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"Can you imagine how right-wingers would have reacted if Obama or Biden had issued sweeping executive orders like Trump does?"
The right-wingers think they did. I need you to understand this. The right-wingers think they did.
Right-wingers live in a hermetically sealed media bubble. And since the days of Bill Clinton, that bubble has been telling them that every Democratic president is a lawbreaking tyrant, disregarding the Constitution and ruling by decree.
This is why they don't panic watching Trump break the law. They don't think they're crossing a Rubicon, because they believe the other side went across first.
@jalefkowit They told everyone our side already did, and I legitimately cannot understand why this fact is still not broadly understood.
@jalefkowit Like I understand the "the mainstream media is IN ON IT" narrative, which—not completely wrong given corp interests! But also the institutional refusal to grapple with the fact that we have a solid third of the country living in a full-time alternate reality makes me feel strong feelings
@kissane @jalefkowit I'm not certain how much of it is an alternate reality and how much of it is the fundamental belief that "those people" are not deserving of rights to begin with. See for example Trump's EO calling trans people fundamentally un-American. By defining Democratic constituencies as undeserving of representation, you arrive at the conclusion that every Democratic president has been, a priori, illegitimate.
In other words, the mere act of being a Black president to them made Obama into a norm transgression, which allows for Trump's transgressions to be seen as merely a reaction to an already destroyed norm.
Of course it is a mixture of both that and the parallel media universe, but the foundationally racist beliefs of an alarming large segment of the population cannot be disregarded.
@sophieschmieg @kissane @jalefkowit I agree here. Conervatives/republicans do try to justify any number of moral transgressions thru DARVO tactics. The cognitive dissonance required to achieve the mental gymnastics of justifying abuse of others requires a tremendous amount of energy that’s just wasted, not unlike AI data centers. Hence why the Fox News needs to be always on in the background; due to the sheer fragility of their mental framework a la house of cards
@kissane @jalefkowit i was aware of right-wing media constant lies and/or bullshit, but i wasn't aware of this particular lie, because i'm not interested in watching/reading a gish gallop, because that would be exhausting.
The fact that it's a gish gallop seems like it goes a long way to explaining why we're not as aware of the most damaging lies as we should be: they buried a needle in a constantly-growing pile of needles, and that makes it hard to focus on any one needle for long.
@kissane @jalefkowit but also, it seems like "false claims damaging to the public perception of the legitimacy of government" maybe should have been a category of speech that isn't protected by the 1st amendment.
Like, why should it be the responsibility of hundreds of millions of people to fact-check every false claim of tyranny, every day? Ain't nobody got time for that! Why shouldn't it be prohibitively expensive to publish those false claims in the first place?
@JamesWidman @jalefkowit That's actually how they put journalists who report the truth in jail in Russian, Myanmar, and a lot of other places.
Freedom of the press is so tricky because any government will be bad a lot of the time, so you have to do rulemaking that attempts to be resilient in that situation.
@kissane @jalefkowit but:
1) the determination of whether a claim is false wouldn't be up to the executive branch; it would be up to a court (just like in defamation lawsuits).
2) in theory at least, a court would take some care to check whether a specific claim of tyranny was backed by evidence that meets some acceptable standard...?
@kissane @jalefkowit
3) it seems like this would go under *civil* law rather than criminal law...? (so, worst case, a broadcasting license would be suspended; i mean it's not like rupert murdoch would be sent to prison, right?)
@kissane @jalefkowit like, surely there's a broad spectrum of possible ways to approach this between the two extremes of, "murdoch is allowed to broadcast any stochastically-violence-inciting bullshit he wants" on one side, and "the president gets to disappear journalists" on the other.
@JamesWidman @kissane @jalefkowit Theoretically, these should fall under the purview of anti-defamation laws if they weren't tied to monetary value. Even then, it feels like the Democrats are too.... Lazy? To force the issue, as if the problem would just go away on its own.
It's been decades, that's not going to happen.
@JamesWidman So, yes, there are centuries of legal and political discussion about all of this, and we have the examples of many countries that have chosen different trade-offs. (They tend not to have broad press freedoms written into their constitutions, though.)
@jhooper
The government cannot bring defamation suits. The freedom to say anything you want about the government is the express purpose of the first amendment.
@kissane @JamesWidman There are legal limitations to the first amendment, the "yelling fire in a movie theater" is such an example. Another is declaring intent to murder or injure a politician, or inciting others to do the same. I'm sure the police or FBI showing up to your house for such a statement would just be there to protect your first amendment rights.
@JamesWidman but let's not forget who owns SCOTUS at the moment...
@kissane @jalefkowit
@punissuer @kissane @jalefkowit
1) that's fair, but... how did we get that SCOTUS in the first place? Sure, a big part of it is _Citizens United v. FEC_ (and the fact that billionaires exist), but another big part is that we have a voting population that has been catastrophically & *deliberately* misinformed.
2) there's a limit to how bad a SCOTUS ruling can be without destroying public's respect for SCOTUS and the rule of law more broadly (e.g. see _Dred Scott_).
@punissuer @kissane @jalefkowit
3) a catastrophically-misinformed voting population will eventually lead us to actual tyranny anyway (as we've seen). So either we find a way to prevent/ameliorate that problem, or we have a state of bipolar political instability forever (or until this country destroys itself).
No government should be designed to operate under these conditions, because it's not *possible* to have a stable government under these conditions.
@punissuer @kissane @jalefkowit
So we have to (1) defeat fascists and (2) design government based on the assumption that fascists will be defeated.
It's a gamble, but playing it "safe" when it comes to freedom-of-speech is a big part of what brought the nazis to power this time.
@JamesWidman all true. I just wanted to point out that we may not rely on courts to achieve our goals.
I had hoped the point where we decide to ignore a clearly defunct SCOTUS has passed already, but here we are
@kissane @jalefkowit
@kissane @JamesWidman @jalefkowit countries with freedom of press and speech exist that limit free speech to "unless you're aiming to destroy our constitution". Germany is one.
The hurdles you need to jump over in order to prove someone is against the constitution are high. Maybe too high, as even our current Nazi reincarnation, the AfD, hasn't been prohibited on that basis.
From our perspective, the American understanding of free speech is extreme. Democracy should be able to defend itself.
@lizzard @kissane @jalefkowit Yeah. Like, we definitely want a constitution that makes it clear that everyone is permitted to observe government, to interrogate government, and to openly criticize government.
[...]
@lizzard @kissane @jalefkowit
...but if we're also permitted to publish false claims that e.g. a president is illegally overriding the authority of other branches of government, or that a president rigged an election, that's the kind of thing that can incite organized violence, and sometimes leads to an overthrow (and in January 2021 very nearly did, and might still lead to the destruction of constitutional order now).
[...]
@kissane @jalefkowit
Furthermore, if those false claims also promote e.g. antisemitism/racism/xenophobia/etc, then you get nazis. And if nazis overthrow the government, then you get genocide.
[btw @lizzard i didn't mean to direct this part at you personally; it's more for the americans here]
@lizzard @kissane @jalefkowit
In general, we do want freedom of speech, but the american model really seems very willing to wager with the lives of people who would be targeted by fascists (which could also help to explain why racism has persisted so long).
@lizzard @kissane @jalefkowit but also: the concept of "consent of the governed" loses its meaning if that consent is not *informed* consent.
And informed consent isn't possible if everyone is being psychologically conditioned to go along with a horrible constellation of lies, all day, every day, as if they're test subjects in an industrial-scale version of the Asch conformity experiments.
@JamesWidman @kissane @jalefkowit which basically comes down to "can we allow millionaires to exist" "should millionaires be allowed to own media empires" and "should we have well-financed public media", right?
@JamesWidman @kissane @jalefkowit racism has persisted because it's an attractively easy theory. You need a culture of humbleness that values thinking and change in order to overcome racism. Which means it's a constant fight against, basically, laziness.
If things are other people's fault, that means I don't need to change or even understand my role as part of the problem. Just underpay/evict/kill these others, doesn't matter to me, and can never hurt me because I'm not like them.