Notices by I moved to Mastodon.social (teri_kanefield@law-and-politics.online), page 3

I started reading this book:

Wrong: How Media, Politics, and Identity Drive our Appetite for Misinformation.

These are things I’ve been thinking about for years, watching happen on left-leaning social media, feeling frustrated by, and trying to understand.

Then Prof. Young, a sociologist, comes along and explains.

We all know about election deniers, 4chan, and Alex Jones style cults.

But there is also a propensity to hold on to misinformation on the left.

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. . .because democracy, which derives its authority from rule of law, requires facts and an adherence to reality.

Authoritarianism, on the other hand, relies on myths (“I am the strongman who can fix all problems.”)

Prof. Young shows how smart people fall victim to conspiracy theories.

In fact, she humbly opens the book with a personal anecdote about how, when confronted with a situation that was confusing and incomprehensible, she immediately looked for a way to assign blame.

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Aside: I've distinguished these by calling what happens on the left “misinformation” and on the right “disinformation” because when incorrect ideas catch on in left-leaning media, the origins are usually bad headline writers, publicity hounds, experts who pop off the tops of their heads without doing the research, and simple errors which get compounded when they are repeated.

In other words, they are not deliberate lies.

But anything that removes us from the truth hurts democracy. . .

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In fact, this is the idea she presents:

We are motivated to comprehend our world, to feel in control and to be part of a community and these things often lead us to believe things that are demonstrably false.

Holding a conspiracy theory gives people a renewed sense of energy. Instead of feeling out of control, they have an explanation.

Fueled by anger, they become defiant—but they have a direction. They feel they have agency. They can get behind a banner. They feel back in control.

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In fact, that is the pattern:

People face a situation that is confusing or seems incomprehensible and then they look for a way to assign blame.

It is easier to grasp a conpiracy theory when people you identify with—people who share your political and moral views— are doing the same.

It feels good to belong to a community of like minded people, so if a wrong idea catches hold in your group, you are more inclined to go along.

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Steve Scalise dropped out of the speaker race.

https://www.bbc.com/news/world-us-canada-67097299

Now what? Nominate Jim Jordan? Resurrect McCarthy? Something else?

It has to be somewhat embarrassing to House Republicans.

Two things haven’t changed about that group of white supremacists:
(1) How they think and (2) how good they are at grabbing power.

The book draws parallels between the white supremacists of the past and today.

Screenshot #1 is from 1857, when a small group of enslavers came close to seizing control of the federal government.

Lots of us look at the rampant disinformation, the GOP glorifying of lawbreaking, and the level of right wing racism and wonder, “Can democracy work?”

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(Thread) Democracy Awakening

OK. I’m ready with a Mastodon Book Report.

What Heather Cox Richardson does (as in her newsletter) is locate today’s events in historical context.

She opens with: “America is at a crossroads."

But crossroads aren't new. We've been at them before.

She shows how this moment is part of an ongoing struggle between a small group of white people who think that America was founded on principles of white supremacy and should remain that way, and the rest of us.

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Richardson tackles the question by showing how progress has been made in the past despite great pushback.

Lincoln and the Civil War got us out of an era when a small number of white men controlled everything.

But soon the white supremacists pushed back again.

For perspective, this happened after the Civil War (Screenshots 1 and 2, from page 212)

FDR and the New Deal got us out of another era when a small group of white men seized power and controlled most of the nation's wealth.

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Even if you think you know a lot about American history, I guarantee you’ll learn things you didn’t know.

Did you know that liberalism initially meant government restraint to protect individual liberty, and then referred to the liberal consensus, and now has been conflated with the far left?

I didn’t know that, but then I thought, "Yup, that make s sense."

In fact, that’s the feeling you’ll often get reading this book. “Hmm, now that I think about it, that makes sense.”

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The current GOP is a backlash against Brown v Board of Education (the Supreme Court case that declared racial segregation in schools unconstitutional.)

Richardson traces in detail how that backlash happened, and how today's backlash echoes the language and attitudes of the Confederacy.

She shows Nixon and others tied taxes to “redistributing wealth” to “undeserving” people as a way to get lower income racists aboard an economic agenda that hurt them.

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Did you know that Carter put solar panels on the White House and Reagan promptly removed them?

The book even mentions Archie Bunker as a cultural reference when the current backlash was about to pick up momentum.

Remember in 2021 when lots of people insisted that indicting Trump would solve the problem? (Yes, they did. They wanted it fast so we could quickly solve the problem.)

After reading this book, you'll know how naive that thinking was.

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Richardson shows how the liberal consensus put together after WWII was unwound by the modern GOP by turning Americans against each other.

The Republican Party is not inventing new tricks. They are using the tricks from the Confederacy, not because they are smart students, but because they think the same way.

See Screenshot #1. Does it sound familiar? It’s the same playbook used by the white supremacists of the past.

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@fediversereport

However, as my techie friends have explained to me, this does not mean Bluesky will be connected to Mastodon because the protocol is not Activity Pub.

Is that still correct?

Phillip Bump @pbump wrote this piece for the Post slamming Elon Musk for his latest degradation of Twitter.

You can read it through my subscription: https://wapo.st/3F4di8C

What I found interesting was the discussion of how Google solved the Internet search problem by building a website that sent people to other websites.

"The more you send people away, the more they come back."

Sounds a bit like Activity Pub and the theory behind the fediverse.

Well, that was fast. Trump is really the fastest loser (not just the greatest, but also the fastest.)

Earlier today he filed this asking the court to pause the New York fraud case while his appeal is pending:

https://www.documentcloud.org/documents/24017947-appeal-filing?responsive=1&title=1

Already, the court issued the ruling:

Nope, says the court
https://iapps.courts.state.ny.us/nyscef/ViewDocument?docIndex=icW_PLUS_422b3TJ12AMchhA3Ng==

The court did, however, grant the stay on the cancellation of the business certificate pending appeal, which was no surprise because Letitia James didn't oppose that.

@lolgop I’m a fan of mastodon. Lots of people are here to help. @feditips is helpful.

Good to see you by the way.

Here is the irony of Trump asking Cannon to delay his trial until November 2024 on a flimsy excuse:

If he were smart, he'd try to go to trial first with the one judge most likely to try to tip the scales in his favor.

IInstead, this trial is likely to come last.

That said, I have no idea how far he will be able to push Cannon, but the excuse that somehow he can't travel to D.C. to view the docs is absurd.

https://storage.courtlistener.com/recap/gov.uscourts.flsd.648653/gov.uscourts.flsd.648653.167.0.pdf

From the contents, we see that he will claim absolute immunity because any alleged wrongdoings were performed on the "outer rim of presidential duties."

Without reading the brief, you can see that he will interpret "outer rim" to include:

🔹 public statements about the election
🔹telling the justice department and state officials to investigate "fraud,
🔹talking to the VP and others about their "duties" and
🔹directing slates of electors.

As you go down the list, it gets sillier.

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Okay, this is just plain wrong. (Screenshot #1)

Stand by while I find a copy of the Constitution. 🤓 Got it. See Screenshot #2

He has it backward. All Congress can do is impeach and remove, but this doesn't preclude criminal actions after the president is out of office.

He argues that he was acquitted by Congress so no criminal prosecutions are possible, which wouldn't make sense.

What if crimes come to light after he leaves office?

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