact there are a small number of large corporations who work, as Taibbi states in this and many other articles, with various governments including the U.S., Israel, U.K. and China? Or that when you look at real world history, and that of the United States, there has always been a concerted, often conspiratorial push to destroy labor, the anti-war movement, the left in general and any major action groups that start to gain traction and threaten corporate, police/surveillance state supremacy? But calling it a conspiracy theory doesn't insult me or the point at all. Nobody smart ever said there weren't real conspiracies. Of course there are; people and organizations conspire to get what they want and harm the people and organizations they don't like. But most often it comes down to Occam's Razor - you really have to draw a line when some of them start getting a little too bizarre (such as Qanon, the Pizzagaters, and the farther fringes of the 911 Truthers). I fully stand by my "conspiracy theory" that we live in an inverted totalitarian managed democracy and that there is a "cabal" (even if not working directly together or even directly at all times) who in fact are the ones who ultimately "manage" the aforementioned "democracy."
See I knew you believed it.
Thanks for proving my point.
So I guess I'm still waiting for an answer - Any examples of "far left" conspiracy theories that have actually gained the amount of traction that Qanon or Pizzagate have - and - which turned out to have absolutely no merit? You seemed to have very specific examples in mind and the "conspiracy theory" I just discussed with you is certainly not one of them. So let's have it - give me a "far left" individual/organization/theory that has any prominence or is well known.
9/11 truthers.
Russiagate.
Hitler ain’t got shit on Chairman Mao in the body count depart.
Of course millions of Mao’s victims were ostensibly fellow Chinese communists-wouldn’t that make him a target for the twitter mob.....
I question if you know what the term conspiracy theory means. Critical Race Theory is a sociological theory. As with all scientific theories, it is argued for and championed by it's supporters, and has competing theories that are studied and championed by other researchers. That's science, not conspiracy.
Nothing in your rant of a response gives one any level of confidence that you understand what the term conspiracy theory means. Sociology is a scientific discipline which means its publishings are subject to peer review, unlike news media or 4chan. If one has a hypotheses and finds data to support their assertions, that data is scrutinized by fellow scientists. If any of the data is found to be suspect (or cherry-picked), that scientist will be black-listed and in the findings will be redacted. If you have any evidence that a scientific journal has published tarnished data, I encourage you to contact the editors of that journal. I can assure you that the journal will take any credible claims, that can be backed up with evidence, seriously.
Imagine being a gay man who thinks that Trump is superior to Biden.
I can imagine that quite easily. But I suspect you cannot. And more is the pity...
I didn’t word that correctly. I’m a gay guy who actually thinks that Trump is marginally better than Biden.
Me too, dude. You're not alone.
That's because you're actually thinking.
There are more of them than you seem to realize.
I wasn’t clear. I’m a gay dude who despises Trump but HATES Biden.
Well I'm a mostly(?) straight dude who, in general, likes Trump's policies but not his personality, but who at the same time is very very afraid of what Biden represents. So I think we are on the same page, kinda.
I'm a straight, married, Libertarian dude with three kids and dislike Trump personally but like what I see out of the Administration. What's more, I look at what I see from the Left and can't imagine voting for it. Just under four years ago Trump was elected and the Left and their media handlers claimed he would start WW3, was Hitler, was a despot, a dictator in waiting, would cause world economic ruin, would strip gays of their rights, abortions would be back to being done in dark alleys, our allies would hate us and that he would be personally enriching himself and his family. And that was just the first hour of CNN on day 1.
Yes, I'd like to chop his finger off so he'd stop Tweeting. Yes, I wish he'd knock-off the "nobody has ever seen this before" and "perhaps greatest ever" nonsense. And yes, he should stop picking stupid fights with nobodies. But, he has been under attack since day 1 by an organized cabal of people intent on overturning an election. And what's more, he's had 24x7 negative coverage by 90% of the media.
Despite having some Left leans in terms of social policy, Trump could roast puppies and eat them on stage and there's still no way I could vote for what I've seen out of the Democrat Party for the past four years and, in particular, the last 7 months. I am not going to vote to condone riots, looting, racism and the breakdown of law and order.
Please ignore my prior post...I didn't fully consider the potential implications of your statement. And no edit function...grr...
Stand up job to acknowledge a mildly presumptive original statement but reel it back in when you got the bigger picture. Very humble thing to do
If it's a man who want's a job he will go with Trump. What you do in your bedroom is your own business. If you want to vote on who you THINK likes you more, you can do that too.
I'm in the same boat with my partner. We're having a hard time connecting at the moment. It's tough. I feel for you.
For someone who abhors postmodernism, his writing style is exactly that. You know what post-postmoderists hate more than anything? People who try to show how much smarter they are than everybody else by over-writing. Geesh.
Regardless, I think you're on to a helpful idea, but the major impediment to that future is the reality that most people are too stupid and/or too lazy to think for themselves in a political context. And of the rest, the influencers usually have a horse in the race. You can't teach people how to think if they don't want to learn or are incapable of putting in the work to find objective truth in an ever murkier and volatile information cloud, and of course half the point is that it's too difficult for us to figure it out on our own, so let's pick a side and trust them unquestioningly.
Taibbi's comments section is one of the few mediums I've encountered where people - many of us - speak honestly. I believe that's a function of Matt's integrity coming through his work.
I'm confident that I've lost more friends to the Russiagate conspiracy theory than anyone has lost to Qanon batshittery.
Far from my own experience. I'm not the type of person who "loses" other people to anything other than actual wars and crime/police violence, so right up front I think it's the definition of a "first world problem" for a person to claim they've "lost" members of their friend group or family to a ridiculous political conspiracy theory. The USA is, right now, killing innocents abroad - inflicting REAL LOSS - economic and human lives in too many countries to count. And like it was on Bush and Obama, now it's on Trump. He's not working with "Q" and he's not going to preside over any day of reckoning.
Again, I digress. The reason you've probably "lost" more people to the Russiagate nonsense is that the corporate, center-right, mainstream news media has glommed onto that story and pushed it like it's nobody's business for nearly 4 years now. It just has so much reach. And unlike Q, you won't get booted off Facebook or de-platformed anywhere else for pushing THAT particular line of garbage and innuendo. But that gets into altogether different territory that one of Matt's recent articles touched on too. CNN, CBS, MSNBC - all of the so-called liberal mainstream corporate media outlets thrive when they have a heel like Trump to focus on. All the better if it can tap into decades old programming about the evil reds. In essence, what it entails is the center using right-wing McCarthyist tactics to suck people into non-existent scandals and conspiracies that, if you repeat them often and loudly enough, will gain all the traction it needs to ensure months to years of ratings booms.
But back to your point - I wholly disagree. Q is a far greater "line in the sand" type phenomenon than Russiagate, itself a laughable but typical PR campaign waged by the Intelligence Community and the corporate media assets it has always infiltrated since WWI at least. Sorry for your experience, but even most Russiagaters I know aren't as passionate or down the rabbit hole as the Q-anoners that make up a good portion of my social media friends and acquaintances.
Well, first, I still have all my friends. Thanks for your kind consideration of my social circle because of my pithy, off-hand remark about having friends that have fallen for Russiagate. They're still my friends. If I ditched every friend that thought differently than I did, I'd have no friends.
But to the more important point I was trying to make, you're wrong to think Qanon is a phenomenon with more real-world impact than Russiagate. Russiagate was just used as a soft coup in the USA. Just this week, "Russian disinformation" was employed by the US to silence whistleblowers in the OPCW Syrian chemical attack testimony at the UN. (Just ask Aaron Mate). Russiagate is essential in the PR campaign against Julian Assange to justify his extradition to the US. The same entities that advanced Russiagate (Intelligence services, media) are coordinating with Facebook to ban Qanon. I could go on and on and on regarding the global impact of Russiagate. It's adorable that you think Russiagate is nothing more than "laughable PR." Qanon is ridiculous and yes, a handful of legislators have gone down that rabbit hole. Nearly EVERY Democratic legislator operates under the assumption that Russia is why we have Trump.
Good for you for keeping those weirdo Qanon friends of yours though!
I prefer QAnon to CNN, because I can be 100% certain that CNN is lying.
Ha, ha, ha.
You totally misunderstood what I said. What I said can be summarized as follows: Russiagate had far greater reach (you don't seem to get that we are agreeing here) because it was trumpeted non-stop by the establishment Democrats, Intelligence Community and corporate media for 3+ years. It had FAR greater reach through every possible channel than Q anon does (so far). Hence, I said it's hardly a surprise that you would encounter way more people in your personal life who have bought into it. I never once said that it was merely a "PR camaign" if you actually read what I wrote. And finally, yes, I stand by both my empirical observation (that Russiagate had far greater "official" and accepted reach) and my personal anecdotal experience (that people who buy into Russiagate make up a much wider spectrum of those who buy into Qanon, but that it's much more specific and they're more likely to have differing views on other topics - not so much with Qanon simply because it tries to cover so much scope. In fact, in that way "Q" is really trying to be a "theory of everything" and hence its proponents have drawn a line in the sand because to accept the core tenet, they have to accept all the other crazy stuff that surrounds it). Hope that helps.
" Russiagate was just used as a soft coup in the USA."
I do not think that you're clear on the meaning of the word "coup."
"Soft coup" is an oxymoron in the first place. But the Democratic Party hasn't even managed to increase its influence in the Capitol or on the Presidency, much less shifting into a position of dominance and control over the levers of State power. Their attempt at impeachment was successfully countered (which was entirely predictable.) It's questionable whether the Democrats will even reap a net benefit from their Russiagate efforts at the ballot box, when all the votes are finally counted.
Exactly. The hard core Russiagate crowd are mostly pissed off Hillary voters who never would have considered voting for anyone but a Democrat anyway. If anything, Russiagate has pissed off people who might be more motivated to vote for Trump now, even if they didn't the first time. Russiagate - if you take it on its face (in the way it's presented by MSM) - was a massive PR failure for the Democrats and "Intelligence Community." Personally I think it was part of a more complex plot to use political theater to distract the whole country, Trump supporters included, from the ongoing theft and wealth transfer to the uber-rich and corporations/banks/MIC. In other words, Russiagate/Ukrainegate were DESIGNED TO "FAIL."
Gotta challenge you here, Mascot. The Russiagate Hoax has already worked, insofar as it basically sabotaged Trump's (first?) term.
Come on. Trump gave the GOP everything they care about from a President: a massive income tax cut that mostly went to the wealthy; a huge business tax cut; nearly $1 trillion increase in military spending, much of it in weapons procurement; all of the tax cuts and spending put on the credit card, inflating the debt and deficit and thereby proving that "government doesn't work" and "there's no money left" when the economy eventually goes south again and control returns to the Democrats; a Supreme Court judge whose vote can be counted on to overturn Roe v. Wade, the ACCA, and favor the other items on the GOP wish list; 50 appellate judges that are all reliably biased toward the Republican wish list; and a repeal of various environmental standards that impede the hoarding of profits- and the political influence it buys- by the GOP-dominated fossil fuels industry (annual revenues larger than the Federal government.) Thankfully, most of the gutted regulations have not been in place long enough to do much damage to the future of the natural world. But with another term of Trump, the absence of EPA headwaters protections and gutted power plant emission rules will empower the $hort-term gain>>long term pain, privatize the profits>>socialize the costs game plan of today's GOP in classic style.
This explains the lockstep fealty of the Republicans in Congress (and most of their financial backers) toward Donald Trump. They'll put with anything, to get results like those.
Meanwhile- what Trump initiative were the Democrats able to stop? What part of their own agenda were they able to get past the Republican Senate, and Trump's veto pen? Trump walked away from negotiating the second stimulus bill, leaving a lot of formerly full-time working Americans are the end of their rope. It's to be taken for granted that he's framing this as an act of heroism against the extortionate Democrats. Although that narrative has recently taken a back seat to Trump's by now predictable confusion-hypnosis topic swerve into imperious demands for Justice Department indictments of Obama, Biden, the Clintons, every usual suspect in the Democratic Congress, various FBI heads, et. al. Like the White Queen, in Alice in Wonderland- "Off With Their Heads!" Although I've always found Trump's affect to be more along the lines of the Reverend Jim Jones. An impression that his most recent TV performances have only served to confirm.
In that regard, it should be enlightening to find out how Teh Donzo splits the difference when he's inevitably asked about his reaction to the recent roundup of armed would-be insurrectionists in Michigan who are currently charged by Federal and State law enforcement agencies with various minor infractions, like planning to kidnap the Governor there. Donald Trump has always exhibited a marked preference for finding a way to get two entirely opposite statements on the record, when the duties of high office demand that he offer his views on events of that sort.
Welfare exceeds Military for the first time.
You're worried about trump walking away from the second stimulus while chastising him for the outrageous debt? Which is it?
Russiagate was not only bad for Trump but the US in general.
He got a lot of good things done in spite of the Democrats and biased press and judges:
1. The middle-class incomes, after adjusting for inflation, have surged by $5,003 a year more since Donald Trump
2. United States has added more than 10,000 manufacturing BUSINESSES
3. He brokered peace between N&S Korea, Israel and Arabs, Kosovo, called a Syrian Ceasefire and is being nominated for a 3 peace prize. NO NEW WARS.
And it was Democrats creating fear kerfuffle with the "Crazy Red Button", "Orange Man" theme that the papers supported endlessly.
It is the Democrats throwing fits from the first day because Hillary didn't get in. I see Trump balancing out the Democrats perfectly.
Thanks for your engaged reply--more than I have time to respond to at this time. But as for "sabotage"--see my reply to Cypher, below.
But yes, Trump's recent debate performance was dismal. I don't see how any fair-minded person could think otherwise.
The income tax cut didn't mostly go to the wealthy. It went to people roughly in proportion to their share of federal taxes.
https://www.taxpolicycenter.org/publications/distributional-analysis-conference-agreement-tax-cuts-and-jobs-act/full
The increase in military spending from fiscal 2016 to fiscal 2020 is approximate $130 billion, not $1 trillion. It's closer to $200 trillion if you include VA, foreign aid, etc. But still nowhere near a trillion.
https://www.usgovernmentspending.com/rev/google_vis.php?title=Recent Defense Spending&units=b&size=800_600&legend=Military defense-total_Veterans-total_Foreign military aid-total_Foreign economic aid-total&year=2000_2020&sname=US&bar=1&stack=1&col=g&source=a_a_a_a_a_a_a_a_a_a_a_a_a_a_a_a_a_a_a_a_g&spending0=294.36_304.73_348.46_404.73_455.81_495.29_521.82_551.26_616.07_661.01_693.49_705.55_677.85_633.45_603.46_589.66_593.37_598.72_631.13_686.00_718.85&spending1=47.40_45.36_51.34_57.85_61.23_71.30_70.82_73.86_85.79_96.48_109.27_128.20_125.57_140.13_150.75_160.83_175.94_177.37_180.21_201.24_209.22&spending2=6.39_6.56_7.91_8.62_8.37_7.90_7.81_7.98_9.48_6.25_11.36_12.04_11.46_9.95_11.38_12.91_11.31_12.24_11.42_11.23_17.12&spending3=10.83_9.93_14.41_12.58_18.50_26.67_21.69_20.50_19.38_31.28_33.83_33.64_25.34_36.51_35.50_39.13_34.00_34.07_37.58_41.51_50.34
The federal government's revenues are far larger than US fossil fuel companies. Comparing a global company list to the revenue of the US government is a false comparison, which I suspect you know well.
But you hate Trump, that much is clear.
Disagree with you here. How has it sabotaged his term? Exactly what was it that he would have gotten done had there been no impeachment? Like what precisely was on the table that got sidelined because of Russiagate, policy wise? I agree that it was used as an attempted "soft coup" but it failed and only made Trump's case stronger - that the Democrats, "swamp" and mainstream media are conspiring against him and trying to force him out of office. IF anything, you could argue that COVID-19 sabotaged his first term simply by coming into being, but those people who think that Qanon is legit also tend to believe in the "plandemic" hoax as well, so it becomes just another excuse for why Trump might lose in his re-election bid.
Thanks for your reply. Allow me briefly respond: how did Russiagate sabotage the Trump presidency? First, the outrageous takedown of Mike Flynn deprived Trump of a National Security Advisor who, it is said, knew where the bodies were buried. (so to speak) in the intel community and posed a threat to exposing them. Second, Russiagate prevented what might have been a valuable truce in the New Cold War with Russia. Funny how making peace with our adversaries something liberals are now opposed to. Third, the Russiagate Hoax forced Trump to expend enormous amounts of time, energy, and political capital fighting it. No one can say what would have been done, but it seems reasonable to assume the Hoax did function as a roadblock. There's more, but I'm limited time-wise.
Bottom line: the Russiagate torpedo severely damaged the SS Trump, leaving it listing but still afloat. I think that qualifies as "sabotage."
This is what he did in spite of Democrats in trade alone:
US wins WTO case against China over grain exports https://apnews.com/article/3fd7f5959c484321892749ce16ba3d67
U.S. Wins $7.5 Billion Award in Airbus Subsidies Case https://ustr.gov/about-us/policy-offices/press-office/press- releases/2019/october/us-wins-75-billion-award-airbus
US wins end of EU lobster tariffs in mini trade deal
https://www.bbc.com/news/business-53870136
Trade wins for U.S. pork producers
https://www.nationalhogfarmer.com/business/trade-wins-us-pork-producers
Montana beef declared winner in U.S.-Japan trade deal https://billingsgazette.com/business/montana-beef-declared-winner-in-u-s--japan-trade-deal/article_07577f7a-bc4d-57fc-85d6-b77e96fb2e4d.html
Long-outlawed U.S. trade policy wins WTO approval in Canada lumber dispute
https://www.reuters.com/article/us-usa-trade-canada-wto-idUSKCN1RL1V6
Canada, Mexico lift tariffs on US goods after Trump scraps steel, aluminum levies
https://thehill.com/policy/finance/444581-canada-mexico-lift-tariffs-on-us-goods-after-trump-scraps-steel-aluminum
The "Gates" are just part of the continuous SMEAR campaign that has been very successful. Now they want to suggest that the President is unable to lead due to mental disorder and just before the election. It doesn't have to be true. It's the kind of colossal gossip their constituency enjoys and it does the trick. That's what the first part of Matts essay was about, how Biden was protected and everyone they don't like is left twisting in the wind.
Every single paper was part of the un named "official" said. That's how Russiagate was perpetuated. Hillary paid the spy, Steel, for dirt on Trump. That went no where. The papers harped and harped on the Trump tower meeting and believed every word of the "Dossier" right down to the, still repeated, "Golden Shower".
Flynn should be exonerated for having been crushed in the JudicialGate, carte blanch bias.
But Comey should be in jail.
Trump IS mentally unstable. Did you see the "debate?"
Soft response. I hope that's clear.
I have a pretty conservative circle of friends, and I have only heard of QAnon via liberal media.
I haven't lost any friends that I know of.
It seems to me it was the LEFT that pushed Russiagate, Quid Pro Quo gate, and Trump Virus gate.
It was the DNC backed by Hillary who couldn't bear to lose to Trump so had to invent interference by Putin (the most stable president in the world). The DNC are so stupid, they TWICE booted Sanders, the only person who could have beaten Trump and who could beat him now. The DNC would rather have Trump than Sanders. Why? Because Sanders actually cares about the citizens of this country. My God, can't have anyone like that. Biden is not a good choice.
The Democrats didn't boot Bernie out of stupidity. When a group of powerful, well connected people make a choice that seems obviously wrong and stupid to you, go back and reexamine your assumptions. Collectively they probably know more than you do, and then some. Maybe they care about things that you don't care about. Maybe they don't care about things that you do care about. Maybe they lie about the things they care about. Also, Bernie went willingly. He was never in it to win it. His job like all fake opposition was to pace and lead stragglers back to the herd.
"The Democrats didn't boot Bernie out of stupidity." No, they booted him out of greed; i.e., keeping the status quo for: big pharma and for-profit medical care (can't let the people have universal healthcare), the MIC, the bankers, the weapon manufactures (forever wars), Israel (can't let those pesky Palestinians have any civil rights), and generally power, money and control. Bernie didn't go "willingly." Obama dragged him into the White House and talked at him for three hours, finally, just wearing him down. (Bernie shouldn't have caved.) He was "in it to win it." I should "reexamine...assumptions?" I don't make assumptions. I ferret out facts, a steady job these days. Try reading more Matt Taibbi, Max Blumenthal (the Grayzone Project), Aaron Mate (Push Back), Mondoweiss, the electronic intifada, CounterPunch, Seymour Hersh, Stephen F. Cohen, Consortium News, Craig Murray, John Pilger...you know, real reporters, not stenographers such as, say, Rachel Maddow. Whatever you do, skip the MSM.
Can we please stop using the absurd term 'the left"? There is no and has never been a true left in America. What we have is moderate-right and batshit-crazy right, both corrupt.
I can't use moderate right to describe someone who is NOT right. How about:
Anti individualism?
Anti American Tradition
For Big Government
Anti Business.
Welfare state.
What's a good word for all that? I'll use it.
The world does not see the US Right opposing the US right. The Democrats are not the least bit right in any of their ideals. Only their representatives are right in their personal lives like Nance investing in Crowdstrike. Just look at the personal worth of members of Congress. That doesn't in any way represent their constituency. Nancy should be on welfare if she truly represents those who vote for her.
The ideals of the "Left" have not changed because people THINK that's what they are voting for. Everyone on the right knows exactly who they're voting for and why.
Left is supposed to be for Unions yet 5 states went right to work under Obama and he replaced US workers with foreign born lowering middle and lower income wages. Why are they for more visas an migrants? What is the political and economic reason. Most of all, how does it help laborers?
"Medicare for all"? That's a program paid in ADVANCE by workers. How do you allow people (who are not working and may never have paid into it) to take part in that program? Will Social Security (retirement) still be viable?
That's a bait and switch. Is that what progressive means - getting rid of the old stuff. Nancy wouldn't donate her retirement to subsidize 20,000,000 new citizens living in the shadows. but that's what she expects others to do.
And isn't that what communism is, making everyone equal? The "Anti American Traditionalists" think Trumpers are communists. What are they teaching in school? Individualism is just the opposite.
Masking their faces is perfect as they have finally reached Hurd Anonymity, and they are ready for the NEW NORM. Until Biden get's in, then all MSM COVID news will meticulously stop being reported because he healed everyone and all their money and headlines will be put into more investigations (Instead of infrastructure) and jailing Trump.
So what's the word?
The Hurd Party
The Commoners Party
The Justice Party
Perhaps they need to decide who they are. After all they voted for the people who chose Hillary over Bernie (who I campaigned for).
Long time reader, first time poster. I don't claim to be an expert on many things, especially public policy, but I've followed the relationship between free speech and technology for many years.
I'm wondering if this piece was provoked by some of the recent proposals to repeal (or at least heavily modify) section 230. Even if not, I'd like to say something on the topic, because it's closely related and people may be thinking about it. For those not familiar, section 230 of the Communications Decency Act says (more or less) that you can't sue a website for content posted by the user. Instead, you have to sue the user who posted it.
Right now, if post a comment here that says something like "Governor Bill Bribetaker takes bribes", Bill Bribetaker can't sue Matt for defamation. Matt might politely comply with a request to take my post down, but Bill Bribetaker can't sue Matt, Bill Bribetaker has to sue ME. If Bill Bribetaker tries to sue Matt, Matt can point to section 230 and ask Bill Bribetaker politely but firmly to leave. That's what section 230 does. It does that whether Matt chooses to moderate his comments section or not, even if that moderation is completely arbitrary and capricious.
Why does this matter for what we might colloquially call Big Tech? That's Facebook, Google, Twitter, Reddit, etc. Well, it means they have the legal power to be arbitrary and capricious in moderating their comments. Legally speaking, they could take down all pro-Trump posts while leaving anti-Trump posts up, or vice versa. There is entirely reasonable concern over this when a small handful of sites have so much power over national political discourse.
Both Trump and Biden have publicly stated their desire to repeal section 230. We may be screwed either way on this one. It's easy for politicians to score points by promising to Do Something™ about the unchecked power of Big Tech. It's understandable to want to go along with that. Fight the temptation. Don't allow politicians to smear their grubby little hands all over 230. What will happen is that the internet will turn into cable TV, where you can only access information that's been approved and published the media-priests. (For what it's worth, I don't count Matt in that category, and that's a compliment.)
Now as Matt has correctly identified, that kind of censorship is already unofficially in progress with Big Tech run sites. But at least other sites still EXIST. If for some reason you want to discuss the possibility that humble patriot and water filter salesman Alex Jones is right about the Illuminati lizard people, there are places you can go to do that. That may not hold. If the so-called solution to the current information monopoly turns out to be a 230 repeal, Big Tech will be all that's left. Smaller websites with user submitted content will vanish overnight, because they won't be able to afford the legal liability. And when I say user submitted content, I mean ANYTHING. Photos, comment sections, discussion boards, all of it. Gone. Big Tech will be damaged in the short term, but will survive through deep pockets and legal black magic, and all their competition will be de facto eliminated by law. Forever.
What do we do instead? I'm not sure. I don't think that (for example) conventional anti-trust laws will help here. Social networking sites may be a form of natural monopoly. Why does everyone use Facebook? Because everyone uses Facebook. If you want to communicate, you have to go where people are already communicating. Kill Facebook, and something else will consolidate in its place.
I don't have an answer, but it seems to me that the way to approach the problem is to recognize that for better or worse, major social networking sites are the new public square, or at least a major segment of it. The President (whether you like him or not) uses Twitter to communicate with citizens. Court have declared he can't block his critics on Twitter. Twitter is recognized by law (incompletely, but still) as being an official political channel.
So how do we want to treat the public square? Well... I think it means allowing crazies with sandwich boards shouting that the end is near. There's some legal precedent for this. Pruneyard Shopping Center v. Robins declared that a mall had to allow political speech on private property. Maybe we should start thinking of Twitter like that?
The other thing I would propose is to remove the biggest obstacle to competition. Believe it or not, the thing we need to do is not allow VISA and Mastercard to refuse to do business with an individual or coporate entity unless they have committed a crime. If ithat sounds out of left field, let me explain. There have been repeated attempts to set up alternative social networking sites focused on free speech. Some have had some modest success, others not to much. But the single biggest obstacle is that if someone complains to your payment processor and gets you removed from it, you're done. If you get blacklisted by VISA or Mastercard (and they share info), you cease to exist. Period. End of. And that's what happens to sites focused on controversial speech. This leads to further consolidation into Big Tech sites. Start your own payment processor, you say? You CAN'T "start your own" payment processor. It's not anything resembling a free market. The banking regulation costs MILLIONS to comply with. It CANNOT be done. The barriers to entry are unfathomable.
On the off chance anybody is still with me... here's my point. I share in Matt's frustration, but I disagree with the assessment that this is the worst of all possible worlds. As bad as things are now, people have no earthly idea how much worse they can get if we don't handle this with EXTREME care. The most popular solution to this being floated right now is to repeal section 230, and it's as wrong as anything could possibly be. If 230 gets repealed, 80% of the internet will vanish overnight, and the sites everyone was worried about will have permanent lock in protected by the full force of the law.
Kurt just now
Posting made up statistics stating with certainty about what will happen in the future is not a particularly compelling position. The sites already have “permanent” lock in. What comes after permanent? I stuck with you through the entire missive, and by the time you got to the end, it’s running on fumes. Anyone with a desire to make the world a better place will delete their FB account, not worry about what might happen to it.
I wouldn't be so sure that the current monopoly is permanent. I've seen a lot of sites come and go that were considered unassailable in their own day. People believed nothing could ever replace MySpace, then Facebook came along. I could go down a list of Yahoo, Geocities, etc.
But that becomes impossible if nobody can start a website because they're afraid of getting sued over a single user comment.
What?! I've been putting my GeoCities webzine link in my AIM away message for months now. No wonder it hasn't had any hits.
Many of those sites you speak of didn't have massive government backing like the big tech companies of today do. They weren't used as a tool by law enforcement, and Alphabet agencies like they are today. Those sites were in the early days of the Internet when your connection was measured in Kbps and you had awesome clanky sounds while you waited for your system to connect.
Today's systems are live and constantly on line and becoming ever more so as now your TV and even your toaster is wired into the world and feeding information about you and yours. Yes, today cannot be compared to yesterday.
Kurtjust now
You’re making the mistake of imagining what happened in the past is how it works in the future. Fukuyama imagined that history ended in the same manner. The original post by Taibbi and nearly all of the comments in here are an encyclopedia of non sequitur-ial imagining.
Well, let me ask you then. And I'm not asking rhetorically.
Suppose that anyone is allowed to sue a website for content posted by users. What do you think will happen? How would that change the internet?
And in your defense, yes, the 80% statistic is made up. The "vanish overnight" part isn't. I know at least one website on the extreme free speech side whose owner says that the day section 230 is repealed, he will shut down the website and vanish from the face of the earth due to the legal liability.
What do I think will happen? How would it change the internet? The answer to both questions is I honestly don’t care if social media platforms get sued out of existence. I live in China much of the year and go from ultimate tech censorship to ultimate open ended anything goes-ness. If it all went away something awful would happen, like folks would might become interested and involved in projects of their own creation, maybe plant a garden or talk to their neighbor, or meditate or race bicycles, or ANYTHING other than giving a shit about what happens on FB. And, thank you for your civil discourse. It’s refreshing. We both love Taibbi, or we wouldn’t be in here.
You didn't answer the whole question. Your point about social media is well taken, but would it bother you if substack had to shut down? Would that be a bad thing?
Lots of websites would shut down because they have to face the same legal framework that other companies face. Should we cry for them? I think not.
Facebook would not be one such company. They would be like google and every other large company. They would fight in court and pay when the lost and settle when they thought they needed to.
I would also like to include the NYT in the Vacuity Hall of Fame. They’re as complicit in the idiocy of Q-ness as FB, by continually pushing it into the faces of the blank minded looking for a distraction fix as if it’s some world sweeping movement. It’s not. And now Taibbi is writing about it, which is a disappointment. That Q is being “censored” on FB does not portend anything in particular, and making the jump from Q being banned to us being on the doorstep of totalitarian thought crushing restrictions is simply a bridge too far for me to cross.
Ever heard of a piltdown man? Yes.. the Germans used the Bolsheviks in the same way media is using the QAnon/Antifa/Proud Boys.
When your Fuhrer becomes chancellor, you'll be all set.
You are grossly underestimating the complexity of content moderation. Mr. Bob has shared some wise words and his concerns are valid. See https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/pdf/10.1177/2053951719897945 and https://www.techdirt.com/articles/20190825/21540442853/protocols-not-platforms-technological-approach-to-free-speech.shtml
I was actually thinking about including some of Techdirt's "Content moderation is impossible at scale" content in the original post, but I figured it was already too long.
I don't endorse everything Techdirt says, but they're absolutely right about that one.
Agreed. I'm skeptical on his protocol argument but am learning more. I was going to link to Stanford's Center for Internet and Society but I think the site is down atm. Professor Keller writes a lot on this https://law.stanford.edu/publications/?primary_author=Daphne%20Keller&page=1
The protocols thing is... a mixed bag. We already have test cases in the form of things like e-mail and IRC. They work... -ish. (Actually, e-mail is terrible, but nevermind.)
But even those can fragment. I can't seem to find the story at the moment, but there was something a couple years back where a Mastodon (I think?) group refused to federate with another group due to perceived extremist views.
Whether that's a bug or a feature depends on the individual.
Yup.
Yeah, he is. If I have a point, it’s that it doesn’t matter. FB is testament to humans insatiable appetite for distraction. Censored, uncensored....doesn’t matter. In a world absent coherency, that anyone cares is the worrisome element.
And how, pray tell, is anyone supposed to determine what IS coherency without absolutely free speech?
Please, DO tell us all how China's totalitarian inhumanity is graceful again.
That's fucking nuts, and I'm not going to be delicate about that.
I certainly could be. Then again, I live much of the year in China and understand content moderation on levels the average Westerner does not, what it does and does not do. That Q is being “censored” has all the world changing impact of a small potato popping in the microwave. That anyone would give much thought to it reinforces all my worst misanthropic tendencies. Of course Mr. Bob’s concerns are valid. Everyone’s concerns are valid. My own concerns are that people care about FB in all the wrong ways. Everyone is entirely free to do whatever they want, but it’s not incumbent on any platform to provide the megaphone for lunatic fringe conspiracy theories grounded in fantasyland.
"... but it’s not incumbent on any platform to provide the megaphone for lunatic fringe conspiracy theories grounded in fantasyland."
Here's the thing. I understand why that's a common position, but I still disagree with it. When any entity is SO MUCH a part of public discourse that politicians using it can't legally block anyone, that's a part of the public square. And part of being the public square means allowing crazy people to use it sometimes. That's just the cost of doing business. We may not like it that Facebook or Twitter have become a significant political platforms. I don't. I hardly ever use either, especially for anything related to politics. But a huge number of people do. That's where we are, and we're going to have to figure out how to deal with it.
As far as China, I plead ignorance. I have a decent handle on the technical aspects of Chinese censorship, but the social and legal ones, not so much. I wouldn't know where to begin making a comparison.
....because what “happens” is a distraction. My thesis is that nothing is happening, and that’s the problem. That FB and Twitter are now the platform for world governance discourse is enervating, as it’s neither politics or discourse. It’s a distraction. I have a very good handle on censorship in the PRC. On the front end, it is a maddening and restrictive environment on more levels than I care to describe. Once one gets past this sort of surface issue, something else happens, and it’s surprisingly elegant and exposes a lot of what is best about humans. That does not make me a proponent of totalitarian governments, but it does make me understand that limitations can sometimes lead to good things. This is anathema to a too broad swath of Americans, and it is our loss. I never imagined I would write something like the preceding, but a little experience in other environments can change one’s perspective. That folks put so much emphasis on the vacuity of FB and Twitter is the problem, not all the other stuff that seems to be at the crux of this thread.
So... you're saying that government surveillance and censorship on a massive scale leading to people being jailed or simply disappearing for what they say online is a *good* thing? You'll have to explain that one to me.