Category Archives: Random Blogging

Flooding The Zone

Times are tough for us Free Speech defenders ….

It’s bad enough that so few Americans understand either the protections or the limitations of the First Amendment’s Free Speech provisions. Fewer still can distinguish between hate speech and hate crimes. And even lawyers dedicated to the protection of our constitutional right to publicly opine and debate recognize the existence of grey zones.

When the Internet first became ubiquitous, I celebrated this new mechanism for expression. I saw it as a welcome new development in the “marketplace of ideas.”  What I didn’t see was its potential for the spread of deliberate propaganda.

Color me disabused.

Steve Bannon coined the phrase that explains what we are seeing: “flooding the zone with shit.” Rather than inventing a story to counter explanations with which one disagrees, the new approach–facilitated by bots and AI– simply produces immense amounts of conflicting and phony “information” which is then uploaded to social media and other sites.  The goal is no longer to make people believe “story A” rather than “story B.” The goal is to create a population that no longer knows what to believe.

It’s a tactic that has infected American politics and made governing close to impossible–but it is not a tactic confined to the U.S. It’s global.

Heather Cox Richardson has summed up the resulting threat:

A report published last week by the European Commission, the body that governs the European Union, says that when X, the company formerly known as Twitter, got rid of its safety standards, Russian disinformation on the site took off. Lies about Russia’s war against Ukraine spread to at least 165 million people in the E.U. and allied countries like the U.S., and garnered at least 16 billion views. The study found that Instagram, Telegram, and Facebook, all owned by Meta, also spread pro-Kremlin propaganda that uses hate speech and boosts extremists.

The report concluded that “the Kremlin’s ongoing disinformation campaign not only forms an integral part of Russia’s military agenda, but also causes risks to public security, fundamental rights and electoral processes” in the E.U. The report’s conclusions also apply to the U.S., where the far right is working to undermine U.S. support for Ukraine by claiming—falsely—that U.S. aid to Ukraine means the Biden administration is neglecting emergencies at home, like the fires last month in Maui.

Russian operatives famously flooded social media with disinformation to influence the 2016 U.S. election, and by 2022 the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) warned that China had gotten into the act. Today, analyst Clint Watts of Microsoft reported that in the last year, China has honed its ability to generate artificial images that appear to be U.S. voters, using them to stoke “controversy along racial, economic, and ideological lines.” It uses social media accounts to post divisive, AI-created images that attack political figures and iconic U.S. symbols.

Once upon a time, America could depend upon two large oceans to protect us from threats from abroad. Those days are long gone, and our contemporary isolationists–who refuse to understand, for example, how Russia’s invasion of Ukraine could affect us–utterly fail to recognize that opposing our new global reality  doesn’t make it go away.

The internet makes it possible to deliver disinformation on a scale never previously available–or imagined. And it poses a very real problem for those of us who defend freedom of speech, because most of the proposed “remedies” I’ve seen would make things worse.

This nation’s Founders weren’t naive; they understood that ideas are powerful, and that  bad ideas can do real harm. They opted for freedom of speech–defined in our system as freedom from government censorship– because they also recognized that allowing government to decide which ideas could be exchanged would be much more harmful.

I still agree with the Founders’ decision, but even if I didn’t, current communication technology has largely made government control impossible. (I still recall a conversation I had with two students at a Chinese university that had invited me to speak. I asked them about China’s control of the Internet and they laughed, telling me that any “tech savvy” person could evade state controls–and that many did. And that was some 18 years ago.)

At this poiint, we have to depend upon those who manage social media platforms to monitor what their users post, which is why egomaniacs like Elon Musk–who champions a “free speech” he clearly doesn’t understand–are so dangerous.

Ultimately, we will have to depend upon the ability of the public to separate the wheat from the chaff–and the ability to do that requires a level of civic literacy that has thus far eluded us….

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Left, Right And The Need For Certainty

I have a theory.

Way back when, when I was in college, a distant cousin of mine earned the opprobrium of the rest of our large, extended family by joining the university’s Young Socialist organization and participating in protests that received significant negative media coverage and prompted politically motivated and ultimately dismissed criminal charges. Interestingly, at the time, and despite the fact that I was one of the clan’s most politically conservative members, I was a lonely voice defending his exercise of his constitutional rights…

Fast forward some thirty plus years, and that cousin had morphed into an equally enthusiastic–and dogmatic– right-winger. He’d become a rightwing caricature. (I haven’t seen him in years, so don’t know whether he went “all the way” and embraced Trump and MAGA.)

I thought about that cousin’s ideological transformation when I read Michelle Goldberg’s recent review of Naomi Klein’s book “Doppleganger.” Klein traced the similar political turn of Naomi Wolf, with whom Klein has often been confused. Wolf, for those who are unfamiliar with her, was a once-liberal feminist icon who turned into an anti-vax Steve Bannon sidekick.

Klein and Wolf, both brown-haired middle-aged Jewish women writers, are often mistaken for each other. That became a growing problem for Klein as her reputation was tainted by Wolf’s escalating lunacy. Trapped at home by the pandemic, Klein became increasingly obsessed by Wolf’s transformation into a heroine of Covid truthers.

That obsession, in turn, guides Klein into an examination of what she calls “the Mirror World,” the vertigo-inducing inversion of reality common to contemporary far-right movements. Think, for example, of Vladimir Putin claiming that he’s liberating Ukraine from fascism or Donald Trump howling that his multiple prosecutions are a racist plot to subvert a presidential election. When I spoke to Klein recently, she described how jarring it was to watch protests against Covid measures appropriating left-wing language — common slogans were “I can’t breathe” and “My body, my choice” — making them “this weird doppelganger of the movements that I had been a part of and supported.”

Klein’s book explores this “upside-down” world, attributing the exchange of beliefs largely held by those on the political left to an equally firm adherence to those on the right, to

a half-joking formula to explain onetime leftists or liberals who migrate to the authoritarian right: “Narcissism(Grandiosity) + Social media addiction + Midlife crisis ÷ Public shaming = Right wing meltdown.”

I have a somewhat different take on these transitions, undoubtedly influenced by my observation of the U-turn taken by my cousin. If there are any psychiatrists or other mental health professionals reading this, I’d welcome your reaction to my theory.

Here’s my analysis.

We live–as we all recognize–in a time of rapid social change. Those changes challenge the various verities with which most of us were raised, and with which we have become comfortable. Every day, it seems, we encounter evidence questioning–or worse, disproving– things that we have believed to be fact. We are absolutely marinating in ambiguity–we live in a world that is increasingly painted in shades of gray, and in which we enounter proliferating evidence that what we knew wasn’t really so.

Some people can cope with that growing lack of certainty. Others cannot. It has nothing to do–again, in my humble opinion–with intellect or its lack.

Think about the number of highly intelligent, prominent people who began as Conservatives and now are Liberals–and those who have migrated in the other direction. (I’ll exclude politicians–like Ronald Reagan–whose transitions might be attributed to political advantage.) Lefties who, like my cousin, became right-wingers include people like Irving Kristol, Jean Kirkpatric and David Horowitz…

None of these people are dummies. But if I was a wagering woman, I would bet that all of them share a profound need for certainty and a corresponding terror of ambivalence and ambiguity– a deep need for a world that can be understood in shades of black and white, right and wrong, correct and erroneous.

When emerging realities fundamentally challenge beliefs held by people who are uncomfortable with ambiguity, those peoople are much more likely to substitute a different, equally firm belief system than they are to accept the complications and confusions that accompany uncertainty. The content of the ideology is ultimately less important than its function, which is to provide a predictable, permanent foundation for encountering and interpreting the world around them.

Sometimes, as Klein notes, that “exchange” of belief systems is prompted by negative events. In Wolf’s case, it was evidently negative publicity over inaccuracies in a book.

Whatever the trigger, a deep-seated need for orthodoxy–for a firm belief system to cling to– explains a lot….

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This!

As regular readers of my daily rants know, I’m not a fan of organized religion–quite the contrary. And I’m definitely not a fan of the faux “Christianity”– more properly identified as Christian Nationalism–that permeates the MAGA movement.

But I am a fan of some actual Christians–especially the members of the clergy desperately working to remind their colleagues and congregants of the basic messages of the Christian faith. I have several personal friends who fall into that category, and I follow a couple of others on social media. One of the latter is John Pavlovitz, and I was so impressed with a recent “sermon” he delivered via the Internet that I’m going to quote rather copiously from it.

The title of the piece was “No, I Won’t Agree To Disagree About You Supporting Trump. You’re Just Wrong.” The ensuing message did two important things: it underlined the ways in which MAGA Republicanism is inconsistent with traditional Christian teaching; and it explained what all those nice people who want to bridge American political disagreements fail to understand–these arguments aren’t political. They are deeply moral–and accordingly, unbridgeable.

As Pavlovitz writes, we can’t simply “agree to disagree” because that would be tantamount to a declaration that “we both have equally valid opinions, that we’re each mutually declaring those opinions not so divergent that they cannot be abided; that our relationship is of greater value than the differences”–and as he says, that really isn’t an accurate description.

We are not simply declaring mismatched preferences regarding something inconsequential. We’re not talking about who has the best offensive line in the NFL, or whether Van Halen was better with Dave or Sammy, or about what craft beer pairs best with a cheesesteak, or about the sonic differences of CDs and vinyl. On such matters (though I will provide spirited debate), I can tolerate dissension.

We’re not even talking about clear misalignments on very important things: how to best address climate change or what will fix our healthcare system or how to reduce our national debt or what it will take to bring racial equity. Those subjects, while critically important, still have room for constructive debate and differing solutions. They are mendable fractures.

But this, this runs far deeper and into the marrow of who we each are.

At this point, with the past few years as a resume, your alignment with the former president means that we are fundamentally disconnected on what is morally acceptable—and I’ve simply seen too much to explain that away or rationalize your intentions or give you the benefit of the doubt any longer.

Pavlovitz understands what allegiance to Trump and MAGA tells us about those loyalists: that they don’t value the lives of people of color or women, that they distrust/dismiss science, and that they are willing to distort and betray the faith they loudly profess.

I now can see how pliable your morality is, the kinds of compromises you’re willing to make, the ever-descending bottom you’re following into, in order to feel victorious in a war you don’t even know why you’re fighting.

That’s why I need you to understand that this isn’t just a schism on one issue or a single piece of legislation, as those things would be manageable. This isn’t a matter of politics or preference. This is a pervasive, sprawling, saturating separation about the way we see the world and what we value and how we want to move through this life.

Agreeing to disagree with you in these matters, would mean silencing myself and more importantly, betraying the people who bear the burdens of your political affiliations— and this is not something I’m willing to do. Our relationship matters greatly to me, but if it has to be the collateral damage of standing with them, I’ll have to see that as acceptable.

Your devaluing of black lives is not an opinion.
Your acceptance of falsehoods is not an opinion.
Your defiance of facts in a pandemic is not an opinion.
Your hostility toward immigrants is not an opinion.
These are fundamental heart issues.

As he concludes:

I believe you’re wrong in ways that are harming people.
You’re wrong to deny the humanity of other human beings.
You’re wrong to justify your affiliation with this violence.
You’re wrong to embrace a movement built on the worst parts of who we are.

Pavlovitz refuses to “agree to disagree” about such profound moral differences.

To which this atheist says: AMEN.

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I Was So Wrong…

As I cleanse my email feed every morning , deleting multiple frantic requests for just $2/$5/$20 or whatever, I’m reminded about my original, oh-so-naive belief that small-dollar fundraising would improve governance by removing the influence of big-dollar donors…

Silly me.

I was thrilled when Howard Dean first demonstrated that the internet could be employed to encourage small donations.  When Obama raised enormous sums in small increments, I  thought the days of depending on political fat cats was over–and since no candidate could be “bought” for these small contributions, I counted this as a win for democracy.

Let’s just say it turned out to be a lot more complicated than that.

Small dollar fundraising did indeed reduce political reliance on the “usual suspects”–the big money donors. Unfortunately, however, this approach to fundraising produces different–but equally troubling– negative consequences, and those negatives go far beyond the annoying assaults on our inboxes.

In a recent column for the New York Times, Thomas Edsall consulted the research–and reported on the gloomy conclusions that the research supports.

Increasing the share of campaign pledges from modest donors has long been a goal of campaign-finance reformers, but it turns out that small donors hold far more ideologically extreme views than those of the average voter.

In their 2022 paper, “Small Campaign Donors,” four economists — Laurent Bouton, Julia Cagé, Edgard Dewitte and Vincent Pons — document the striking increase in low-dollar ($200 or less) campaign contributions in recent years. (Very recently, in part because Donald Trump is no longer in the White House and in part because Joe Biden has not been able to raise voter enthusiasm, low-dollar contributions have declined, although they remain a crucial source of cash for candidates.)

Bouton and his colleagues found that the total number of individual donations grew from 5.2 million in 2006 to 195.0 million in 2020. Over the same period, the average size of contributions fell from $292.10 to $59.70.

Edsall also quoted a 2019 article, “Small-Donor-Based Campaign-Finance Reform and Political Polarization.” That article warned about the consequences of increasing dependence on small donations, due to the fact that low-dollar donors tend to be “considerably more ideologically extreme than the average American.”

This is one of the most robust empirical findings in the campaign-finance literature, though it is not widely known. The ideological profile for individual donors is bimodal, with most donors clumped at the “very liberal” or “very conservative” poles and many fewer donors in the center, while the ideological profile of other Americans is not bimodal and features strong centrist representation.

It turns out that rising dependency on small-dollar donors has been one of the major reasons we’ve seen a decline in the strength of political parties–and the inability of party leaders, especially but not exclusively in the GOP, to control their respective crazies.

Political parties have been steadily losing the power to shape the election process to super PACs, independent expenditure organizations and individual donors. This shift has proved, in turn, to be a major factor in driving polarization, as the newly ascendant sources of campaign contributions push politicians to extremes on the left and on the right.

Edsall writes that Citizens United “was a crucial factor in shaping the ideological commitments of elected officials and their challengers.” It ushered in our era of independent expenditures and of dark money, leaching power that used to be exercised by the political parties.

The small donors who contribute to Trump are also those who fund the looney-tunes.

Edsall reports that Marjorie Taylor Greene raised $12,546,634, with 68.32 percent coming from small donors; Matt Gaetz raised $6,384,832, of which 62.24 percent came from small donors; and Jim Jordan raised $13,975,653, of which 58.05 percent came from small donors. On the Democratic side, Bernie Sanders and AOC appealed most to small donors (although I would note that Sanders and AOC are both sane and hard-working legislators–something that  certainly can’t be said about Greene, Gaetz and Jordan.)

Donations of $200 or less made up 69 percent of the individual contributions to Trump’s campaign.

And speaking of Citizens United, in its wake, spending by ideological and single-issue independent expenditure organizations grew from $21.8 million in 2006 to $66 million in 2016. During that same time-period, spending by political parties fell from 24 percent of the total to 16.2 percent, and the influence of dark money grew significantly.

There’s much more in Edsall’s column, and it is definitely worth reading in its entirety. The bottom line is that we now have a system that incentivizes extremism. Social media and the Internet enable lunatics to self-finance; they don’t worry that Fortune 500 companies will stop giving them money, because 30 percent of the population wants insanity and is willing to fund the politicians who give it to them.

I have no clue what we do about this, but a more politically savvy Supreme Court would help….

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Is The Tide Turning?

I’ve just finished a really good book by Dan Pfeiffer, “Battling the Big Lie.” Pfeiffer handled communications in the Obama White House and is currently the host of the podcast “Pod Save America.”

One of the many, many important points he makes in that book is that Democrats have a “message over megaphone” problem–“Democrats spend 99 percent of their time worrying about what they should say, and only one percent figuring out how to get people to hear what they are saying.”

Pfeiffer spends a significant amount of time describing the outsized effect of the Right’s media ecosystem, including two chapters on Fox. I’ll undoubtedly have more to say about the book  (okay, I probably loved it so much because his analyses mostly mirror mine…), but today I want to focus on an article about Fox I came across just after finishing it.

The American Prospect’s Kuttner on Tap reports that Fox’s troubles didn’t end when it paid Dominion zillions of dollars for lying about that company.

Fox is both a network and the owner of 29 individual lucrative TV station franchises, including in 14 of the 15 largest markets. Their licenses require renewal by the FCC every eight years.

Fox’s license for its Philadelphia station is currently up for renewal, and several public-interest groups are opposing that renewal.

The FCC’s criteria for renewal include “character,” defined in great detail, a test that Fox flagrantly flunks, especially given its admissions in the Dominion case. On August 23, the Commission agreed to take public comment on this question.

Opponents of renewal include Jamie Kellner, the founding president of Fox News. Kellner’s  letter to the FCC included the following:

Unlike the news feeds provided today by Fox News Channel, our news feeds did not prominently feature advocates like Rudy Giuliani and Sidney Powell spouting nonsensical lies about a Presidential election … If the character requirement for broadcast licensees is to have any meaning, the FCC must designate the application for a hearing to evaluate the Murdochs’/Fox’s character qualifications…

Others who have filed objections include Alfred Sikes, a former Republican FCC chairman,  Ervin Duggan, a former Democratic FCC Commissioner, and ex–Fox News Channel commentator Bill Kristol.

In yet another filing, the Media and Democracy Project pointed out that:

FOX knew—from the Murdochs on down—that Fox News was reporting false and dangerous misinformation about the 2020 Presidential election, but FOX was more concerned about short-term ratings and market share than the long-term damage caused by its spreading disinformation.

FOX’s lies concerning the outcome of the 2020 election caused a great injury to the American people and the institutions of our democracy. FOX’s willingness to lie demonstrates a fatal character flaw.

It’s hard to see how Fox can get its license renewed if there is a hearing on the merits. There are just too many examples of Fox’s deliberate disinformation. Kuttner predicts that the Philadelphia challenge will be followed by 28 more, as Fox’s other licenses come up for rolling review.

If Fox does get its license, we might as well scrap the FCC as meaningless. As the Media and Democracy petition puts it:

This is not a First Amendment case. Rather the issue here concerns a corporation that, with the full knowledge and approval of its management, lied to millions of Americans. The question before the Commission is not whether FOX had a right to lie, rather it is about the consequences of those lies and the impact on FOX’s qualifications to remain an FCC licensee.

If a blogger or independent Internet source lies, the First Amendment protects them. The government has no legal recourse. But government has the right–and, I would insist, the duty–to ensure that those competing for use of one of the limited public airwaves adhere to certain standards as a condition of the award.

The Dominion lawsuit proved (as if we had any doubt) that Fox  lies to the American public with the full knowledge and approval of its management.

As Kuttner correctly notes, the question isn’t whether FOX had a right to lie. But I disagree with his assertion that the issue is the negative consequences of those lies. The issue I see  is the right of a corporation to use public airwaves to deliver deliberate disinformation in blatant violation of its license with the FCC.

Fox demonstrably violated numerous terms of that license, just as Trump knowingly violated numerous laws. If neither suffers the consequences that less powerful miscreants would suffer, that result would undermine the most basic tenet of the rule of law: that no one is above the law.

As the saying goes, every journey begins with a single step. Opposition to Fox’s Philadelphia renewal represents a welcome first step toward dismantling the Right’s megaphone. Bravo to the opposition!

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