NYTimes: How Disinformation Splintered and Became More Intractable

I’m going to wait to read this groundbreaking article in the New York Times, but I’m putting a gift link below for anyone who wants to read it. The finding that self-regulated social media, which runs most lucratively on the viral spread of things that piss people off, has somehow tribalized people by constantly confirming their faith in things that are manifestly untrue, seems like a tragically belated headline for the Gray Lady. But let’s give her the benefit of the doubt shall we? I’m sure their presentation of the weaponization of hateful conspiracies will be supremely well-balanced.

Here’s the sub- headline:

Ahead of the midterm elections, the proliferation of alternative social media sites has helped cement false and misleading information as a defining feature of American politics.

Oh boy…

The spread of Mr. Trump’s [stolen election] claim illustrates how, ahead of this year’s midterm elections, disinformation has metastasized since experts began raising alarms about the threat. Despite years of efforts by the media, by academics and even by social media companies themselves to address the problem, it is arguably more pervasive and widespread today.

“I think the problem is worse than it’s ever been, frankly,” said Nina Jankowicz, an expert on disinformation who briefly led an advisory board within the Department of Homeland Security dedicated to combating misinformation. The creation of the panel set off a furor, prompting her to resign and the group to be dismantled.

The creation of the panel set off a furor, prompting her to resign and the group to be dismantled.

More like the creation of a panel to combat right-wing disinformation set off the Führer. Death threats forced Jankowicz to resign, the threat of widespread violence by American lynch mobs caused the closure of the Homeland Security Department to combat disinformation. Come on, Gray Lady!

This is some alarming shit:

“We believe at Parler that it is up to the individual to decide what he or she thinks is the truth,” Amy Peikoff, the platform’s chief policy officer, said in an interview.

She argued that the problem with disinformation or conspiracy theories stemmed from the algorithms that platforms use to keep people glued online — not from the unfettered debate that sites like Parler foster.

On Monday, Parler announced that Kanye West had agreed in principle to purchase the platform, a deal that the rapper and fashion designer, now known as Ye, cast in political terms.

“In a world where conservative opinions are considered to be controversial, we have to make sure we have the right to freely express ourselves,” he said, according to the company’s statement.

God save us from bigoted assholes with mountains of fucking money.

How Disinformation Splintered and Became More Intractable https://www.nytimes.com/2022/10/20/technology/disinformation-spread.html?unlocked_article_code=AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAACEIPuonUktbfqYhlSFUZAybJUNMnqBqCgvfeh7A9nX74Ii-PTD9ezuMTRpOY4UrEaexje943lXy9deN2DYUOFrZ03_MNeAtkURWpqZ-J35hVeX9ro9jtGzM7hMOIAOwzrnrjZDPjbbYgmuzjsRzXOzToWrfNkiF0fHYTqppjc1Ct2XIK1_2FRrYzgo8iqK9nUpNqRj4AZz2Jvu3oC3h8P9aGahLc4momSr0TGGGTzZPHteV2IEgFAknGTXh__W4_9NpaXdoTN634JBQiE9HstQOz_tBYKWVEFaX2SF5BXw

The Categorical Imperative

Hannah Arendt reported her  surprise to hear Adolf Eichmann, a self-righteous fool of ridiculous proportions who wrestled with his native German language while defending himself in front of three German Jewish judges in Jerusalem, correctly answer a judge’s question about his understanding of Kant’s categorical imperative, which he himself had made reference to.  Arendt seemed shocked that Eichmann, who lived in a world of mindless cliché, had grasped the principle: acting in a way that, if everyone acted that way, the world would be a better, more just place.  Of course, Eichmann’s understanding of Kant came with it’s own grotessquely idiotic punchline.

Eichmann told the judges that Kant’s imperative was a moral test of one’s actions.  If your action was done by everyone, would it make the world a better, more just place?   Or, as Kant put it:  Act only on that maxim whereby thou canst at the same time will that it should become a universal law.

It would be a better, more just world if everyone agreed never to torture another person, say. You could apply that agreement to mankind as a whole and everyone would benefit from it.  Except, of course, those who make their living by torturing others.  Your actions, of course, should never be dictated by comparing yourself to the worst humans, but by holding yourself up to the standards of the best among us.

In Eichmann’s mind he had merely done a difficult job as well as he was able in the interests of what was best for everybody.  You could argue with the Nazi methods, yes, he himself agreed that the mass extermination of people perhaps better banished and sent to live in distant lands, might seem extreme.  He himself, he pointed out, had never personally killed anyone.  However, much as he may have disagreed with his superiors in their method, if the goal was a noble one, a goal you believed in, and the world would be better if the goal was achieved, who was he to question the decisions of wiser people he owed allegiance and obedience to?   If everyone stopped doing their duty because they had a twinge of hesitation, what could humanity ever hope to accomplish?  The universal principle, to Eichmann, the Categorical Imperative, if you will, is that duty is the highest calling, or something along those lines.   And, anyway, he was only making sure the trains were full, and left on time, and arrived on time at their destinations.  As his duty and oath of obedience prescribed. 

As we know, the Devil can quote scripture and a medicore-minded Nazi can wrap his murderous employment in Kantian morality.  Try seriously applying the Categorical Imperative to anything Donald Trump has ever done in his life.  

Every day in the news there are new revelations about the rot at the center of Donald Trump’s world.  A new scandal, some corrupt new detail that turns the stomach.  Picture anything the man and his minions do and imagine everyone in the world doing it. 

Your boss foments a violent riot to overturn an election he lost — you dutifully cover up his crime by destroying all evidence and obstructing all investigations.  You are his Secret Service, after all, you took an oath to protect him.   Your agency paid up to ten times the going rate for hotel rooms while defending POTUS, while his idiot son lyingly claimed he was giving the SS rockbottom, preferential rates.  1.4 million dollars and counting for security to stay in hotels owned by the guy you were sworn to protect, paid to that same grifting, lying dog-hater.  SO?   Do it if you can get away with it is a good universal law, no?

During a deadly pandemic, government health officials were replaced by unqualified loyalist drones like Pence, Kushner and economist Peter Navarro.  Under them the CDC was ordered to cover up how infectious and deadly Covid-19 was, weaponize attempts to combat it, fight masks, vaccines, all efforts to try to control it — America sets the world record for Covid-19 deaths, as a direct result of your boss’s need to score political points during mass death he himself added tens of thousands of American corpses to by his policies, and lack of same.   

Go down the list and see if you can apply even Eichmann’s twisted version of the Categorical Imperative to it.  Everything the motherfucker does — from compulsive lying and bragging, to constant childish whining, to viciously attacking anyone who does not obey his will, to throwing every loyal sidekick under the bus when it benefits him, to his world-class petty vindictiveness, to profiting on misery, to his indifference to mass death while surrounding himself with corrupt cronies who defy legal subpoenas and take the Fifth over and over when forced to answer questions about their flawed vessel master under oath — is despicable and crassly self-serving.

And isn’t that just the point for people who bask in the reflection of the very worst among us and luxuriate in the indulgence of their worst impulses, secure in the warm embrace of their angry, cynical leader who praises Ku Klux Klan supporters and Nazis as very fine people, while begging, deceptively and quite successfully, for money from the least among us?

I picture the book Hannah Arendt would write about their trials.

The boy can’t help it

Granted, yesterday was a bad day for F POTUS all around, his own Supreme Court dismissing his latest delay attempt in one sentence, NY AG moving to cut off his attempt to transfer assets to avoid paying fines and restitution after the fraud trial, and the J6 Committee slap down. The 76 year-old boy went nuts after yesterday’s closing statements showed him being, coincidentally, at the center of all of the fevered plans to keep himself in power and then lead an armed attack to seize by violence what he still considers his, to this day.

He ranted in a 14 page statement about the unselect committee, an illegitimate bunch of lying, traitorous assholes, ignoring both his enormous crowd size on Janiary 6 (see photos!) and never even mentioning his equally gigantic penis size (Stormy Daniels is a fucking liar!). Total witch hunt by more disloyal, lying, sick truth denying deniers, corrupt rats, in so many states.

He truly can’t help it. Even having to plead the Fifth makes him furious.

Mine, mine, I own it all! Everyone is in on the vicious, sick conspiracy to steal from me. You traitors have unleashed the rage of the majority of Americans, ready to kill and die for me. You’re all fucking dead, watch.

MAGA = Nazi

Friends have long chided me for saying the rabid, lying, authoritarian fact-deniers of the current Republican party are Nazis.  “Everything reminds you of Hitler!  Everyone’s a Nazi to you,” they often say.   Well, not everything.   But every lying sociopath who mobilizes the visceral hatreds of millions for his own self-serving ends, and is indifferent to mass suffering and countless deaths, tends to remind me of old Herr Hitler.  Every faithful follower of a lying sociopath, while also a victim of that leader, is a fucking Nazi.

I know a lot about Nazis, their motivations, techniques and ultimate aims, having studied them for years in class and in my reading.  Many of the top Nazis were very much like our Kevin McCarthy, Mitch, Lyin’ Ted, Little Marco, Perjury Taylor Green, Clarence and Ginni Thomas, people without any real core beliefs about anything but power.  Power is an end to itself to ambitious people and as Robert Caro pointed out in his excellent essay on power (sadly available only through Bezos’s paid service…) you can judge what a person believed the whole time they were climbing to power (Caro says “cloiming” in his  wonderful NY accent) by what they do once they have it.   

Like, in the case of our radicalized, lockstep Republicans, shutting down a government they controlled to pressure the country into submitting to something the vast majority didn’t want.   Like repeating angry, divisive lies disproved over and over again to mobilize the rage of their aggrieved base.  Like pointing a loaded gun at the Capitol and pulling the trigger to prevent the peaceful transition of power.   Like many ugly things they have shown no hesitation whatsoever to do.  Amid the silence of the Republican “moderates”, as afraid to speak the truth as the many in government who are already hounded by literal lynch mobs, who live in fear of stochastic, lone wolf terrorism from people goaded to deadly violence by insane lies spread by our own home grown white nationalist reality TV avatar of totalitarianism and those who march behind him.

Let’s just recap the latest united stand these Nazi motherfuckers continue to take behind anything that will hurt the Democrats chances, based on their actual successes, of keeping the House and gaining an actual, useable majority in the Senate.  As Jared’s pal MBS in Saudi Arabia squeezes the world oil supply to drive up inflation and hurt that communist dupe Biden and his radical socialist party in the approaching election.

Fucking F POTUS has, not surprisingly, continued to lie about the documents he stole from the government when he was dragged kicking and sulking from the White House.   He lied over and over, as he did to Mueller, about cooperating with the government.  Recall that his new AG Bagpiper Barr emphasized on live TV that his boy had cooperated fully with Mueller’s investigation, although Trump did not cooperate with the fake witch hunt at all, in fact, only obstructed it.  As to that obstruction, Mueller wrote that while he could not charge Trumpie while in office, he also could not exonerate him for obstructing his investigation.  It was, according to Eagle Scout Mueller, a matter for Congress, the DOJ and the courts, once POTUS was F POTUS.  About those stolen documents:

We were cooperating fully.  We didn’t lie, we never lied, we never lie.  The DOJ lies, to help Biden. We turned over everything.  They planted shit.  I declassified the shit before they could plant it.  I’m the rubber you’re the glue, scumbag.  We did nothing wrong.  We own those papers, and even if we don’t, we still do.  No backsies.  Finders keepers, losers weepers.  Executive Privilege, Attorney/Client Privilege, White Wealth Delay Tactic Privilege, Fuck your Mother Privilege.  Muhammed Bin Salman, one of the best people, a reformer, a visionary, gave Jared two billion as a small downpayment on what some of my documents are worth to him.   Putin, fine man, also, great customer.  What, am I not supposed to make money?  Jared and Ivanka made over $600,000,000 while public servants on the government payroll.  What am I, chopped liver?  I get to make money, too.   I’ve got mad bills to pay.

Anyone who thinks F POTUS would not sell top secret documents, has not already monetized those valuable papers he stole going on two years ago, probably also believes there are two parties who both do good things and bad things, who are roughly equivalent and equally corrupted by the big money donors.  Leaving the corrupting big money donors aside (and the legal unlimited use of dark money was a GOP initiative and great game-changing achievement that gave us MAGA), one party is trying its best to serve the needs of the vast majority of Americans.  The other is, I’m sad to say, the Nazi party, its only platform regaining unchallengeable power, behind an infallible, though often irrational, leaderIt is that stark, boys and girls.

The argument against the increasingly clear MAGA = Nazi argument:  Trump built not one single death camp!  Only one person that we know of was executed by federal agents who shot him on sight and claimed they were there to arrest him and that he resisted (that one unarmed antifa guy outside of Portland)!   Trump and Barr only executed one severely mentally ill prisoner on federal death row, and the bitch deserved it, no matter how extensive her daily cocktail of psychoactive drugs!  His government passed no law directly against the fucking so-called minorities, unless you consider the many new, restrictive voting laws in states where MAGA controls the legislatures.  There is no plan to invalidate future elections, unless you consider all the purity-tested MAGA election deniers who are campaigning on the promise to invalidate, as fraudulent, any election won by a non MAGA candidate.  Unless you consider the 6-3 MAGA Supreme Court poised to rule on a carefully constructed case designed to give a fig leaf of “originalism” to the pulled-out-of-somebody’s-ass “theory” of the Independent State Legislature, the most powerful sovereign bodies in America, whose actions are unreviewable by any court anywhere once SCOTUS bangs its 6-3 gavel.

Hitler had more time to make his mark on history.  It took him over a year in power before The Night of the Long Knives when he executed untrusted allies and hated enemies all over Germany.  It took five years before Kristalnacht, the Nazis’ first organized nationwide pogrom against Jews.  It was only after that he began secretly gassing “useless eaters” whose “lives were unworthy of life” in mental hospitals.  Six, almost seven years before he began the war of national self-defense the Jews forced him to wage to rescue the Aryans from destruction.   He hired violent criminals to oversee his war against partisans and Jews in countries he overran, and they did atrocious things, but it was eight long years before he started the mechanized mass murder machine in earnest and initiated that crowning Nazi achievement — historically efficient genocide.

So, F POTUS simply has not had time, in just one term, to make this country into Charles Koch’s wet dream (Koch’s dad built the oil refinery that produced the high octane fuel for the Nazi luftwaffe).   A country where the super rich can do whatever they want, in the name of liberty and freedom from majoritarian tyranny and government coercion, while everyone else is forced to do whatever they can to stay alive, subject to the whims of the best among us, guys like Koch, Murdoch, Bezos, Musk, Zuckerberg, Gates, et al.   Not all Nazis, perhaps, but the next best thing — the biggest beneficiaries of a Nazi social structure.  In that society, if you are not one of the condemned classes, you go along to get along, privileges protected as long as you play ball, take your windfall profits and stay quiet on “social issues”.  It’s been that way since the first tough guy imposed his will on a tribe of half apes thousands of years ago.  It was that way during all twelve years of the Thousand Year Reich.

Vote like your democracy depends on it, because it does.   I’m writing postcards to “swing voters” in Pennsylvania.  Contact tinicumtogether@gmail.com to get some postcards and a succinct script to write on ’em.  Take action, no matter how small it may seem, elections can turn on very few votes in a given precinct or district.   Any good history of the Nazi era will convince you that we are way, way too close to it happening here to fall into enervated depression about it.  Take action, friends.   Otherwise, see you at one of the MAGA camps, coming soon to an anarchist jurisdiction near you, if the Nazis take over.

Ron DeathSantis– cool dude

Heather Cox Richardson on strongman wannabe Ron DeathSantis:

This destructive storm highlights the distance between reality and the ideology that calls for getting rid of the federal government.

As a newly elected congress member in 2013, now-governor of Florida Ron DeSantis was one of the 67 House Republicans who voted against a $9.7 billion federal flood insurance assistance package for the victims of Hurricane Sandy in New York and New Jersey. Now, with Florida on the ropes, DeSantis asked President Joe Biden for an emergency declaration to free up federal money and federal help even before the storm hit, and said Tuesday, “We all need to work together, regardless of party lines.” 

Heather then describes the hugely successful Republican push since Reagan to move wealth increasingly toward the already very wealthy and away from the average American

There is a direct correlation between growing economic inequality and the growing popularity of authoritarianism. Scholars of authoritarian systems note that a population that feels economically, religiously, or culturally dispossessed is an easy target for an authoritarian who promises to bring back a mythological world in which its members were powerful.

But, having lifted strongmen into power, they learn that they were only tools to put in place someone whose decisions are absolute and who is no longer bound by the law.

https://heathercoxrichardson.substack.com/p/september-28-2022?r=74gv9&utm_campaign=post&utm_medium=email

Got to work hard to get out the vote and make sure this Trump wannabe DeathSantis, overruling the will of Florida voters regarding former felons voting, with his armed “election integrity” goons intimidating voters, still loses reelection as Florida gauleiter [1]  by a million votes.

[1]  A Gauleiter was a regional leader of the Nazi Party who served as the head of a Gau or Reichsgau. Gauleiter was the third-highest rank in the Nazi political leadership, subordinate only to Reichsleiter and to the Führer himself. The position was effectively abolished with the fall of the Nazi regime on 8 May 1945.

Hub and Spoke RICO case against F POTUS and allies

The best explanation I’ve had for Merrick Garland’s slowness and longtime reticence about prosecuting F POTUS and his criminal associates was from Joyce Vance, many months ago. Vance, a former federal prosecutor, explained that the best way to prosecute all of these seditious creatures and take them off the political playing field is through a RICO prosecution. RICO is the racketeering law that Giuliani and others used to put away many of the top Mafia dons, their consiglieres and capos.

RICO is a powerful law, with long prison sentences. Vance pointed out that it’s not that hard to obtain convictions under RICO. The problem is if the case is not perfect and airtight, a good appellate lawyer will not have a hard time poking a hole and getting the entire conviction thrown out. Imagine fucking F POTUS and his gang being successfully prosecuted under RICO, getting long prison terms and then being sprung on appeal, having the entire prosecution tossed out. That would be devastating and the end of democracy.

So Vance pointed out that Garland has to work with extreme care to make sure there is not a weak link in his RICO case. This process typically takes a couple of years, she said, but it’s the best shot at taking down a gigantic criminal conspiracy. Garland knows he has one shot.

Recently Alex Wagner on MSNBC had an interview with a former prosecutor who has drawn a map of a likely RICO prosecution. All I can say is “damn!”. Look at the diagram and then watch the short segment. Then take solace in the fact that in this legal battle against lying zombie F POTUS and his zombie army of third rate lawyers, Garland has not made a false move or lost any significant motion in court. Garland has also made a few brilliant legal moves cutting directly through F POTUS’s most grotesquely muscular attempts to obstruct justice, his lifelong project. Now he has to indict, prosecute and convict gold plated Teflon Don.