Are we really so stupid that we cannot see through this kind of thing and need to actively censor it to have civilized society continue to function? When do we just give up on democracy completely?
Yes. Yes we are.
Facebook Says It Is Removing All Content Mentioning 'Stop the Steal'
331–340 of 451 posts
Re: Facebook Says It Is Removing All Content Mentioning 'Stop the Steal'
#332Earlier quoted context omitted.
Most of them aren’t in it for ideology but the shared victimhood. They go along with the ideology because most of the donor funding wants the ideology to be Conservative. These people were New Deal Democrats before the civil rights movement.
The chronology of that association doesn’t work. Democrats were staunch opponents of civil rights until the 1960s. Even then, more republicans supported the Civil Rights Act of 1964 than Democrats. Even in 1976, Carter won with the traditional new deal coalition of southerners and northeast progressives. He won South Carolina by the same margin as Massachusetts. Even in 1980 against Reagan, Carter performed much clos…
All chronologies of the 2 major parties in the US are flawed because the parties spent the 20th century switching their positions. The exodus of southern racists from the Democratic party in the mid-century controls almost all the polarization in our politics. Reagan gets a lot of blame for being at the helm during the rise of the moral majority, but if you read Perlstein, the coalition Reagan was backed by has its roots in Goldwater's southern strategy.
It is no more reasonable to say that Democrats were staunch opponents of civil rights into the 1960s (Truman integrated the military!) than it is to say that Republicans were religious conservatives. Southern Democrats opposed civil rights, and Northern Republicans were New Deal economic populists.
I did the (probably pointless) exercise a few years ago of reading the GOP party platform documents from 1972 through 2012, tagging each with specific issues like "block grant benefits to states" or "oppose campaign finance restrictions". I don't believe for a moment that these documents are representative of the real party, but it's interesting that you can watch the GOP's position change so clearly over time. Into the late 1970s, the GOP was open to abortion!
The parties have held relatively coherent positions since the 1980s; I think when people talk about the roles the parties have had in US history, as opposed to specific politicians, we should probably limit ourself to the parties of Reagan and Mondale and their successors.
Re: Facebook Says It Is Removing All Content Mentioning 'Stop the Steal'
#333Earlier quoted context omitted.
For historical context, it may be worth noting that the framers of the US constitution did not envision having direct popular election of the President [1], nor of senators [2]. To be clear, I'm not indicating that the framers had the right idea about this. Rather, just mentioning that the risks of under-informed general populace exercising direct democratic election has been under consideration since the nation's fo…
I don't really understand how that is relevant to the OP's question about censorship. Did the framers also think that censoring the views of the POTUS would be required? EDIT: Although going along with your point, I also remember the framers wanting the electors to be determined at the local level (district) rather than state. That would change things significantly, IMO.
The question was "are we really so stupid that..." The answer, at least according to the Framers, as implied by their actions, is "yes."
Re: Facebook Says It Is Removing All Content Mentioning 'Stop the Steal'
#334Earlier quoted context omitted.
I completely agree. I would like to see some of the other replies here comment on how democracy can function if the citizens are incompetent/stupid. If they can't be trusted to be knowledgeable, then how can they make informed decisions, including voting? And of course, who decides which people hold legitimate positions and which people are ignorant?
It is well known that an educated, free people are necessary for the functioning of democracy. It's part of the justification for the 1st Amendment. We have new technologies which are being leveraged to intentionally misinform people, in a society that has degraded public education and raised the cost of higher education to levels prohibitive for the majority of the population, and as a result, the society (as a whol…
> raised the cost of higher education to levels prohibitive for the majority of the population
Do you think there was a time when the majority of the population were college educated? Or realistically had access to college education?
Re: Facebook Says It Is Removing All Content Mentioning 'Stop the Steal'
#335Are we really so stupid that we cannot see through this kind of thing and need to actively censor it to have civilized society continue to function? When do we just give up on democracy completely?
I completely agree. I would like to see some of the other replies here comment on how democracy can function if the citizens are incompetent/stupid. If they can't be trusted to be knowledgeable, then how can they make informed decisions, including voting? And of course, who decides which people hold legitimate positions and which people are ignorant?
I agree that democracy can't function properly if citizens are stupid. All these talks of censorship are merely a stopgap measure, whether you're for or against it. The proper long-term fix is better public education.
Coincidentally, there are a certain group of people opposed to public education, ahem, I mean, "indoctrination" - they will continue to be a problem, but hopefully smaller and smaller problem if we have better education.
Re: Facebook Says It Is Removing All Content Mentioning 'Stop the Steal'
#336Earlier quoted context omitted.
What's with all the loonies in here? A private company censoring content on its platform is well within its rights, especially when that content conflicts with the company's policies. This has literally nothing to do with freedom of speech.
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Funny because I would consider you brainwashed! Any widespread censorship is enough to raise serious concerns for me.
Re: Facebook Says It Is Removing All Content Mentioning 'Stop the Steal'
#337Re: Facebook Says It Is Removing All Content Mentioning 'Stop the Steal'
#338Earlier quoted context omitted.
I think there's quite a step from "don't use AWS to plot a violent overthrow of the United States Government" to all communication being monitored and a firewall blocking foreign sources. Why should Facebook and Amazon use their resources to help this cause?
I think it’s quite a step to say all comments with the phrase Stop the steal want to overthrow the government. We, as a society, should be allowed to be very critical of our election process. Stifling discussions about the legitimacy of the election actually reduces my confidence in the election process. I’ve listen to their arguments and I didn’t believe them, but I feel good that people are allowed to do openly que…
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Re: Facebook Says It Is Removing All Content Mentioning 'Stop the Steal'
#339Earlier quoted context omitted.
Are you aware of what other things have led to deadly consequences? Communism, socialism, green terrorism, and self driving cars come to mind.
Totally, and then you have unfettered capitalism and corporatism, kakistocracies, oligarchies and lawn darts. Unfortunately, unlike all of those things, the FBI, Homeland Security[1] and Congress [2] actually found that white supremacists and other far-right-wing extremists are the most significant domestic terrorism threat facing the United States. So, when social networks' legal/liability or moderation teams take a…
StopTheSteal is not a slogan of white supremacists. In fact, it has nothing to do with white supremacism. Are you saying that 60 million or so people in the US are white supremacists?
Re: Facebook Says It Is Removing All Content Mentioning 'Stop the Steal'
#340Earlier quoted context omitted.
Inversions are happening faster than ever. The red and blue tribes swap their positions in sync at this point.
I'm an engineer, not an ideologue, and don't make it a practice of painting myself into a corner just to be consistent. Though I think the big tech companies have too much power, I think the need to avoid having the US government overthrown by a violent coup trumps other considerations. The material they are shutting down includes plans for next weekend to attack both Washington DC and state capitals. Some innocent c…
I think the government has too much power and the cost of losing the presidency shouldn't be so traumatic.
So much of the executive craziness of the last 4 years is due to the ever growing power of the executive branch and executive orders being de facto law.
All this presidential overreach is about to (hypocritically) be put to use and further expanded.