America is moving in the direction of a police state and it only works because big tech is in bed with the DemocratIc party and the establishment wing of the Republican party. Is this really about the 2nd amendment? Not even close - gun ownership is a right. Is it about Trump's speech or the pro-gun protests which a 5th grader can tell you did not incite violence? Nope. Big tech's censorship and control is simply about shutting down half of the country's free speech and opinions to strengthen and expand the liberal belief that people with values and ideology that are different from theirs do not deserve to be heard. They will continue to play this hand until someone steps up and fights back. Whether you liked Trump or hated Trump, he wasn't afraid to stand up to this nonsense.
I agree. And it’s not just big tech. We now have the capital of the US in military lockdown. Lockdown, meaning no one can protest. As someone who has protested and observed protests on the Mall and the streets of DC, I can’t see this as anything but a shameful effective way to create a false sense of unity. Biden just literally scrubbed the most political of places free of dissent.
There was a violent attack on the seat of government. That is why Biden locked down the area. No responsible president could have done otherwise. If you were president, how would you react to a highly destructive attack on a key government building by BLM, in which they beat to death one of your policemen? Would you ignore it and take no precautions?
I’m not a fucking conservative FYI. But I also don’t give a crap about political elites who are in business for themselves so I empathize with the breachers who were there due to frustration at an impotent government. I didn’t see it as a violent attack or an insurrection or coup. I thought it was pretty funny that it was so easy to breach the Capitol. Maybe govt should convene for the next few months via zoom like everyone else until it’s safe to come out.
I would beef up security w/o a military encampment. I think there’s a way to do that without troops lounging around infecting each other with Covid and sleeping in parking garages and preventing citizens from gathering to show dissent. Talk to me a year from now when they’re still there.
Yeah Beetle Grisha. Of note about the eventual forced removal - it was led by Douglas McArthur who was Army Chief of Staff - is it even remotely possible that our current Army COS (had to look 'em up)
would consider suiting up - manning a mount on a steed - and having at 'em with a blackjack?
Now the betrayal is far more subtle, remote, and lucrative. Like Petraeus & Mattis - who build their 'brand' via the rank and file fighting and dying and then cash in with War Inc.
Another note I've read Beetle G - about how we now may be in a similar 'Phony War' - the lull of minor to non-existent ('39 & '40) fighting for England and France until the Blitz punched through the Ardennes - and the French folded and the Vichy prevailed - unlike Churchill who thwarted Halifax and the surrender monkeys.
So, yeah - parallels indeed.
Final unrelated side bar Beetle - I have arrived (thanks for the guidance) as a poster/blogger. Cypher was way not happy with my cribbing Webster's on cluing him on choice of post-nom de plum - check out the response -
Good point. I'm not a fan of MacArthur, but at least he was willing to get his hands dirty. To make my political position clear, I take the side of the Bonus Army.
I think Petraeus was always a careerist POS and people knew it. His nickname within the military was "BetrayUs." There was a long period of breathless, worshipful media coverage of him and McChrystal; they liked the cameras. This is well covered in the late Michael Hastings' book "The Operators."
I'm very disappointed in Mattis and McMaster. To be fair, I'm sure working with Trump wasn't easy. McMaster -- the guy who literally wrote the book on the mendacity of the general officer corps in Vietnam -- advocating for more of the same policies was skull-exploding for me.
I got all the F-Bombs you need and then some. I'm Slim Pickens riding an F-Bomb and yelling "YEE-HAW!"
If that is your criterion for success, you will be missing a lot of reasoned discourse. Do you want to provoke everyone to use an F-bomb? What purpose does angering people have? It can never be helpful in advancing a discussion, as far as I can see.
Very interesting. Thanks for that link. Seems from my quick read similar in terms of concerns about the govt not working for its citizens. And two protesters shot dead, one an immigrant.
Word of advice - Fun Police = Cypher - 'A cypher is a message written in a secret code. ... Another kind of cypher is an unimportant person who's blank or devoid of personality — you might call a lifeless character in a book a cypher. The word has an Arabic root, sifr, "zero, empty, or nothing."
Mr Zero is back - in a new 'Bird-Whistle' nom de plume
I will talk to you in a year if they are still there. I am going to repeat part of another comment I just posted below:
If you were President, and BLM attacked a key government building, and even cooperated with the attackers, what would you do? Not call in the National Guard? If not, why not? It would be one of your powers. How could you justify not using it to protect the inauguration, assuming it was the second inauguration for Trump?
I would beef up security and go on with the show. Do you remember the violence during Trump’s inauguration? Somehow he wasn’t affected by it. There is a way to create a shield without 30000 troops installed. Either we have to admit that security forces are inept and can’t determine when an attack will come (as they claimed were possible)and need brute force or see the military response as unjustified, alarming and perilous to this tattered democracy.
I very much agree. If the Capitol police had even halfway done their job, the National Guard would never have been needed. The question is, why did the Capitol Police fail? I read that their budget is enormous by comparison with the nature of the job they do. Yet they applied very inadequate resources on that day. Why?
Let me answer your question with a question: this is what happened in 2018 at the supreme court. Look at it, and ask yourself honestly and realistically what would have happened if those doors had been forced open. It's only luck or incompetence that separate these two incidents. So what should have been done back then when this occurred?
And just to clarify, as CNN themselves describe in this video:
"Protesters opposed to Brett Kavanaugh's appointment to the US Supreme Court swarmed over Washington -- massing at the Capitol, disrupting the confirmation vote in the Senate and banging on the Supreme Court building doors when Kavanaugh arrived to be sworn in."
Thank you for that link. All I can say is that there was adequate security that day and no one got in. I don't know anything else. One other point: no one in the crowd was wearing military-style gear. But the key point was that the security forces kept the crowd out. On 1/6/2021, the security forces failed.
If I were president or even speaker of the house, I would have listened to the requests for added security given 100k + demonstrators were expected. Nancy and Mitch should be fired just for that level of incompetence.
Really??? I thought that is what the police are for! (And your argument falls flat when you consider the death, destruction, and mayhem this summer, which included breeches of federal and state property.)
The death and destruction this summer are irrelevant to what we are discussing. The Capitol police did not handle the attack on the Capitol adequately. If you were President, and BLM attacked a key government building, and even cooperated with the attackers, what would you do? Not call in the National Guard? If not, why not? It would be one of your powers. How could you justify not using it to protect the inauguration, assuming it was the second inauguration for Trump?
The fact that the Capitol Police were unprepared (for reasons that still aren't clear) on Jan 6 has nothing to do with a prepared police force now. That is what the police are for. Fine, National Guard for the inauguration but why are they still there? If you say to guard against some possible violence during the impeachment trial, I'm not going along. We are getting dangerously close to a CCP style government. But you can't see it, so I am not going to try to convince you.
Given the No Comment coming from the House and Senate, it's obvious what happened. They were either incompetent or wanted something to happen. Not sure which one.
I don't have an answer. We have to inquire further, and find out when the National Guard is withdrawn. I believe their presence was warranted, but I have no information or ideas about when they should be withdrawn, except, of course, as soon as possible.
'The death and destruction this summer are irrelevant...'
What a pathetic excuse for a position. We are one year into this and yet to really feel the economic consequences of what you consider irrelevant - like - a MANUFACTURED DEPRESSION just in business closings and job losses alone.
And by the way for most of the 50k+ there peacefully to protest what they considered a stolen election - IT WAS TRUMPS 2ND INAUGURATION - cause they and I believe he won - possibly in a landslide.
Locking down the capital with 20k National Guard isn't a warning to the fellow Phoenician nut job wearing a buffalo head-dress and the other goof-ball now sitting in Prince George County because he messed with Goat Girl Pelosi's to-do list on her desk once he plunked down his Dr. Martins.
Tucker Carlson nailed it the other night on why - You are allowed to believe that Biden won - as I am that he is nothing more than a pathetic puppet installed illegally. He is incompetent and illegitimate and the pretext that you have bought into - if you are sincere - likewise puts your ability to make rational decisions suspect. We all are entitled to a Senior Moment Ralph. Not a delusional nightmare that you want to force on half the country.
There are 70+ million of us - and we are not going to curl into a fetal position or go away. We are going to re-install voter integrity - and stop these fascist-progs from stealing our republic.
I don't "get to determine". I just asserted that I think it is irrelevant to that narrow discussion. Repeating something I wrote above, I never said -- and I do not believe -- that the death and destruction this summer are unimportant. They are very important, just not relevant to a specific discussion of the Capitol situation on 1/6/2021.
I would like someone to explain why the “invaders” and “insurrectionists” did not bring guns if they were seriously trying to oust the “sacred democracy.”
We do know that some came with those plastic handcuffs. And one person (group?) actually did beat a policeman to death.
One big clarification I've learned from this batch of comments is that the most important problem is that the security failed. Regardless of anyone's intentions, if the crowd had not entered at all, there would have been no significant problem. So I am going to stop calling it an insurrection, etc., because it would have been a nothing-at-all if the security had held.
To put that another way, "intentions" of a group cannot easily be measured in a one-off like this because everyone has a different set to intentions. That is why security must hold: you never know what might happen if a crowd gets in somewhere. (And obviously they were not entering a public place, such as a shopping mall, where intentions might have to be analyzed, in retrospect anyway, if there were an attack.)
Thank you for this. I appreciate your decision to stop calling it an insurrection as the MSM/DNC is portraying it. I agree with you. My wife and I watched it live from our couch, with live feeds from various sources on the web. 90% of the folks there were peaceful and respectful of the Capitol. In several places the cops let them in, either thru fealty to the aims of the protestors or by order, maybe both at different times and places. Protestors taking happy selfies with the cops, walking deferentially between the velvet roped tour lines. There were indeed bad actors, many arrived before Trump even ended his speech. But from what I have seen at least a plurality of them were antifa, and called out as such by the protestors. Very, very few from the Trump contingent meant any harm to that sacred place. Remember, at base Trumpers are solid patriots. They love America, and the shrines that represent it. If you think otherwise you are deluded.
I want to circle back to why nobody has heard of David Bailey, the DC cop who evidently shot Ashli Babbit. If that was truly an "armed insurrection" and "coup" against our Republic, the cop who fired the shot that killed the prime "domestic terrorist" should be feted and welcomed as a hero! His name and deeds and stalwart defense of the Capitol and "our sacred democracy!" should be celebrated to the heavens by DNC and MSM!! But instead we have complete silence. Zero info from any investigation, zero interest and zero questions from the compliant MSM. Nobody knows his name. The truth does not fit the Narrative. The Narrative wants you to believe 5 people died because Trump Incited a Riot, worthy of Impeachement! Yeah, well... no. The DC cop David Bailey shot the unarmed Ashli Bobbit to death in the Capitol.
David Bailey shot unarmed protestor Ashli Bobbit to death in the Capitol. Just for clarity.
Several died of natural causes like heart attack, almost a given in a giant crowd like that. (How giant was the crowd? Nobody knows. That info is Not To Be Discussed.) DC cop Brian Sicknick walked away from the riot but died a day later from a head wound suffered during the riot. RIP. All evidence paints him as a man of honor and I have every reason to believe it.
To be clear I believe David Bailey may have been in the right of doing his job best he could. I have no reason to think he was a bad actor. Maybe he was the last line of defense before some cowering Congress Critters. Evidently he was security detail during the attack on Sen Scalise some years ago, and was wounded by the (Bernie Bro) assailant. Bailey's shot to the chest of the attacker was likely the mortal wound that stopped the attack. Add all that up and I could credit the man a hero. So how he came to shoot Ashli Babbit? Darn, if there was only an investigation. If only somebody cared enough to want to know the truth. But that does not fit the Narrative. You, Joe public, are just a serf to be played.
What they do not show you is much more important than what they holler to the skies.
I do not agree that antifa was involved in most of the instances of violence. Since most of the people who perpetrated violence or destruction have been arrested, and will be prosecuted, there is an opportunity to find out if they had connections with antifa. As for an investigation, my understanding is that an exhaustive investigation has already begun, and is expected to go on for a long time. How David Bailey came to shoot Ashli Babbit will surely be an important part of that investigation. Just try not to say it's not an investigation if the Democrats run it. They happen to be the party in power in both chambers, and whatever party that is usually controls investigations. If you want democracy, you have to accept that either party may be in power at any given time.
I disagree about Trump's speech, if you mean what he said to the crowd that went down to the Capitol. I say it did incite violence. How else can you interpret what he and Giuliani said?
And I definitely say the Democratic Party is not moving in the direction of a police state. No Democrat has ever advocated such a thing. You will not find a single Democrat who advocates anything of the sort. If you know of any, please reply because I want to know.
Trump's mistake was the event itself and expecting a change in outcome. His words were benign and he never suggested anyone should be violent. What is it the BLM "protesters" say, "silence is violence?" Well not speaking up and defending free speech by every democrat politician is supporting the ban on free speech including allowing twitter, youtube and facebook to silence the speech of the president of the US and those with a dissenting opinion. So that's every Democrat; not just one.
Trump said, "You cannot be weak, you have to be strong." That is incitement to violence when spoken to a crowd carrying weapons. And Giuliani suggested "trial by combat". How else can you interpret "trial by combat" than an incitement to violence? Suppose a black leader, speaking to a crowd of BLM supporters, suggested trial by combat. The BLM crowd then walked down and broke windows in the capitol, entered, and people were heard saying "Kill Pence", and they killed a policeman? Would you judge the words to be benign in that case? What would you have done as President after that happened?
The protestors were not carrying weapons of any real significance. Furthermore, telling the crowd to be strong and to peacefully protest at the capitol isn't an incitement to anything other than naivete. The playbook for that idiotic display was written over the summer. They didn't do anything that they haven't seen hundreds of times from those riots.
That said, using the capitol riot as a pretext to further disenfranchise anyone or anything on the right is unbelievably tone deaf. For God's sake, CNN is trying to build up support to censor Fox News because of an alleged pattern of disinformation and an incitement to violence. Honestly, I don't even know where to begin with that.
The best thing they could do is to treat these protestors with the same kid gloves that they have used for the thousands of protestors from the summer. Equal justice under the law could actually move the needle. Instead, they are pouring gasoline on this while they target, smear and harass American citizens. Anyone on the right is potentially guilty by association.
If I'm not mistaken, there were around 100k at the event. Several hundred of those protestors lost their shit. That is the definition of a mostly peaceful protest. I never blamed protestors over the summer who were there to exercise their right to assembly and to voice their grievances. I do blame the small percentage of them who were agitators and violent. The same applies for the capitol riot.
Antifa and BLM use revolutionary language as a standard practice. I have heard many protest leaders use language at these protests that were incredibly inflammatory. I don't remember them verbatim but they regularly encouraged activists to perform acts of violence and to directly overthrow our system of government.
In terms of, "direct action", they tried to burn down a federal courthouse with officers locked inside for well over a month. They set up autonomous zones in front of state capitols. That doesn't include all the people that were beaten and murdered by activists during that time. The resulting damage and loss of life was shocking for anyone who paid attention.
These people are the definition of extremists who really do want to overthrow and replace our government. I never mistook them for the vast majority of Americans on the left because that would be ridiculous. No group or ideology deserves to be defined by fringe elements that are tangentially related to them.
But it is clear that the right has lost the culture war and the left no longer has the right to call itself liberal. At this point, I kind-of hope that they get what they are asking for. I've got a great spot picked out to watch everything crumble.
I never thought I would see the day when the first amendment was up for debate. There is no nuance or discourse and civil libertarians are now white (or white adjacent) nationalists according to our moral superiors. It is really unbelievable that our great nation will be taken down by woke militants that have been coddled from birth. It's a fucking tragedy.
A common mistake I've seen these past months is equating a political mob (Trump supporters) with anarchists (Antifa) and racial justice rioters (BLM). All three are terrible taken together, but only one of these groups is supporting a political figure.
You are right. They are not comparable. The sheer size and scale of the summer riots puts them in their own category. There were literally hundreds of riots across the country. They were far more destructive to people, property and social order than the capitol riot could ever hope to be.
I really really doubt our great nation will be taken down by anything in the next few years. I don't see why you should be so pessimistic. Almost everyone who lives in the US wants it to survive!
The legacy media didn't attend or cover most of the riots so I had to rely on independent sources for information. Michael Tracey was one of the few journalists who actually covered them and those engaged in them through a cross country tour. He was assaulted in Portland because they didn't want him to stream the event. I watched as many live feeds as I could until I just couldn't stomach it anymore. There is no question that Antifa and some of the more militant BLM activists were the main agitators. I'm not going to dig up videos and police arrest records to prove that to you but they are widely available.
Your comment about Antifa and BLM rings hollow? They (both of them) are responsible for most of the $2.0 billion of damage and violent attacks this summer. They are the definition of fascism and marxism. Citing CNN and NPR weakens your argument.
Antifa and BLM share a common core of beliefs in revolutionary Marxism. I'm not going to dig for resources that you won't read anyway.
To some degree, you are correct about Antifa as a reactionary organization. There is no question that they will go out of their way to counter protest to anything that they perceive as fascist.
On inauguration day, Antifa protested and rioted against our newly elected president in Portland, Seattle, Denver and California. I guess you could say that they were reacting to a fascist regime taking power. You could also say that they were reacting to the existence of statues that they didn't like and DHS agents in a federal courthouse.
As for the rest, I don't really give a shit about who gets bused in and for what. I do take issue with violent extremism regardless of ideology.
Here's an example of BLM calling for destruction. I'll pre-emptively say, please don't insult anyone's intelligence by trying to argue that smashing into buildings and stealing stuff somehow doesn't count as "destruction":
“That is reparations,” Ariel Atkins, a BLM organiser told the broadcaster. “Anything they wanted to take, they can take it because these businesses have insurance.
“I don’t care if someone decides to loot a Gucci or a Macy’s or a Nike store, because that makes sure that person eats,” she said. “That makes sure that person has clothes.”
You should spend 15 minutes researching the Capitol breach because you're dead wrong.
Trump's rally could not have motivated the crowd, the timing wasn't there. The insurgents were already on the Capitol steps a full half hour prior to Trump finishing, and everyone finishes a Trump rally. Further, the Capitol was breached one half hour after Trump finished even though navigating from Ellipse to Capitol would have taken over an hour.
Say that Trump's uncivil 2 months of #stopthesteal leaves him responsible - even though his people had never acted so violently, and all we wanted was a legit audit - that's fine. But claiming that his 1/6 rally had anything to do with it is just false.
What weapons? Now you’re just making things up or intentionally lying. In his speech Trump intentionally called for the crowd to protest “peacefully and patriotically”. And by the way, Black Lies Matter constantly call for the killing of police. And often actually do kill police.
Ralph, elections are won because the diehards flip enough of the wafflers in the middle to their side.
All of the discussion about the Capitol idiot-fest would be moot if Trump, when asked if he accepts blame for Covid response errors, would have said, "Mistakes were made. I won't play the blame game. But I'm the president and the buck stops here. I apologize. From here on out we will work harder & we will do better. Thank you."
In other words, if he'd have acted like an adult or a leader and not like the little kid whose mommy says, "Donald who broke the vase?"
"Wasn't me mom. Must have been the dog," when they don't even have a dog.
America is almost criminally forgiving of its presidents.
I think he'd still be president.
In my mind, Trump's complete lack of humility in the face of his own egregious stupidity just makes him the spiritual heir of George Bush who landed on an aircraft carrier festooned with MISSION ACCOMPLISHED banners, a big stupid grin plastered on his face, right before the real slaughter in Iraq got started. Don't recall any apologies from the Shrubster either. The only difference is that America was too busy shitting its collective pants during Bush's term to think clearly so they re-elected the idjit , justifying it with bits of popular wisdom such as, "Well Cleetus, Mr. Bush started us on this journey to the cliff's edge, so we might as well let the old boy drive us right over."
I think the phrase most describing America during the Bush years would be "Scared Stupid."
I agree with everything you wrote in that comment! Other countries imprison their ex-leaders with some regularity. What the political result might be if we did that here, I have no idea. Some questions are unanswerable. Either an approach is tried, and we get to find out the result, or the untried approach just... disappears. Kind of like evolution. A mutation happens and some offspring "try it out". If they survive, the mutation persists. If not, there is nothing to be remembered.
What I'm getting sick of is the Bible size justifications & obfuscations that swirl around Trump's stay in office these days.
Folk are really trying to make a martyr out of guy who, if he were a comic book character, would have a completely blank thought bubble above his head at least 60% of the time you looked at him. The other 40% of the time he just looked like he wanted to be somewhere else. Anywhere else.
The only time Dondsi came alive was during his periodic visits to the faithful where he worked the crowd like a demented Buddy Hackett.
Maybe you should ask why Trump got elected in the first place instead of misleading everyone into a justification and rationalization of the consequences of horrible leadership ??
I won't respond to grisha because he has been abusive in the past. I am by no means a bot. You can ask me any series of questions that a bot could not answer. So far, no bot can give you a coherent account spread over many responses. For a bot to do so would require a far different kind of machine learning architecture. I don't think it's impossible, but I am not aware of any current architecture that comes close. Admittedly I could be wrong, so if anyone can point to a bot implementation that could respond as I do, I would be eager to investigate it. I am torn between wanting the machines to be more intelligent and being nervous about the consequences.
I suspect you'll never understand there is no left or right, only top and bottom. That's all there's ever been and more than likely all they'll ever be.
Oh I definitely understand that; unfortunately my lazy, often imprecise, writing often leads me to use “easy” terminology (such as leftists) that is not the best terminology.
There is a group of Democrats trying to push that (including Biden) but luckily one of the squads own is trying to pass a resolution to block it. Rashida Tlaib says it will kill civil liberties. Makes me really really happy she’s around. We need her & other squad members to join w/ Rand Paul & Mike Lee to stop a new law going through.
I’m not sure. I do know that right now, they have every law on the book already to stop all kinds of domestic terrorism, they do not need to pass anything else. I’m mean, the whole Stop the Steal rally was largely planned on Face Book in brood daylight. All the info was floating around out there. The capital police were not prepared and no new domestic terrorism law would’ve helped that. This is massive NSA, FBI power grab. They want Apple to have to let them into the back door of phones. And as long as we the people let fear blind us, we will give away all of our civil rights and liberties.
You mean "led". "Lead" refers to the metal. "Led" is the past tense of the verb "lead", which makes the whole situation very confusing. In practice, I think the only way to get that distinction right is to have a lot of practice reading and writing.l
I am in no way a troll. I want a reasoned discussion. Unfortunately mule has been abusive in the past and so I had hoped not to respond to him. But I don't like to leave calumny without a response. A difficult dilemma.
There is a realignment happening. It’s slow starting but I think we’ll end up seeing a right/left populist anti-war movement happening. It’s why you see Glen Greenwald & Jimmy Dore on Tucker Carlson and not MSNBC.
I new something weird was going on when my Fox News watching Baby Boomer parents started becoming very anti-war and thinking Trump should pardon Snowden! Lol, this would’ve been unthinkable in the early aughts. Say what you want about Glen going on icky Fox News but he’s getting thru to some very right wing boomers out there and it’s AMAZING!!!
Well, my parents are your typical suburban middle class Fox News watchers. They’re both retired but they’ve been voting republican since the 70’s. They were pretty dogmatically anti-liberal when I was growing up (80’s & 90’s) but we weren’t religious so I didn’t get the whole evangelical upbringing (though K have extended family that are very much religious fundamentalists).
So, my parents would be your typical right winger that would call Bernie a communist and yada yada. That’s the whole point, there are these people who’ve been dogmatically republican for over 40 years, that are starting to rethink all these things. There is no way my parents would’ve ever thought someone like Snowden should be pardon. Ever. They are totally on board now.
So, to all the so called liberals out there that give Glenn Greenwald or Eric Weinstein a hard time for going on Fox or think they’ve switched sides, they’re dead wrong. My parents have come around on issues like privacy, anti-war and anti-monopoly since watching shows like that. It’s anecdotal but if it can happen to my Regan devotee parents it can happen to anyone.
That's a very good point. If we could figure some of that out, it would be great. But there is no way to figure out the composition of a crowd without extensive surveillance and concerted investigation.
They are calling for the isolation and gun confiscation of the half of the country that supported Trump. That does not sound problematic to you? If you are American, it should.
They are pulling down any content that does not comport with that goal, or support the false narrative behind it.
It's hard to understand if you do not realize that the very thing that we believed about Russia and China - that the state controlled all media. Happened long ago in this country. The thing is, they are now cracking down on the small fringe media outlets that they had let to exist. The reason for that will only be visible to you once you realize that fact about your media- that it's state media.
When you are open to that fact, you will see why Trump had to be 1000% maligned and lied about night and day- to the point wherein many victims of this stressful media onslaught cannot stand the mention of his name. Trump derangement syndrome is a manufactured condition, and many in this country will never be able to see what is behind it.
Democrats and Republicans swap power back and forth and remain civil because ultimately they have the same goal- which is convincing us they they have our interests at heart and that they answer to us. As this years exposed election fraud showed us, they do not. Their alignments are with big tech and big pharma.
Trump was a genuine outsider who they never thought would overcome their rigged systems. Once he did get in, they were desperate to stymie him and get him out ASAP (resist!). But all the while, they had to maintain the mirage of bi-partisanship. Not till the final hour - the electoral college vote (with the mercenary, paid violent rioters injected into the Trump rally) did the unilateral nature of their operation shine through.
In my experience, the dyed-in-the-wool party acolytes (especially Democrat) will never see their party and it's actions for anything other than what they were taught in grade school. But this blindness will cost us our country.
Preparing this bankrupt country for the Great Reset is the current goal of both parties is right now. You should research it. But use Duck Duck Go to search because Google is also controlled and censored.
Sorry for the bad news, but knowing is better than not knowing.
While I support Janine's right to make this comment, I think many of us would disagree heartily with some of the propositions. I would let it go except that many will paint all of us who disagree with Ralph's original and subsequent posts with a broad brush and throw us into what I think is a fringe view. I don't mean to disparage Janine, but most of us who are more measured and less likely to believe some of the hyperbole, would not sign on to your comment. I certainly don't! That being said, I find some bits of truth in Janine's comment, but Janine has merely put forth hypotheses (that many would call the misnomer "conspiracy theories") that must be satisfied by EVIDENCE before stating them as truth.
You seem to be casting about for explanations for what's going on in this country. While you do so, the country, as janine says, will be lost.
Janine nailed it, calling the sequence of events accurately. He/she did a whole lot more than "provide some bits of truth". Providing you are not a bot like Ralph, I'd suggest you keep an open mind and attempt to see all of this in a different light.
Easy to shut down someone by calling them a "bot." (Reminds me of shutting down people by automatically calling them a racist or whatever.) Although I disagree with Ralph on many of his posts, he is certainly not a bot. Just read his many posts and if you are honest, you will have to admit he is not a bot. As to the rest of your reply, I am not "casting about for explanations" at all. Unlike you, I don't hold a monopoly on the truth.
Thank you for accepting that I am not a bot. I suppose conceivably there could be a bot that writes like me, but that is in the future, if it ever can happen. I'd be grateful for a reply when you disagree with me, because my whole purpose here is to learn. Matt is trying to occupy a difficult territory, a sort of no-man's land between "right" and "left". It is a big puzzle.
I would never intentionally criticize one person for someone else's views. If I ever do so, I hope someone will point that out as I do not wish it at all. In fact I think that is one of the most powerful tendencies that are polarizing the country. Our current ideological split does not take into account that each person's views are different from any other person's views. The current two-party system appears to wipe out these differences. At the present time that is not an acceptable situation. We need some way of involving other parties or some similar arrangement. I unfortunately would not know how to make that happen, so I hope some people are looking into it.
It is a terrible tendency which is very much encouraged by the way Twitter works. Twitter automatically turns a mob on anyone who disagrees with something a much-followed person writes. I honestly think Twitter is a Bad Thing. I mention Twitter here only because I think the influence of Twitter spills over into everything else online.
Because it's a corporate fascist state they are advocating for. Who needs policy when you control the currency, are privy to all online and telecommunications conversations, have legalized torture, gulags, irradiated due process, and used a virus to lock people down and ruin their way of life to the point they end up living on the street ??
So funny to hear anyone try to defend either of the funding arms of the uniparty and it's owners !
Thanks for the chuckle and I hope you wake up soon.
I cannot find the post you are replying to. If it is one of mine, please help me figure out which one it is. Substack makes this quite difficult. Thanks.
The Dem alliance w hedge funds banks corps and Silicon Valley set enuf amigo not to mention police state censorship demanded by Dem senators Marley and Wyden !
Amen. The dems stole the republican funding and the police state agenda started by Ronnie Ray-gun. Ronnie was first and foremost a propagandist dating clear back to ww2 until the day he died.
I agree. It's not about algorithms; it's about politics. Go to YouTube and search for "how to clean a gun" or "how to shoot a gun" or even "how to build a gun". You'll get hundreds of results. And yet they censor videos that show gun rights rallies? That's not an algorithm doing that, it's a person.
Trump's fear is based on 'ignorance is bliss.' He's been able to 'weather' so many debacles due to others propping him up, like the GOP, wealthy Jews, his Dad, etc and so on. His innate talent is as Carnival Barker. He has no depth of understanding of almost everything. He has made it by his connections with others. I'm not trying to insult him or his followers, but he has a vocabulary of a spokesman who doesn't know anything, but can sell you on it, with highly exaggerated words and superlatives and phrases. "You're gonna win so often you're gonna get tired of winning." "You're gonna have the best healthcare anywhere." He's the prime seller of euphemism, and still his ignorance is a lot like mentally ill folks who have no filter in their brain, because they lack the necessary self-awareness, of, say, like the kinesthetic sense of your body that knows its appendages' location in space internally, without a mirror.
Another example, I wonder what Trump says of the amount of misinformation and disinformation that ceased across the Twitter network when he was taken off of Twitter? He has very little clue of the enormous power of the Presidency. And surprisingly, it's astounding he didn't do more damage than he did, because as stated, 'ignorance is bliss' and Brother Trump, well, he perhaps thought of himself as a player of a tiny local fiefdom, not at all of an entire world Empire (in decline, but still).
In today’s world, Thomas Paine and Patrick Henry would be kicked off of Twitter and FB and deplatformed by Amazon. Censorship is allowed by a cowardly populace that clings to the status quo, no matter how repressive it is.
There is a growing body of the populace that sees through the merger of state+media+big-tech. Unfortunately, many in this country are sound asleep and do not realize that everything they watch on television is controlled by state interests (thus the 1000% negative Trump coverage [if you are ready to throw "Fox" at me, then you haven't watched Fox lately]). Now the focus is on marginalizing anyone who supported Trump in any way, and creating a terror-scare towards the goal of isolating them and confiscating their guns.
The reason for this goal, is so the US can be absorbed into the globalist power structure.
(Duck Duck Go: The Great Reset {Google is censored}) The Fed is bankrupt, and the ruling class is complicit is this goal. Don't take my word for it; research it for yourself.
It's why the election fraud was broadly swept under the rug- (Zero evidentiary hearing have been made in any court, but cases are still sitting on the Supreme Courts docket. Why has the media ignored that fact and outright lied about the existence of evidence?).
I (an incurable romantic) fully believe that heroine/hero is out there but she/he does not want to get involved in American politics as presently constituted.
Not much heroism in a constitutionally limited republic awash in otherworldly wealth - where the dissolute / mentally ill set minority businesses on fire to "protest" racism or charge into the capitol to take photos in a bison hat.
We are much more likely to see heroism in places where students and freedom fighters risk their lives to be heard, or for simply speaking about freedom (Hong Kong, China, Nicaragua etc)
My opinions on it only got me a B+ in my Politics Science thesis ;-)
That country is such a mess, I don't know where to start anymore. How about this, I have friends who trained contras in Honduras. I have friends who were contras. I have friends who were shot. I know land owners who were killed when they refused to sign over property to the Sandinistas. And I have personal accounts of paying extra taxes to Somoza because the Guardia showed up with automatic weapons to make extra "tax collections" - so many, many stories.
While not an easy migration, I'm moving away from Google, YouTube and Facebook. I've enjoyed their services immensely over the years but I just can't tolerate censorship from corporations in this manor. I have no issue if an Independent Content Creator uploads a video committing a crime or encouraging others to do so but none of these stories are of Creators violating the law. It seems the common thread is those Independent Content Creators and other users of Big Tech are more and more, people like me. I question the Narrative, I don't believe Corporate Media or Government without a healthy does of skepticism. I don't consume Corporate Media at all, that's one reason I'm here right now. I only consume Independent Journalism and Content Creators.
It seems evident to me that the Duopoly of political parties, NeoCon/NeoLibs, working with Corporations are doing an end run around the 1st amendment citing "private property" as their cheap veneer.
Close out your Facebook, move to Gab. Close out Twitter move to .....too late (another victim of the vertical monopoly). Move away from YouTube for Odysee, Bitchute, Rumble. Close out your gmail/hotmail/outlook/yahoo email accounts for protonmail or Tutanota.
They're crude by comparison but they're not in the Elite Corporate/Government/Narrative club.
Big Tech and their cabal have power because we give it to them.
I too have been leaving the big tech platforms (for several years now). It's not that hard (I use Brave, Duck-duck-go, protonmail, Locals, and I NEVER buy from Amazon.) However, there is no viable alternative to Youtube and therein lies the rub for Status Coup and other independent news outlets. (Thankfully The Hill Rising has managed to rise above but their content is not that challenging.)
I stopped using google for search years ago. It's actually not great search. Most people use it out of habit or for lack of "searching" for alternatives. Saying google is good at search is like saying Microsoft makes great operating systems. Ubiquity does not equal excellence.
Reading Matt's column and Glenn Greenwald's I get so depressed, between the left wanting more censorship and the right not willing to do anything are we doomed? Seriously it feels like there is no bottom and both the democrats and republicans could care less.
Have you ever watched NFL football? The commercials, I mean. Ad after ad for cops shows and military dramas (think SEAL Team) showcase guns. Firearms. Not only guns, but men and women pointing them in the general direction of other people. All these "gun" ads for violent shows that our kids see are accepted as "normal," yet a few firearms at a rally violate YouTube's policy?
If we wanted to enforce a firearm/violence policy on American TV, half the shows would go off the air.
If memory serves, Wile E Coyote preferred TNT and cannon balls. Assume they will get rid of those. ACME has to be an allegory for white supremacy as well.
These are not "pro-gun" protests. They are "civil rights" and "pro-Constitution" protests.
1/6 was not a "riot" or "insurrection". It was a "mostly peaceful protest". No person has been charged with "insurrection" which begs the question of how Trump can be impeached for inciting insurrection.
It was not "Twitter" that expected follow on violent protests on 1/17. It was FBI agents gaslighting on Twitter hoping to cause violent protests on 1/17.
Progressives are getting caught up in their own creation of cancel culture and technocratic tyranny. Cry me a river. For example, "I understand, there must be some limits. If someone like Alex Jones is saying, “Go get your guns, get out there,” that’s really dangerous. But this, this is beyond a slippery slope. It’s a cliff. If they start pulling live streams or issuing strikes like this, it’s basically a death sentence for outlets like ours." JC's cognitive dissonance is blinding.
"Hate Speech" is not a thing in the USA....yet.
"In the hands of alternative media, however, the tool posed another problem, in the form of simply showing offensive reality." - "Offense" is subjective. For example, I am not the least bit offended by any person's words because I am not mentally weak.
Language matters Matt. Please be precise and stop using the nomenclature of the enemies of our country(The Misleadia's Newspeak Minders).
Well Said. What should have been a beautiful exercise in democracy - the same kind of evidentiary hearing put before the respective legislatures - the receipts as Bannon put it on War Room - just died on the spot - and the Dems have been overplaying the event ever since.
That Nanny Goat came out today and announced HR 1 as her #1 legislative priority openly reveals just what joke the Kabuki Impeachment is really all about - keep the mob/great unwashed distracted while they install a Californian-style coup - Big Tech and Big Gov all the time - the end of the Westphalian tradition - an end to the individual as sovereign - an end to our republican form of self-governance.
That is why MT's article is so important - because we have seen just how on-board the MSM is to assist.
At every step they reveal their globalist agenda - and so it is with supporters here. Anti-democratic at their core. Their obsession with repealing the 2nd amendment or at least regulating it to the point of irrelevance is self-evident - and - explains why the Soros approved and funded NY Attorney General attacked a wounded (by its own infighting) NRA - and in doing so crippled the organizations usual ability to help Republicans with election Ground Game....
That lawfare manipulation is but one of many progressive 'projects' that has led us to this crucial point - and again - I believe the country is waking up.
I like how Google's motto for years was "don't be evil." To me, that's the equivalent of going on a date, and they first thing they say is "I'm not a serial killer"
There is zero chance of gaining any regulatory relief from the federal government under the current administration. If Republicans are smart - an "if" large enough to hide a couple galactic clusters inside - they look at their recent House wins, and start running NOW on a free speech platform for 2022.
Yes, private businesses can limits what is posted to their servers.
But the attempts to shut down alternative services are grotesque violations of anti-trust, and need to be treated as such. The coordinated efforts to not only kick Parler off Amazon servers, but to pressure their attorneys, their domain hosts, even their flippin' accountants, into dropping them as clients, are or ought to be illegal.
It's already illegal under civil law to conspire to deny others the opportunity to earn a living through campaigns of harassment. It's time to start going after these clowns.
Absolutely. If Parlor isn't the final straw I can't imagine what could be. These are monopolies that must be brought to heel to restore free expression - and MT's article is but a growing flood of evidence.
Great interview! This is kind of related to the interview Jimmy Dore had with a member of the Boogaloo Boys. It was a really good interview and surprising. It turns out the Boogaloo are not white supremacist racists. At all. There’s so much the msm is either willfully keeping from us in order to keep the sides divided or they just live in a bubble and are not aware of the common interests of so many of these groups.
Without these independent media outlets we would be kept in the dark about so much. This summer Michael Tracey went to Minneapolis and filmed interviews with locals, reported on people who had their businesses looted, burned and very damaged due to the riots. It is so incredible how derelict our media is in reporting any kind of truth. They have a narrative and they will NOT deviate from it whatsoever. It is so shameful and disgusting.
I support and will continue to support as much independent media as I can afford to. I’m so sick of being only able to choose from the red or blue team. I just want the straight, unvarnished truth no matter what. Follow the facts wherever they lead. Ideology kills, literally.
Dude followed all the rules scrupulously and still got shot by police. Castile's case just tells me this: "If a cop asks you whether you're carrying, say 'no.'" His crime was being honest. He's dead. Does it pay to be honest?
Maybe it's not all about race, actually? I understand the frustrations of a lot of the BLM folks, but it also seems like there's a strenuous MSM effort to redirect this conversation to race-not-class.
He followed all the rules until the cop told him to stop reaching into his pocket and then he did not follow the rules. I am not defending the actions of the cop, but it is not as cut and dried as you make it sound.
But I do agree that the MSM is redirecting the conversation to race when it should be more about class.
I love that the majority of commenters on here are challenging each other to think about things in different ways AND are able to do so in a respectful way! The comments sections for both Matt and Glenn are full of so many different thoughts and opinions...for sure many angles that I would not have found on my own. :-)
I don't disagree with that, which is why I said I am not defending the actions of the cop. Overall there is always a lot more to each story than what they media tries to portray them to be.
So many people are not curious enough to look into the details. They are happy with one version of the story (highlighting certain aspects) being presented to them and will never question that there could be more.
Michael Tracey was one of the few journalists who actually covered the human impact for those riots by speaking to those who were actually affected by them. What he uncovered in a few informal interviews from random people on the street was incredibly revealing and heart breaking.
OMG! Yes, I just couldn’t believe how candid those interviews were. I absolutely cannot believe what the corporate media are willfully ignoring. These people will remember this. Those cities will be living through the after shocks of these riots for many years. Watts California was never the same.
I couldn't agree more. Legacy media is in shambles. They present themselves as the arbiters of truth and morality. In and of itself, that is really scary because that is what authoritarians and religious zealots do. The majority of journalists have become empty, hateful mouthpieces.
Where did curiosity go? What happened to questioning authority? We have raised a generation of adult children who seem to be incapable of critical thought. They want to feel safe from dissenting views that may challenge their preconceptions of the world.
The unholy alliance of tech overlords, the legacy media and the illiberal political establishment keeps me up at night. Post modernism is eating everything.
I've never liked that "incitement" is not protected by the First Amendment, and I've been extremely dismayed lately by how its lack of protection is almost universally accepted, by liberals especially, though this dreadfulness is understandable because the illegality of incitement has been validated by the U.S. Supreme Court for decades. Nonetheless, think about what outlawing incitement means. Does it not invoke, and answer in the affirmative on everyone's behalf, the sententious question asked of children, "If someone told you to go jump off a bridge, would you do it?"
Banning incitement is infantilizing and dehumanizing. With this concept, we've made an unseemly, morally obtuse concession to the trope of the Mob, a long-standing, anti-democratic slander in political theory that goes back to Plato and neutralizes the responsibility of those who listen to an inciter to restrain themselves (assuming they are moved), and not commit crimes afterwards. Proof: the disavowal of responsibility by some of those who stormed the Capitol on the ground that Trump incited them. In essence, these idiots are saying, and asking the rest of us to accept, that they were lemmings and should be treated as such. This is not morally valid in a would-be free, democratic society.
But if you don't buy that, I am here to inform you that, as we speak, the concept of incitement is being negligently and willfully stretched to encompass "incitements" beyond the current legal standard that supposedly circumscribes its unwarranted extension, and that doing this has been a project of the political establishment and its officious intellectuals, e.g. Cass Sunstein, for a long time. Glenn Greenwald just did a very fine run down of how this expansion is unfolding, and the threat to freedom of speech it poses is obvious. Therefore, watch out: if you encourage this development, then all the limits on the concept's current misapplication to less than indisputable incitements to "imminent lawless action", as the dubious saying goes, will fall away, leaving any government stooge or tech monopoly free to claim that it also applies to unauthorized thoughts and speech where the threat of violence is unquestionably non-existent.
10. Suspend rule of law - Free speech, Patriot Act, Shooting at Protesters (check)
*** Cannot say we were not warned. Hedges talked about sacrifice zones. Dr. West talked about the neo-fascist and neoliberal elements of the elite clashing and consolidating. Thomas Frank reminds us that the corporate left and moderate right have merged with the intelligence community, big media and tech companies to form the merger between state, business, and military - very definition of fascism.
Tell tale sign is to look out across our country and look at all the indifference from 400,000 to 500,000 deaths, as capital seeks business as usual and the wealthy are seeking normalcy. People who are struggling want healthcare, non-penury education, and affordable housing, but this would eat into the profit streams of people who are in moral bankruptcy -- so they choose to forget. This is how you can tell we are fucked as a nation. Every person for themselves (YOYO - you're on your own) just does not work. It is a fable, a story tale from an exploitative business class pissed off that Roosevelt beat them for so long --- not taking inventory and shoving Taibbi's vampire squid up our asses, ridiculing even the most minor attempts at socialist policies to help people survive because ....
wait for it
wait for it
It's "commy-u-nest" - when any first year course in economics could explain that all to most economies across the world find a way to balance capital and labor needs.
Alas, this kind of thinking is what will be the death of us and our country - Agnotology 101
#1, Big Tech is a misnomer. This is Big Low Tech of user generated content webpages, cookies and advertising sales. It is certainly not an essential tech. Remove their liability protection on one hand and strengthen the ability to sue by users, force them to produce reporting to individual users on what data they collected and what they sold it for and their business models will collapse and new players will emerge. Google today is almost useless as a basic info research tool. Pages and pages of ads followed by product marketing masquerading as info and reviews. Force them to make a pure info search options available. Force twitter to cough up identities of cancel mobs participants and give users the ability to sue them.
A Blue Checkmark fighting dozens of lawsuits in number of states will think twice before advocating cancelling anyone. There is nothing more dangerous to 1st amendment and our freedom to think and debate than the current social media monopolies. Apple and Google on the other hand should be divested of of the app stores so alternatives to these monopolies can appear and grow. Amazon can easily be told that discrimination against any American because of their political views will automatically disqualify them from bidding on any government contracts be there for cloud services or toilet paper. All of the above can be done within the boundaries of the Constitution.
Gotta give my usual spiel here. Allowed users to sue platforms for third party content (revoking section 230) won't go the way you're picturing. Big Tech would benefit from it, because they'd be the only ones who could afford the necessary lawyers. Smaller sites would cease to exist overnight, and there would be no more startups because of the legal liability.
That said I absolutely agree about the app stores. The way they're being pressured to remove Instagram because people MIGHT be using it to plan bad things in a way that the government can't spy on is spine chilling. I'd say this calls for government regulation, expect the government is actively contributing to the problem! In a more sane world, a choice of app stores would be ideal. You can still do this if you're technically inclined, but it's not for the feint of heart, and certain things just don't exist on any alternative app store.
The social media outlets for news are like public utilities. They are similar to a phone line. Or even a book. We don't shut down people's phones because they may be saying something we don't like. Society did try book banning and book burning, but the need for dialogue is too strong to be suppressed forever. If the oligarchs control our access to ideas, it's all over. This is a huge threat to my right to choose where I get my ideas and which sources I trust in the end.
Gotta disagree on that one. An ISP is more similar to a phone line. Comcast, Cox, etc. They exist (more or less) to agnostically move electric signals from one place to another. There's MUCH more going on with a social media platform. The infrastructure is several orders of magnitude more complicated. The service is, by its nature, much different, being more interactive and involving the owner of the service much more than, say, a phone call.
That's not to say social media giants shoudn't be regulated, I just don't know know what they should be regulated AS. I don't think utility is it. I'm not sure the proper category actually EXISTS yet.
Would a book store be a better analogy? Or a news stand? It is hard to find a perfect comparison. If we were to regulate Google, FB, Twitter, etc., what would that look like?
Censorship is hard to fine tune. Aside from shouting "fire" in a crowded theater, we've wisely not set limits on speech.
There was a case some years ago in California where some people were making political speeches in a mall. It went to court, and the could ruled that even though it was private property, it was a public space, and the political speech had to be allowed.
I don't see this US Supreme Court adopting that kind of fine tuning. Maybe social media is sui generis and we will have to be creative. The question is: is there consensus that even hate speech is protected? Most people fail to understand that the First Amendment was designed to protect the minority and not the majority. Most people want to curtail speech they don't agree with - which obviously doesn't work.
This is an excellent comment and I am in a similar state of bafflement. My sticky wicket is that participation in social media networks is entirely voluntary. I don't know who I would want or trust to "regulate" them, or in what way. I dislike censorship on Twitter, but I'm also like, "Y'know, you can not go on Twitter."
That’s the thing-it’s about ideological oversight, not $$$. You don’t see people begrudging the utility companies their honest payment for services-but you would see an uprising if they denied service to legit accounts. I agree 1000% with the internet getting put in the same category as ConEd or CG&E or whomever.
Me too. I resisted this forever because of free market dogma but 2020 has shown me that this is too important in the hands of a few people. Libertarianism is as much utopianism as socialism. Neither work in reality.
This. I have bought a book from a used bookstore in Wisconsin off Amazon that wasn’t available anywhere else-a publisher’s combo edition of James Bond novels. 20 years ago would I have launched an obsessive personal search of used bookstores within a 1,000 mile radius for said book-of course not. But that’s just me. Now people are too lazy to go to friggin Taco Bell w/out Uber Eats........
Not long ago Congress published a major 450 page report on -- Silicon Valley tech. giants monopolies. It was expected that major action will be on breaking up Amazon, Facebook and Google into well defined pieces.
This appears not likely since Democrat oligarchs and their WS and arms/intelligence industry donors are grateful for silencing Democrat party and Biden-family corruption (Hunter's laptops, etc.) facts and now -- massive silencing of independent news stories.
Amazon, Google, Facebook, etc. are completely integrated into surveillance apparatus -- they are playing a key role in limiting remnants of free speech in the US -- a fascism packaged as "fight against fascism". A more polite term used for fascism in the US is -- authoritarianism...
Only a 3rd, 4th, etc. viable parties will reduce the two-party monopoly of one party with two wings - wings formed to polarize population into "red" and "blue" factions.
Also remember -- DSA "party" is part of Democrat party formed solely to harness and corrupt "progressives" ala TYT, The Intercept, select members of Congress/Senate. DNC cabal of oligarchs are afraid of progressives -- they closely collaborate with GOP on their common interests.
"But how can alternative media operate if it doesn’t know exactly where the lines are?"
That's how the Good People want it. Don't specify clear rules. Don't quantify anything. Just keep it all muddy and let the Good People decide who is excellent, who can be heard, etc. They know better than you.
America is moving in the direction of a police state and it only works because big tech is in bed with the DemocratIc party and the establishment wing of the Republican party. Is this really about the 2nd amendment? Not even close - gun ownership is a right. Is it about Trump's speech or the pro-gun protests which a 5th grader can tell you did not incite violence? Nope. Big tech's censorship and control is simply about shutting down half of the country's free speech and opinions to strengthen and expand the liberal belief that people with values and ideology that are different from theirs do not deserve to be heard. They will continue to play this hand until someone steps up and fights back. Whether you liked Trump or hated Trump, he wasn't afraid to stand up to this nonsense.
I agree. And it’s not just big tech. We now have the capital of the US in military lockdown. Lockdown, meaning no one can protest. As someone who has protested and observed protests on the Mall and the streets of DC, I can’t see this as anything but a shameful effective way to create a false sense of unity. Biden just literally scrubbed the most political of places free of dissent.
There was a violent attack on the seat of government. That is why Biden locked down the area. No responsible president could have done otherwise. If you were president, how would you react to a highly destructive attack on a key government building by BLM, in which they beat to death one of your policemen? Would you ignore it and take no precautions?
I’m not a fucking conservative FYI. But I also don’t give a crap about political elites who are in business for themselves so I empathize with the breachers who were there due to frustration at an impotent government. I didn’t see it as a violent attack or an insurrection or coup. I thought it was pretty funny that it was so easy to breach the Capitol. Maybe govt should convene for the next few months via zoom like everyone else until it’s safe to come out.
I would beef up security w/o a military encampment. I think there’s a way to do that without troops lounging around infecting each other with Covid and sleeping in parking garages and preventing citizens from gathering to show dissent. Talk to me a year from now when they’re still there.
There are weird parallels between what's been going on in the past few weeks and the Bonus Army of 1932: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bonus_Army
Yeah Beetle Grisha. Of note about the eventual forced removal - it was led by Douglas McArthur who was Army Chief of Staff - is it even remotely possible that our current Army COS (had to look 'em up)
would consider suiting up - manning a mount on a steed - and having at 'em with a blackjack?
Now the betrayal is far more subtle, remote, and lucrative. Like Petraeus & Mattis - who build their 'brand' via the rank and file fighting and dying and then cash in with War Inc.
Another note I've read Beetle G - about how we now may be in a similar 'Phony War' - the lull of minor to non-existent ('39 & '40) fighting for England and France until the Blitz punched through the Ardennes - and the French folded and the Vichy prevailed - unlike Churchill who thwarted Halifax and the surrender monkeys.
So, yeah - parallels indeed.
Final unrelated side bar Beetle - I have arrived (thanks for the guidance) as a poster/blogger. Cypher was way not happy with my cribbing Webster's on cluing him on choice of post-nom de plum - check out the response -
Got my first F-Bomb. I have arrived. Hooray!
Good point. I'm not a fan of MacArthur, but at least he was willing to get his hands dirty. To make my political position clear, I take the side of the Bonus Army.
I think Petraeus was always a careerist POS and people knew it. His nickname within the military was "BetrayUs." There was a long period of breathless, worshipful media coverage of him and McChrystal; they liked the cameras. This is well covered in the late Michael Hastings' book "The Operators."
I'm very disappointed in Mattis and McMaster. To be fair, I'm sure working with Trump wasn't easy. McMaster -- the guy who literally wrote the book on the mendacity of the general officer corps in Vietnam -- advocating for more of the same policies was skull-exploding for me.
I got all the F-Bombs you need and then some. I'm Slim Pickens riding an F-Bomb and yelling "YEE-HAW!"
If that is your criterion for success, you will be missing a lot of reasoned discourse. Do you want to provoke everyone to use an F-bomb? What purpose does angering people have? It can never be helpful in advancing a discussion, as far as I can see.
Very interesting. Thanks for that link. Seems from my quick read similar in terms of concerns about the govt not working for its citizens. And two protesters shot dead, one an immigrant.
The bonus army camped and stayed; these deranged, uncouth ruffians and lunatics came, rioted, invaded, and then left to avoid arrest.
Word of advice - Fun Police = Cypher - 'A cypher is a message written in a secret code. ... Another kind of cypher is an unimportant person who's blank or devoid of personality — you might call a lifeless character in a book a cypher. The word has an Arabic root, sifr, "zero, empty, or nothing."
Mr Zero is back - in a new 'Bird-Whistle' nom de plume
I will talk to you in a year if they are still there. I am going to repeat part of another comment I just posted below:
If you were President, and BLM attacked a key government building, and even cooperated with the attackers, what would you do? Not call in the National Guard? If not, why not? It would be one of your powers. How could you justify not using it to protect the inauguration, assuming it was the second inauguration for Trump?
I would beef up security and go on with the show. Do you remember the violence during Trump’s inauguration? Somehow he wasn’t affected by it. There is a way to create a shield without 30000 troops installed. Either we have to admit that security forces are inept and can’t determine when an attack will come (as they claimed were possible)and need brute force or see the military response as unjustified, alarming and perilous to this tattered democracy.
I very much agree. If the Capitol police had even halfway done their job, the National Guard would never have been needed. The question is, why did the Capitol Police fail? I read that their budget is enormous by comparison with the nature of the job they do. Yet they applied very inadequate resources on that day. Why?
Let me answer your question with a question: this is what happened in 2018 at the supreme court. Look at it, and ask yourself honestly and realistically what would have happened if those doors had been forced open. It's only luck or incompetence that separate these two incidents. So what should have been done back then when this occurred?
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IRnmnxVtDqg
And just to clarify, as CNN themselves describe in this video:
"Protesters opposed to Brett Kavanaugh's appointment to the US Supreme Court swarmed over Washington -- massing at the Capitol, disrupting the confirmation vote in the Senate and banging on the Supreme Court building doors when Kavanaugh arrived to be sworn in."
Thank you for that link. All I can say is that there was adequate security that day and no one got in. I don't know anything else. One other point: no one in the crowd was wearing military-style gear. But the key point was that the security forces kept the crowd out. On 1/6/2021, the security forces failed.
If I were president or even speaker of the house, I would have listened to the requests for added security given 100k + demonstrators were expected. Nancy and Mitch should be fired just for that level of incompetence.
Nancy and Mitch ain't getting fired until they die. That's the Permanent Government right there.
Were they warned in advance, do you know?
Really??? I thought that is what the police are for! (And your argument falls flat when you consider the death, destruction, and mayhem this summer, which included breeches of federal and state property.)
The death and destruction this summer are irrelevant to what we are discussing. The Capitol police did not handle the attack on the Capitol adequately. If you were President, and BLM attacked a key government building, and even cooperated with the attackers, what would you do? Not call in the National Guard? If not, why not? It would be one of your powers. How could you justify not using it to protect the inauguration, assuming it was the second inauguration for Trump?
The fact that the Capitol Police were unprepared (for reasons that still aren't clear) on Jan 6 has nothing to do with a prepared police force now. That is what the police are for. Fine, National Guard for the inauguration but why are they still there? If you say to guard against some possible violence during the impeachment trial, I'm not going along. We are getting dangerously close to a CCP style government. But you can't see it, so I am not going to try to convince you.
Given the No Comment coming from the House and Senate, it's obvious what happened. They were either incompetent or wanted something to happen. Not sure which one.
I don't have an answer. We have to inquire further, and find out when the National Guard is withdrawn. I believe their presence was warranted, but I have no information or ideas about when they should be withdrawn, except, of course, as soon as possible.
This is hysterical nonsense
'The death and destruction this summer are irrelevant...'
What a pathetic excuse for a position. We are one year into this and yet to really feel the economic consequences of what you consider irrelevant - like - a MANUFACTURED DEPRESSION just in business closings and job losses alone.
And by the way for most of the 50k+ there peacefully to protest what they considered a stolen election - IT WAS TRUMPS 2ND INAUGURATION - cause they and I believe he won - possibly in a landslide.
Locking down the capital with 20k National Guard isn't a warning to the fellow Phoenician nut job wearing a buffalo head-dress and the other goof-ball now sitting in Prince George County because he messed with Goat Girl Pelosi's to-do list on her desk once he plunked down his Dr. Martins.
Tucker Carlson nailed it the other night on why - You are allowed to believe that Biden won - as I am that he is nothing more than a pathetic puppet installed illegally. He is incompetent and illegitimate and the pretext that you have bought into - if you are sincere - likewise puts your ability to make rational decisions suspect. We all are entitled to a Senior Moment Ralph. Not a delusional nightmare that you want to force on half the country.
There are 70+ million of us - and we are not going to curl into a fetal position or go away. We are going to re-install voter integrity - and stop these fascist-progs from stealing our republic.
No, it is not hysterical nonsense. That is a distracting, provocative comment meant to disrupt.
Ralph Dratman13 hr ago
The death and destruction this summer are irrelevant to what we are discussing.
Since when do you get to determine what's relevant to the conversation ?
Both riots were aimed at government just at different levels. Are you saying local government is irrelevant ?
Are you implying that you actually believe these idiots were going to overthrow the US government ?
That's just hilarious on it's face !
Welcome to your own foreign policy being practiced domestically....
So funny how Americans will buy anything DC sells as long as twitter, face book, and the cable monopolies back it up.
It's a convenient way to shut down any discussion of a double standard.
I don't "get to determine". I just asserted that I think it is irrelevant to that narrow discussion. Repeating something I wrote above, I never said -- and I do not believe -- that the death and destruction this summer are unimportant. They are very important, just not relevant to a specific discussion of the Capitol situation on 1/6/2021.
Who did David Bailey shoot to death? Anybody want to say her name?
Bailey is alleged to be the policeman that shot and killed Ashli Babbitt.
Could you please explain your question? I don't understand.
I would like someone to explain why the “invaders” and “insurrectionists” did not bring guns if they were seriously trying to oust the “sacred democracy.”
That's a very good question.
We do know that some came with those plastic handcuffs. And one person (group?) actually did beat a policeman to death.
One big clarification I've learned from this batch of comments is that the most important problem is that the security failed. Regardless of anyone's intentions, if the crowd had not entered at all, there would have been no significant problem. So I am going to stop calling it an insurrection, etc., because it would have been a nothing-at-all if the security had held.
To put that another way, "intentions" of a group cannot easily be measured in a one-off like this because everyone has a different set to intentions. That is why security must hold: you never know what might happen if a crowd gets in somewhere. (And obviously they were not entering a public place, such as a shopping mall, where intentions might have to be analyzed, in retrospect anyway, if there were an attack.)
Thank you for this. I appreciate your decision to stop calling it an insurrection as the MSM/DNC is portraying it. I agree with you. My wife and I watched it live from our couch, with live feeds from various sources on the web. 90% of the folks there were peaceful and respectful of the Capitol. In several places the cops let them in, either thru fealty to the aims of the protestors or by order, maybe both at different times and places. Protestors taking happy selfies with the cops, walking deferentially between the velvet roped tour lines. There were indeed bad actors, many arrived before Trump even ended his speech. But from what I have seen at least a plurality of them were antifa, and called out as such by the protestors. Very, very few from the Trump contingent meant any harm to that sacred place. Remember, at base Trumpers are solid patriots. They love America, and the shrines that represent it. If you think otherwise you are deluded.
I want to circle back to why nobody has heard of David Bailey, the DC cop who evidently shot Ashli Babbit. If that was truly an "armed insurrection" and "coup" against our Republic, the cop who fired the shot that killed the prime "domestic terrorist" should be feted and welcomed as a hero! His name and deeds and stalwart defense of the Capitol and "our sacred democracy!" should be celebrated to the heavens by DNC and MSM!! But instead we have complete silence. Zero info from any investigation, zero interest and zero questions from the compliant MSM. Nobody knows his name. The truth does not fit the Narrative. The Narrative wants you to believe 5 people died because Trump Incited a Riot, worthy of Impeachement! Yeah, well... no. The DC cop David Bailey shot the unarmed Ashli Bobbit to death in the Capitol.
David Bailey shot unarmed protestor Ashli Bobbit to death in the Capitol. Just for clarity.
Several died of natural causes like heart attack, almost a given in a giant crowd like that. (How giant was the crowd? Nobody knows. That info is Not To Be Discussed.) DC cop Brian Sicknick walked away from the riot but died a day later from a head wound suffered during the riot. RIP. All evidence paints him as a man of honor and I have every reason to believe it.
To be clear I believe David Bailey may have been in the right of doing his job best he could. I have no reason to think he was a bad actor. Maybe he was the last line of defense before some cowering Congress Critters. Evidently he was security detail during the attack on Sen Scalise some years ago, and was wounded by the (Bernie Bro) assailant. Bailey's shot to the chest of the attacker was likely the mortal wound that stopped the attack. Add all that up and I could credit the man a hero. So how he came to shoot Ashli Babbit? Darn, if there was only an investigation. If only somebody cared enough to want to know the truth. But that does not fit the Narrative. You, Joe public, are just a serf to be played.
What they do not show you is much more important than what they holler to the skies.
I do not agree that antifa was involved in most of the instances of violence. Since most of the people who perpetrated violence or destruction have been arrested, and will be prosecuted, there is an opportunity to find out if they had connections with antifa. As for an investigation, my understanding is that an exhaustive investigation has already begun, and is expected to go on for a long time. How David Bailey came to shoot Ashli Babbit will surely be an important part of that investigation. Just try not to say it's not an investigation if the Democrats run it. They happen to be the party in power in both chambers, and whatever party that is usually controls investigations. If you want democracy, you have to accept that either party may be in power at any given time.
They had just watched Monty Python's bit. Come at me with a loaded banana. MPFC makes a lot more sense than our polity.
I disagree about Trump's speech, if you mean what he said to the crowd that went down to the Capitol. I say it did incite violence. How else can you interpret what he and Giuliani said?
And I definitely say the Democratic Party is not moving in the direction of a police state. No Democrat has ever advocated such a thing. You will not find a single Democrat who advocates anything of the sort. If you know of any, please reply because I want to know.
Trump's mistake was the event itself and expecting a change in outcome. His words were benign and he never suggested anyone should be violent. What is it the BLM "protesters" say, "silence is violence?" Well not speaking up and defending free speech by every democrat politician is supporting the ban on free speech including allowing twitter, youtube and facebook to silence the speech of the president of the US and those with a dissenting opinion. So that's every Democrat; not just one.
Trump said, "You cannot be weak, you have to be strong." That is incitement to violence when spoken to a crowd carrying weapons. And Giuliani suggested "trial by combat". How else can you interpret "trial by combat" than an incitement to violence? Suppose a black leader, speaking to a crowd of BLM supporters, suggested trial by combat. The BLM crowd then walked down and broke windows in the capitol, entered, and people were heard saying "Kill Pence", and they killed a policeman? Would you judge the words to be benign in that case? What would you have done as President after that happened?
The protestors were not carrying weapons of any real significance. Furthermore, telling the crowd to be strong and to peacefully protest at the capitol isn't an incitement to anything other than naivete. The playbook for that idiotic display was written over the summer. They didn't do anything that they haven't seen hundreds of times from those riots.
That said, using the capitol riot as a pretext to further disenfranchise anyone or anything on the right is unbelievably tone deaf. For God's sake, CNN is trying to build up support to censor Fox News because of an alleged pattern of disinformation and an incitement to violence. Honestly, I don't even know where to begin with that.
The best thing they could do is to treat these protestors with the same kid gloves that they have used for the thousands of protestors from the summer. Equal justice under the law could actually move the needle. Instead, they are pouring gasoline on this while they target, smear and harass American citizens. Anyone on the right is potentially guilty by association.
If I'm not mistaken, there were around 100k at the event. Several hundred of those protestors lost their shit. That is the definition of a mostly peaceful protest. I never blamed protestors over the summer who were there to exercise their right to assembly and to voice their grievances. I do blame the small percentage of them who were agitators and violent. The same applies for the capitol riot.
Antifa and BLM use revolutionary language as a standard practice. I have heard many protest leaders use language at these protests that were incredibly inflammatory. I don't remember them verbatim but they regularly encouraged activists to perform acts of violence and to directly overthrow our system of government.
In terms of, "direct action", they tried to burn down a federal courthouse with officers locked inside for well over a month. They set up autonomous zones in front of state capitols. That doesn't include all the people that were beaten and murdered by activists during that time. The resulting damage and loss of life was shocking for anyone who paid attention.
These people are the definition of extremists who really do want to overthrow and replace our government. I never mistook them for the vast majority of Americans on the left because that would be ridiculous. No group or ideology deserves to be defined by fringe elements that are tangentially related to them.
But it is clear that the right has lost the culture war and the left no longer has the right to call itself liberal. At this point, I kind-of hope that they get what they are asking for. I've got a great spot picked out to watch everything crumble.
I never thought I would see the day when the first amendment was up for debate. There is no nuance or discourse and civil libertarians are now white (or white adjacent) nationalists according to our moral superiors. It is really unbelievable that our great nation will be taken down by woke militants that have been coddled from birth. It's a fucking tragedy.
A common mistake I've seen these past months is equating a political mob (Trump supporters) with anarchists (Antifa) and racial justice rioters (BLM). All three are terrible taken together, but only one of these groups is supporting a political figure.
You are right. They are not comparable. The sheer size and scale of the summer riots puts them in their own category. There were literally hundreds of riots across the country. They were far more destructive to people, property and social order than the capitol riot could ever hope to be.
I really really doubt our great nation will be taken down by anything in the next few years. I don't see why you should be so pessimistic. Almost everyone who lives in the US wants it to survive!
I'm just planning ahead.
The legacy media didn't attend or cover most of the riots so I had to rely on independent sources for information. Michael Tracey was one of the few journalists who actually covered them and those engaged in them through a cross country tour. He was assaulted in Portland because they didn't want him to stream the event. I watched as many live feeds as I could until I just couldn't stomach it anymore. There is no question that Antifa and some of the more militant BLM activists were the main agitators. I'm not going to dig up videos and police arrest records to prove that to you but they are widely available.
Your comment about Antifa and BLM rings hollow? They (both of them) are responsible for most of the $2.0 billion of damage and violent attacks this summer. They are the definition of fascism and marxism. Citing CNN and NPR weakens your argument.
Antifa and BLM share a common core of beliefs in revolutionary Marxism. I'm not going to dig for resources that you won't read anyway.
To some degree, you are correct about Antifa as a reactionary organization. There is no question that they will go out of their way to counter protest to anything that they perceive as fascist.
On inauguration day, Antifa protested and rioted against our newly elected president in Portland, Seattle, Denver and California. I guess you could say that they were reacting to a fascist regime taking power. You could also say that they were reacting to the existence of statues that they didn't like and DHS agents in a federal courthouse.
As for the rest, I don't really give a shit about who gets bused in and for what. I do take issue with violent extremism regardless of ideology.
Here's an example of BLM calling for destruction. I'll pre-emptively say, please don't insult anyone's intelligence by trying to argue that smashing into buildings and stealing stuff somehow doesn't count as "destruction":
“That is reparations,” Ariel Atkins, a BLM organiser told the broadcaster. “Anything they wanted to take, they can take it because these businesses have insurance.
“I don’t care if someone decides to loot a Gucci or a Macy’s or a Nike store, because that makes sure that person eats,” she said. “That makes sure that person has clothes.”
https://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/americas/blm-protests-chicago-looters-police-a9665861.html
I never said anything about Google, Twitter or FB. I don't know whether they should be regulated.
You should spend 15 minutes researching the Capitol breach because you're dead wrong.
Trump's rally could not have motivated the crowd, the timing wasn't there. The insurgents were already on the Capitol steps a full half hour prior to Trump finishing, and everyone finishes a Trump rally. Further, the Capitol was breached one half hour after Trump finished even though navigating from Ellipse to Capitol would have taken over an hour.
Say that Trump's uncivil 2 months of #stopthesteal leaves him responsible - even though his people had never acted so violently, and all we wanted was a legit audit - that's fine. But claiming that his 1/6 rally had anything to do with it is just false.
Ralph don't do research- you do it for him.
In Soviet America, Ralph research YOU!
Pure calumny, insult, totally false. I am reading and searching and writing most of every single day.
Thank you for that excellent information. Is there an online article or something that lays out that point in detail, do you know?
Search for 'capitol breach timeline' (ignore your fav leftist rags), but here's one:
https://thenationalpulse.com/breaking/ex-capitol-police-chief-says-pelosi-mcconnells-sergeants-at-arms-refused-security-measures-while-new-timeline-proves-trump-incitement-claims-bogus/
What weapons? Now you’re just making things up or intentionally lying. In his speech Trump intentionally called for the crowd to protest “peacefully and patriotically”. And by the way, Black Lies Matter constantly call for the killing of police. And often actually do kill police.
I guess you are right. It seems they did not have real weapons.
No, I was not making things up or lying. I was mistaken. I actually thought they did have guns.
No one, or at least no significant number of the crowd had guns, is that correct?
Ralph, elections are won because the diehards flip enough of the wafflers in the middle to their side.
All of the discussion about the Capitol idiot-fest would be moot if Trump, when asked if he accepts blame for Covid response errors, would have said, "Mistakes were made. I won't play the blame game. But I'm the president and the buck stops here. I apologize. From here on out we will work harder & we will do better. Thank you."
In other words, if he'd have acted like an adult or a leader and not like the little kid whose mommy says, "Donald who broke the vase?"
"Wasn't me mom. Must have been the dog," when they don't even have a dog.
America is almost criminally forgiving of its presidents.
I think he'd still be president.
In my mind, Trump's complete lack of humility in the face of his own egregious stupidity just makes him the spiritual heir of George Bush who landed on an aircraft carrier festooned with MISSION ACCOMPLISHED banners, a big stupid grin plastered on his face, right before the real slaughter in Iraq got started. Don't recall any apologies from the Shrubster either. The only difference is that America was too busy shitting its collective pants during Bush's term to think clearly so they re-elected the idjit , justifying it with bits of popular wisdom such as, "Well Cleetus, Mr. Bush started us on this journey to the cliff's edge, so we might as well let the old boy drive us right over."
I think the phrase most describing America during the Bush years would be "Scared Stupid."
I agree with everything you wrote in that comment! Other countries imprison their ex-leaders with some regularity. What the political result might be if we did that here, I have no idea. Some questions are unanswerable. Either an approach is tried, and we get to find out the result, or the untried approach just... disappears. Kind of like evolution. A mutation happens and some offspring "try it out". If they survive, the mutation persists. If not, there is nothing to be remembered.
Accountability? For America's elite? What heresy.
Personally Ralph, I've always liked heresy.
What I'm getting sick of is the Bible size justifications & obfuscations that swirl around Trump's stay in office these days.
Folk are really trying to make a martyr out of guy who, if he were a comic book character, would have a completely blank thought bubble above his head at least 60% of the time you looked at him. The other 40% of the time he just looked like he wanted to be somewhere else. Anywhere else.
The only time Dondsi came alive was during his periodic visits to the faithful where he worked the crowd like a demented Buddy Hackett.
Your mom would like her iPad back now.
Ha! Funny! I guess you made that up.
Bot !
To whom are you responding? It is really hard to trace that back on sub stack if the comment to which you are replying is far up on the page.
I pine for the future in which all real humans have left the Internet and it's just bots fighting bots all day.
Maybe you should ask why Trump got elected in the first place instead of misleading everyone into a justification and rationalization of the consequences of horrible leadership ??
I suspect leftists like yourself project “inciting violence” in every and anything said by Trump and those supporting him.
Trump: “What a nice sunny day we have”
Ralph: “OMG WTF Trump just murdered 12 indigenous transsexual greenpeace activists that were peacefully protesting! Call out the Army!”
Todd, unsolicited word of advice:
"Ralph Dratman" isn't a "leftist." He's a bot. Steer clear away from "him" and EmKay.
How do you know that? (Just curious)
DM me.
ah shit, no DMs
I won't respond to grisha because he has been abusive in the past. I am by no means a bot. You can ask me any series of questions that a bot could not answer. So far, no bot can give you a coherent account spread over many responses. For a bot to do so would require a far different kind of machine learning architecture. I don't think it's impossible, but I am not aware of any current architecture that comes close. Admittedly I could be wrong, so if anyone can point to a bot implementation that could respond as I do, I would be eager to investigate it. I am torn between wanting the machines to be more intelligent and being nervous about the consequences.
You never say anything coherent, so as a bot, you do have that going for you.
I suspect you'll never understand there is no left or right, only top and bottom. That's all there's ever been and more than likely all they'll ever be.
Oh I definitely understand that; unfortunately my lazy, often imprecise, writing often leads me to use “easy” terminology (such as leftists) that is not the best terminology.
No I do not.
Not at all. I would never write something so absurd.
Who's "we"? RACIST!
How stupid !
So the push by the Dems for a new domestic terrorism law does not disturb you?
There is a group of Democrats trying to push that (including Biden) but luckily one of the squads own is trying to pass a resolution to block it. Rashida Tlaib says it will kill civil liberties. Makes me really really happy she’s around. We need her & other squad members to join w/ Rand Paul & Mike Lee to stop a new law going through.
https://www.google.com/amp/s/www.independent.co.uk/news/world/americas/us-politics/domestic-terror-laws-us-rashida-tlaib-capitol-b1791542.html%3famp
First time the Squad has stood up for something worthwhile.
Shitpost:
Tlaib's the best, AOC's the worst.
Tlaib doesn't post makeup tips on TikTok. AOC will probably go much further.
There's a difference between Michigan and NYC. The difference is the relative level of narcissism.
Either that or it's more controlled opposition. So far that's all the "squad" has been able to muster besides helping Pelosi keep her seat as speaker.
Thank you for the information! Is the text of the bill available?
I’m not sure. I do know that right now, they have every law on the book already to stop all kinds of domestic terrorism, they do not need to pass anything else. I’m mean, the whole Stop the Steal rally was largely planned on Face Book in brood daylight. All the info was floating around out there. The capital police were not prepared and no new domestic terrorism law would’ve helped that. This is massive NSA, FBI power grab. They want Apple to have to let them into the back door of phones. And as long as we the people let fear blind us, we will give away all of our civil rights and liberties.
That is more good information. Thank you.
"Google" is your friend. Even friendlier, duckduckgo
HR 4192, Adam Schiff 116th Congress.
I read the bill. Not sure that is necessary but really don't know. Do you have an opinion on that?
Thank you! I really appreciate that.
I have no idea what is in the bill. How can I react to it?
Once again, Ralph wants to be lead by the hand. How old are you , Ralph?
You mean "led". "Lead" refers to the metal. "Led" is the past tense of the verb "lead", which makes the whole situation very confusing. In practice, I think the only way to get that distinction right is to have a lot of practice reading and writing.l
I am 69 years old. How old are you?
Good reply. Ralph's a troll- just wants to be fed.
I am in no way a troll. I want a reasoned discussion. Unfortunately mule has been abusive in the past and so I had hoped not to respond to him. But I don't like to leave calumny without a response. A difficult dilemma.
If you are following it, please suggest a reference you like or agree with.
There is a realignment happening. It’s slow starting but I think we’ll end up seeing a right/left populist anti-war movement happening. It’s why you see Glen Greenwald & Jimmy Dore on Tucker Carlson and not MSNBC.
I new something weird was going on when my Fox News watching Baby Boomer parents started becoming very anti-war and thinking Trump should pardon Snowden! Lol, this would’ve been unthinkable in the early aughts. Say what you want about Glen going on icky Fox News but he’s getting thru to some very right wing boomers out there and it’s AMAZING!!!
Hurray for your parents and all against killing innocents abroad!
Well, my parents are your typical suburban middle class Fox News watchers. They’re both retired but they’ve been voting republican since the 70’s. They were pretty dogmatically anti-liberal when I was growing up (80’s & 90’s) but we weren’t religious so I didn’t get the whole evangelical upbringing (though K have extended family that are very much religious fundamentalists).
So, my parents would be your typical right winger that would call Bernie a communist and yada yada. That’s the whole point, there are these people who’ve been dogmatically republican for over 40 years, that are starting to rethink all these things. There is no way my parents would’ve ever thought someone like Snowden should be pardon. Ever. They are totally on board now.
So, to all the so called liberals out there that give Glenn Greenwald or Eric Weinstein a hard time for going on Fox or think they’ve switched sides, they’re dead wrong. My parents have come around on issues like privacy, anti-war and anti-monopoly since watching shows like that. It’s anecdotal but if it can happen to my Regan devotee parents it can happen to anyone.
That's a very good point. If we could figure some of that out, it would be great. But there is no way to figure out the composition of a crowd without extensive surveillance and concerted investigation.
They are calling for the isolation and gun confiscation of the half of the country that supported Trump. That does not sound problematic to you? If you are American, it should.
They are pulling down any content that does not comport with that goal, or support the false narrative behind it.
It's hard to understand if you do not realize that the very thing that we believed about Russia and China - that the state controlled all media. Happened long ago in this country. The thing is, they are now cracking down on the small fringe media outlets that they had let to exist. The reason for that will only be visible to you once you realize that fact about your media- that it's state media.
When you are open to that fact, you will see why Trump had to be 1000% maligned and lied about night and day- to the point wherein many victims of this stressful media onslaught cannot stand the mention of his name. Trump derangement syndrome is a manufactured condition, and many in this country will never be able to see what is behind it.
Democrats and Republicans swap power back and forth and remain civil because ultimately they have the same goal- which is convincing us they they have our interests at heart and that they answer to us. As this years exposed election fraud showed us, they do not. Their alignments are with big tech and big pharma.
Trump was a genuine outsider who they never thought would overcome their rigged systems. Once he did get in, they were desperate to stymie him and get him out ASAP (resist!). But all the while, they had to maintain the mirage of bi-partisanship. Not till the final hour - the electoral college vote (with the mercenary, paid violent rioters injected into the Trump rally) did the unilateral nature of their operation shine through.
In my experience, the dyed-in-the-wool party acolytes (especially Democrat) will never see their party and it's actions for anything other than what they were taught in grade school. But this blindness will cost us our country.
Preparing this bankrupt country for the Great Reset is the current goal of both parties is right now. You should research it. But use Duck Duck Go to search because Google is also controlled and censored.
Sorry for the bad news, but knowing is better than not knowing.
https://wikileaks.org/google-is-not-what-it-seems/
While I support Janine's right to make this comment, I think many of us would disagree heartily with some of the propositions. I would let it go except that many will paint all of us who disagree with Ralph's original and subsequent posts with a broad brush and throw us into what I think is a fringe view. I don't mean to disparage Janine, but most of us who are more measured and less likely to believe some of the hyperbole, would not sign on to your comment. I certainly don't! That being said, I find some bits of truth in Janine's comment, but Janine has merely put forth hypotheses (that many would call the misnomer "conspiracy theories") that must be satisfied by EVIDENCE before stating them as truth.
You seem to be casting about for explanations for what's going on in this country. While you do so, the country, as janine says, will be lost.
Janine nailed it, calling the sequence of events accurately. He/she did a whole lot more than "provide some bits of truth". Providing you are not a bot like Ralph, I'd suggest you keep an open mind and attempt to see all of this in a different light.
Easy to shut down someone by calling them a "bot." (Reminds me of shutting down people by automatically calling them a racist or whatever.) Although I disagree with Ralph on many of his posts, he is certainly not a bot. Just read his many posts and if you are honest, you will have to admit he is not a bot. As to the rest of your reply, I am not "casting about for explanations" at all. Unlike you, I don't hold a monopoly on the truth.
Thank you for accepting that I am not a bot. I suppose conceivably there could be a bot that writes like me, but that is in the future, if it ever can happen. I'd be grateful for a reply when you disagree with me, because my whole purpose here is to learn. Matt is trying to occupy a difficult territory, a sort of no-man's land between "right" and "left". It is a big puzzle.
I would never intentionally criticize one person for someone else's views. If I ever do so, I hope someone will point that out as I do not wish it at all. In fact I think that is one of the most powerful tendencies that are polarizing the country. Our current ideological split does not take into account that each person's views are different from any other person's views. The current two-party system appears to wipe out these differences. At the present time that is not an acceptable situation. We need some way of involving other parties or some similar arrangement. I unfortunately would not know how to make that happen, so I hope some people are looking into it.
I very much appreciate that you do not fall into this trap!
It is a terrible tendency which is very much encouraged by the way Twitter works. Twitter automatically turns a mob on anyone who disagrees with something a much-followed person writes. I honestly think Twitter is a Bad Thing. I mention Twitter here only because I think the influence of Twitter spills over into everything else online.
Because it's a corporate fascist state they are advocating for. Who needs policy when you control the currency, are privy to all online and telecommunications conversations, have legalized torture, gulags, irradiated due process, and used a virus to lock people down and ruin their way of life to the point they end up living on the street ??
So funny to hear anyone try to defend either of the funding arms of the uniparty and it's owners !
Thanks for the chuckle and I hope you wake up soon.
I cannot find the post you are replying to. If it is one of mine, please help me figure out which one it is. Substack makes this quite difficult. Thanks.
The Dem alliance w hedge funds banks corps and Silicon Valley set enuf amigo not to mention police state censorship demanded by Dem senators Marley and Wyden !
Amen. The dems stole the republican funding and the police state agenda started by Ronnie Ray-gun. Ronnie was first and foremost a propagandist dating clear back to ww2 until the day he died.
That's funny. You forgot to add the /s for sarcasm at the end.
Please explain what is funny.
You defending one of the corporate fascist parties is what I find funny.
I agree. It's not about algorithms; it's about politics. Go to YouTube and search for "how to clean a gun" or "how to shoot a gun" or even "how to build a gun". You'll get hundreds of results. And yet they censor videos that show gun rights rallies? That's not an algorithm doing that, it's a person.
So true.
Trump's fear is based on 'ignorance is bliss.' He's been able to 'weather' so many debacles due to others propping him up, like the GOP, wealthy Jews, his Dad, etc and so on. His innate talent is as Carnival Barker. He has no depth of understanding of almost everything. He has made it by his connections with others. I'm not trying to insult him or his followers, but he has a vocabulary of a spokesman who doesn't know anything, but can sell you on it, with highly exaggerated words and superlatives and phrases. "You're gonna win so often you're gonna get tired of winning." "You're gonna have the best healthcare anywhere." He's the prime seller of euphemism, and still his ignorance is a lot like mentally ill folks who have no filter in their brain, because they lack the necessary self-awareness, of, say, like the kinesthetic sense of your body that knows its appendages' location in space internally, without a mirror.
Another example, I wonder what Trump says of the amount of misinformation and disinformation that ceased across the Twitter network when he was taken off of Twitter? He has very little clue of the enormous power of the Presidency. And surprisingly, it's astounding he didn't do more damage than he did, because as stated, 'ignorance is bliss' and Brother Trump, well, he perhaps thought of himself as a player of a tiny local fiefdom, not at all of an entire world Empire (in decline, but still).
Very interesting! Thank you for that information. Ed Meese!
In today’s world, Thomas Paine and Patrick Henry would be kicked off of Twitter and FB and deplatformed by Amazon. Censorship is allowed by a cowardly populace that clings to the status quo, no matter how repressive it is.
There is a growing body of the populace that sees through the merger of state+media+big-tech. Unfortunately, many in this country are sound asleep and do not realize that everything they watch on television is controlled by state interests (thus the 1000% negative Trump coverage [if you are ready to throw "Fox" at me, then you haven't watched Fox lately]). Now the focus is on marginalizing anyone who supported Trump in any way, and creating a terror-scare towards the goal of isolating them and confiscating their guns.
The reason for this goal, is so the US can be absorbed into the globalist power structure.
(Duck Duck Go: The Great Reset {Google is censored}) The Fed is bankrupt, and the ruling class is complicit is this goal. Don't take my word for it; research it for yourself.
It's why the election fraud was broadly swept under the rug- (Zero evidentiary hearing have been made in any court, but cases are still sitting on the Supreme Courts docket. Why has the media ignored that fact and outright lied about the existence of evidence?).
Re Google and the state: https://wikileaks.org/google-is-not-what-it-seems/
So true.
You have created a hero who cares about the American people.
I (an incurable romantic) fully believe that heroine/hero is out there but she/he does not want to get involved in American politics as presently constituted.
To your point,
Not much heroism in a constitutionally limited republic awash in otherworldly wealth - where the dissolute / mentally ill set minority businesses on fire to "protest" racism or charge into the capitol to take photos in a bison hat.
We are much more likely to see heroism in places where students and freedom fighters risk their lives to be heard, or for simply speaking about freedom (Hong Kong, China, Nicaragua etc)
I'd love to hear your opinion about the Sandinista/Contra war in the '80s, fully aware that it's a rabbit hole not worth your time.
My opinions on it only got me a B+ in my Politics Science thesis ;-)
That country is such a mess, I don't know where to start anymore. How about this, I have friends who trained contras in Honduras. I have friends who were contras. I have friends who were shot. I know land owners who were killed when they refused to sign over property to the Sandinistas. And I have personal accounts of paying extra taxes to Somoza because the Guardia showed up with automatic weapons to make extra "tax collections" - so many, many stories.
Snowden's lucky he's alive. I admire his courage but I wouldn't recommend his career path to anyone.
While not an easy migration, I'm moving away from Google, YouTube and Facebook. I've enjoyed their services immensely over the years but I just can't tolerate censorship from corporations in this manor. I have no issue if an Independent Content Creator uploads a video committing a crime or encouraging others to do so but none of these stories are of Creators violating the law. It seems the common thread is those Independent Content Creators and other users of Big Tech are more and more, people like me. I question the Narrative, I don't believe Corporate Media or Government without a healthy does of skepticism. I don't consume Corporate Media at all, that's one reason I'm here right now. I only consume Independent Journalism and Content Creators.
It seems evident to me that the Duopoly of political parties, NeoCon/NeoLibs, working with Corporations are doing an end run around the 1st amendment citing "private property" as their cheap veneer.
Close out your Facebook, move to Gab. Close out Twitter move to .....too late (another victim of the vertical monopoly). Move away from YouTube for Odysee, Bitchute, Rumble. Close out your gmail/hotmail/outlook/yahoo email accounts for protonmail or Tutanota.
They're crude by comparison but they're not in the Elite Corporate/Government/Narrative club.
Big Tech and their cabal have power because we give it to them.
I too have been leaving the big tech platforms (for several years now). It's not that hard (I use Brave, Duck-duck-go, protonmail, Locals, and I NEVER buy from Amazon.) However, there is no viable alternative to Youtube and therein lies the rub for Status Coup and other independent news outlets. (Thankfully The Hill Rising has managed to rise above but their content is not that challenging.)
I stopped using google for search years ago. It's actually not great search. Most people use it out of habit or for lack of "searching" for alternatives. Saying google is good at search is like saying Microsoft makes great operating systems. Ubiquity does not equal excellence.
Except for McDonald’s french fries...
Reading Matt's column and Glenn Greenwald's I get so depressed, between the left wanting more censorship and the right not willing to do anything are we doomed? Seriously it feels like there is no bottom and both the democrats and republicans could care less.
Yes. Pick a spot to watch the carnage and stock up on ammo if you are so inclined.
Stocking up on ammo is tough right now!
Have you ever watched NFL football? The commercials, I mean. Ad after ad for cops shows and military dramas (think SEAL Team) showcase guns. Firearms. Not only guns, but men and women pointing them in the general direction of other people. All these "gun" ads for violent shows that our kids see are accepted as "normal," yet a few firearms at a rally violate YouTube's policy?
If we wanted to enforce a firearm/violence policy on American TV, half the shows would go off the air.
Queen Latifah is to be morally trusted with guns, no ordinary law abiding citizens with permits.
Especially not Philando Castile. You nailed it.
Yes
If memory serves, Wile E Coyote preferred TNT and cannon balls. Assume they will get rid of those. ACME has to be an allegory for white supremacy as well.
ACME - a classic
Meep Meep.
Those will be gone soon too. The new New Looney Tunes is a gun free zone...
https://www.tvovermind.com/what-we-learned-from-the-new-looney-tunes-cartoons-trailer/
In our social milieu, words are violence, often equated or worse than gun violence.
Only if it goes against the dogma of the left - not if it's to disparage anyone who could be said to have supported Trump in any way.
"equated to"
Some clarifications for Matt:
These are not "pro-gun" protests. They are "civil rights" and "pro-Constitution" protests.
1/6 was not a "riot" or "insurrection". It was a "mostly peaceful protest". No person has been charged with "insurrection" which begs the question of how Trump can be impeached for inciting insurrection.
It was not "Twitter" that expected follow on violent protests on 1/17. It was FBI agents gaslighting on Twitter hoping to cause violent protests on 1/17.
Progressives are getting caught up in their own creation of cancel culture and technocratic tyranny. Cry me a river. For example, "I understand, there must be some limits. If someone like Alex Jones is saying, “Go get your guns, get out there,” that’s really dangerous. But this, this is beyond a slippery slope. It’s a cliff. If they start pulling live streams or issuing strikes like this, it’s basically a death sentence for outlets like ours." JC's cognitive dissonance is blinding.
"Hate Speech" is not a thing in the USA....yet.
"In the hands of alternative media, however, the tool posed another problem, in the form of simply showing offensive reality." - "Offense" is subjective. For example, I am not the least bit offended by any person's words because I am not mentally weak.
Language matters Matt. Please be precise and stop using the nomenclature of the enemies of our country(The Misleadia's Newspeak Minders).
Well Said. What should have been a beautiful exercise in democracy - the same kind of evidentiary hearing put before the respective legislatures - the receipts as Bannon put it on War Room - just died on the spot - and the Dems have been overplaying the event ever since.
That Nanny Goat came out today and announced HR 1 as her #1 legislative priority openly reveals just what joke the Kabuki Impeachment is really all about - keep the mob/great unwashed distracted while they install a Californian-style coup - Big Tech and Big Gov all the time - the end of the Westphalian tradition - an end to the individual as sovereign - an end to our republican form of self-governance.
That is why MT's article is so important - because we have seen just how on-board the MSM is to assist.
At every step they reveal their globalist agenda - and so it is with supporters here. Anti-democratic at their core. Their obsession with repealing the 2nd amendment or at least regulating it to the point of irrelevance is self-evident - and - explains why the Soros approved and funded NY Attorney General attacked a wounded (by its own infighting) NRA - and in doing so crippled the organizations usual ability to help Republicans with election Ground Game....
That lawfare manipulation is but one of many progressive 'projects' that has led us to this crucial point - and again - I believe the country is waking up.
Who's that walking over my bridge?
I agree. It's getting weird.
“It never got weird enough for me.”
I like how Google's motto for years was "don't be evil." To me, that's the equivalent of going on a date, and they first thing they say is "I'm not a serial killer"
There is zero chance of gaining any regulatory relief from the federal government under the current administration. If Republicans are smart - an "if" large enough to hide a couple galactic clusters inside - they look at their recent House wins, and start running NOW on a free speech platform for 2022.
Yes, private businesses can limits what is posted to their servers.
But the attempts to shut down alternative services are grotesque violations of anti-trust, and need to be treated as such. The coordinated efforts to not only kick Parler off Amazon servers, but to pressure their attorneys, their domain hosts, even their flippin' accountants, into dropping them as clients, are or ought to be illegal.
It's already illegal under civil law to conspire to deny others the opportunity to earn a living through campaigns of harassment. It's time to start going after these clowns.
Absolutely. If Parlor isn't the final straw I can't imagine what could be. These are monopolies that must be brought to heel to restore free expression - and MT's article is but a growing flood of evidence.
Great interview! This is kind of related to the interview Jimmy Dore had with a member of the Boogaloo Boys. It was a really good interview and surprising. It turns out the Boogaloo are not white supremacist racists. At all. There’s so much the msm is either willfully keeping from us in order to keep the sides divided or they just live in a bubble and are not aware of the common interests of so many of these groups.
Without these independent media outlets we would be kept in the dark about so much. This summer Michael Tracey went to Minneapolis and filmed interviews with locals, reported on people who had their businesses looted, burned and very damaged due to the riots. It is so incredible how derelict our media is in reporting any kind of truth. They have a narrative and they will NOT deviate from it whatsoever. It is so shameful and disgusting.
I support and will continue to support as much independent media as I can afford to. I’m so sick of being only able to choose from the red or blue team. I just want the straight, unvarnished truth no matter what. Follow the facts wherever they lead. Ideology kills, literally.
I too had no idea Boogaloo were not racists , until I read the article 30 most bytes ago.
Fwiw, Philando Castile was a martyr for the 2nd Amendment-you’ll never hear that narrative from the msm.
Dude followed all the rules scrupulously and still got shot by police. Castile's case just tells me this: "If a cop asks you whether you're carrying, say 'no.'" His crime was being honest. He's dead. Does it pay to be honest?
Maybe it's not all about race, actually? I understand the frustrations of a lot of the BLM folks, but it also seems like there's a strenuous MSM effort to redirect this conversation to race-not-class.
He followed all the rules until the cop told him to stop reaching into his pocket and then he did not follow the rules. I am not defending the actions of the cop, but it is not as cut and dried as you make it sound.
But I do agree that the MSM is redirecting the conversation to race when it should be more about class.
Lulu, thanks for the comment.
I am very often guilty of reductive reasoning/concise framing. It's a habit honed by Twitter.
I believe we should all think about what the Internet (especially social media sites) is doing to our brains.
I love that the majority of commenters on here are challenging each other to think about things in different ways AND are able to do so in a respectful way! The comments sections for both Matt and Glenn are full of so many different thoughts and opinions...for sure many angles that I would not have found on my own. :-)
I don't disagree with that, which is why I said I am not defending the actions of the cop. Overall there is always a lot more to each story than what they media tries to portray them to be.
So many people are not curious enough to look into the details. They are happy with one version of the story (highlighting certain aspects) being presented to them and will never question that there could be more.
Same here. I also watched Traceys footage and it was very sobering as someone who participated locally and supports defund the police.
Yes and quit a few of those small business owners were immigrants and poc.
Michael Tracey was one of the few journalists who actually covered the human impact for those riots by speaking to those who were actually affected by them. What he uncovered in a few informal interviews from random people on the street was incredibly revealing and heart breaking.
OMG! Yes, I just couldn’t believe how candid those interviews were. I absolutely cannot believe what the corporate media are willfully ignoring. These people will remember this. Those cities will be living through the after shocks of these riots for many years. Watts California was never the same.
I couldn't agree more. Legacy media is in shambles. They present themselves as the arbiters of truth and morality. In and of itself, that is really scary because that is what authoritarians and religious zealots do. The majority of journalists have become empty, hateful mouthpieces.
Where did curiosity go? What happened to questioning authority? We have raised a generation of adult children who seem to be incapable of critical thought. They want to feel safe from dissenting views that may challenge their preconceptions of the world.
The unholy alliance of tech overlords, the legacy media and the illiberal political establishment keeps me up at night. Post modernism is eating everything.
I've never liked that "incitement" is not protected by the First Amendment, and I've been extremely dismayed lately by how its lack of protection is almost universally accepted, by liberals especially, though this dreadfulness is understandable because the illegality of incitement has been validated by the U.S. Supreme Court for decades. Nonetheless, think about what outlawing incitement means. Does it not invoke, and answer in the affirmative on everyone's behalf, the sententious question asked of children, "If someone told you to go jump off a bridge, would you do it?"
Banning incitement is infantilizing and dehumanizing. With this concept, we've made an unseemly, morally obtuse concession to the trope of the Mob, a long-standing, anti-democratic slander in political theory that goes back to Plato and neutralizes the responsibility of those who listen to an inciter to restrain themselves (assuming they are moved), and not commit crimes afterwards. Proof: the disavowal of responsibility by some of those who stormed the Capitol on the ground that Trump incited them. In essence, these idiots are saying, and asking the rest of us to accept, that they were lemmings and should be treated as such. This is not morally valid in a would-be free, democratic society.
But if you don't buy that, I am here to inform you that, as we speak, the concept of incitement is being negligently and willfully stretched to encompass "incitements" beyond the current legal standard that supposedly circumscribes its unwarranted extension, and that doing this has been a project of the political establishment and its officious intellectuals, e.g. Cass Sunstein, for a long time. Glenn Greenwald just did a very fine run down of how this expansion is unfolding, and the threat to freedom of speech it poses is obvious. Therefore, watch out: if you encourage this development, then all the limits on the concept's current misapplication to less than indisputable incitements to "imminent lawless action", as the dubious saying goes, will fall away, leaving any government stooge or tech monopoly free to claim that it also applies to unauthorized thoughts and speech where the threat of violence is unquestionably non-existent.
useless comment intended to boost this comment: ten billion likes for this comment
Naomi Wolf's 10 steps to Fascism - 2007
1. Invoke a terrifying internal and external enemy (check)
2. Create a gulag - domestic prison pipeline and Guantanamo/Black sites overseas (check)
3. Develop a thug caste - police, proud boys, gunmen in the state capitol buildings (check)
4. Set up a surveillance system - See NSA's Bluffdale in Utah's Wasatch Range (check)
5. Harass citizen groups - Protests like Black Lives Matter, Occupy WS, XL Pipeline (check)
6. Arbitrary detention and release - racism/classism in America for forever (check)
7. Target key individuals - "Glenn Greenwald, just got blamed for Lauren Wolf firing (check)
8. Control the Press - CNN, MsNBC, Fox (Two party duopoly fairway of topics (check)
9. Dissent = Treason - Intelligence community operations Russiagate; Assange (check)
10. Suspend rule of law - Free speech, Patriot Act, Shooting at Protesters (check)
*** Cannot say we were not warned. Hedges talked about sacrifice zones. Dr. West talked about the neo-fascist and neoliberal elements of the elite clashing and consolidating. Thomas Frank reminds us that the corporate left and moderate right have merged with the intelligence community, big media and tech companies to form the merger between state, business, and military - very definition of fascism.
Tell tale sign is to look out across our country and look at all the indifference from 400,000 to 500,000 deaths, as capital seeks business as usual and the wealthy are seeking normalcy. People who are struggling want healthcare, non-penury education, and affordable housing, but this would eat into the profit streams of people who are in moral bankruptcy -- so they choose to forget. This is how you can tell we are fucked as a nation. Every person for themselves (YOYO - you're on your own) just does not work. It is a fable, a story tale from an exploitative business class pissed off that Roosevelt beat them for so long --- not taking inventory and shoving Taibbi's vampire squid up our asses, ridiculing even the most minor attempts at socialist policies to help people survive because ....
wait for it
wait for it
It's "commy-u-nest" - when any first year course in economics could explain that all to most economies across the world find a way to balance capital and labor needs.
Alas, this kind of thinking is what will be the death of us and our country - Agnotology 101
also it's funny that DJT was relentlessly smeared as "fascist" by MSM when what is coming is going to be a lot more fascist by Wolf's definition
what's the old credo? "Admit nothing. Deny everything. Make counter-accusations."
This irony was not lost on me.
I've always loved Naomi's Cassandra Calls.
useless comment: seven billion likes for this comment
#1, Big Tech is a misnomer. This is Big Low Tech of user generated content webpages, cookies and advertising sales. It is certainly not an essential tech. Remove their liability protection on one hand and strengthen the ability to sue by users, force them to produce reporting to individual users on what data they collected and what they sold it for and their business models will collapse and new players will emerge. Google today is almost useless as a basic info research tool. Pages and pages of ads followed by product marketing masquerading as info and reviews. Force them to make a pure info search options available. Force twitter to cough up identities of cancel mobs participants and give users the ability to sue them.
A Blue Checkmark fighting dozens of lawsuits in number of states will think twice before advocating cancelling anyone. There is nothing more dangerous to 1st amendment and our freedom to think and debate than the current social media monopolies. Apple and Google on the other hand should be divested of of the app stores so alternatives to these monopolies can appear and grow. Amazon can easily be told that discrimination against any American because of their political views will automatically disqualify them from bidding on any government contracts be there for cloud services or toilet paper. All of the above can be done within the boundaries of the Constitution.
Gotta give my usual spiel here. Allowed users to sue platforms for third party content (revoking section 230) won't go the way you're picturing. Big Tech would benefit from it, because they'd be the only ones who could afford the necessary lawyers. Smaller sites would cease to exist overnight, and there would be no more startups because of the legal liability.
That said I absolutely agree about the app stores. The way they're being pressured to remove Instagram because people MIGHT be using it to plan bad things in a way that the government can't spy on is spine chilling. I'd say this calls for government regulation, expect the government is actively contributing to the problem! In a more sane world, a choice of app stores would be ideal. You can still do this if you're technically inclined, but it's not for the feint of heart, and certain things just don't exist on any alternative app store.
Or, they could curate content less and not have to worry about lawyers at all, is I think the idea. Good point regardless
Good point about the app stores.
Turns out it's not YouTube, it's ThemTube.
The social media outlets for news are like public utilities. They are similar to a phone line. Or even a book. We don't shut down people's phones because they may be saying something we don't like. Society did try book banning and book burning, but the need for dialogue is too strong to be suppressed forever. If the oligarchs control our access to ideas, it's all over. This is a huge threat to my right to choose where I get my ideas and which sources I trust in the end.
Gotta disagree on that one. An ISP is more similar to a phone line. Comcast, Cox, etc. They exist (more or less) to agnostically move electric signals from one place to another. There's MUCH more going on with a social media platform. The infrastructure is several orders of magnitude more complicated. The service is, by its nature, much different, being more interactive and involving the owner of the service much more than, say, a phone call.
That's not to say social media giants shoudn't be regulated, I just don't know know what they should be regulated AS. I don't think utility is it. I'm not sure the proper category actually EXISTS yet.
Would a book store be a better analogy? Or a news stand? It is hard to find a perfect comparison. If we were to regulate Google, FB, Twitter, etc., what would that look like?
Censorship is hard to fine tune. Aside from shouting "fire" in a crowded theater, we've wisely not set limits on speech.
There was a case some years ago in California where some people were making political speeches in a mall. It went to court, and the could ruled that even though it was private property, it was a public space, and the political speech had to be allowed.
I think it would be something like that.
I don't see this US Supreme Court adopting that kind of fine tuning. Maybe social media is sui generis and we will have to be creative. The question is: is there consensus that even hate speech is protected? Most people fail to understand that the First Amendment was designed to protect the minority and not the majority. Most people want to curtail speech they don't agree with - which obviously doesn't work.
This is an excellent comment and I am in a similar state of bafflement. My sticky wicket is that participation in social media networks is entirely voluntary. I don't know who I would want or trust to "regulate" them, or in what way. I dislike censorship on Twitter, but I'm also like, "Y'know, you can not go on Twitter."
They should be public utilities already. $$$$$
That’s the thing-it’s about ideological oversight, not $$$. You don’t see people begrudging the utility companies their honest payment for services-but you would see an uprising if they denied service to legit accounts. I agree 1000% with the internet getting put in the same category as ConEd or CG&E or whomever.
Me too. I resisted this forever because of free market dogma but 2020 has shown me that this is too important in the hands of a few people. Libertarianism is as much utopianism as socialism. Neither work in reality.
#metoo
For a long time I was like, "Nobody is making you use Amazon, Twitter, Facebook, etc. That's your decision."
Now I'm like, "Fuck. It's become very difficult to talk to people and purchase necessary products without some kind of intermediary."
This. I have bought a book from a used bookstore in Wisconsin off Amazon that wasn’t available anywhere else-a publisher’s combo edition of James Bond novels. 20 years ago would I have launched an obsessive personal search of used bookstores within a 1,000 mile radius for said book-of course not. But that’s just me. Now people are too lazy to go to friggin Taco Bell w/out Uber Eats........
Not long ago Congress published a major 450 page report on -- Silicon Valley tech. giants monopolies. It was expected that major action will be on breaking up Amazon, Facebook and Google into well defined pieces.
This appears not likely since Democrat oligarchs and their WS and arms/intelligence industry donors are grateful for silencing Democrat party and Biden-family corruption (Hunter's laptops, etc.) facts and now -- massive silencing of independent news stories.
Amazon, Google, Facebook, etc. are completely integrated into surveillance apparatus -- they are playing a key role in limiting remnants of free speech in the US -- a fascism packaged as "fight against fascism". A more polite term used for fascism in the US is -- authoritarianism...
Only a 3rd, 4th, etc. viable parties will reduce the two-party monopoly of one party with two wings - wings formed to polarize population into "red" and "blue" factions.
Also remember -- DSA "party" is part of Democrat party formed solely to harness and corrupt "progressives" ala TYT, The Intercept, select members of Congress/Senate. DNC cabal of oligarchs are afraid of progressives -- they closely collaborate with GOP on their common interests.
"But how can alternative media operate if it doesn’t know exactly where the lines are?"
That's how the Good People want it. Don't specify clear rules. Don't quantify anything. Just keep it all muddy and let the Good People decide who is excellent, who can be heard, etc. They know better than you.
P.S. A late vote for the Meritocracy book.