Why I'm not going to Parler

If you are like me, your social media timelines have been filled with people announcing that they are leaving for Parler, an alternative social media site that has been touted as the answer to censorship of tech company censorship of conservatives. While the treatment of conservatives by social media companies has sometimes been a problem, I won’t be abandoning Facebook and Twitter for Parler or Mewe. Here’s why.

The first and most obvious reason is that I don’t want any more social media accounts. I’ve been on Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, and Instagram for years and I’m already questioning the time I spend on these sites. I’ve gone on social media fasts in the past, but the time I spend perusing timelines has gone way up as my workload decreased in the pandemic. The last thing I need in my life is another social media account when I really should be reducing my intake of social media.

At this point, I primarily use Facebook to keep up with family and friends, many of whom are not on Parler, and Twitter for political discussions. I don’t anticipate leaving Twitter either because it is unique in that it allows you to interact directly with political figures, journalists, and columnists rather than just reading a post and leaving a comment.

Depending on how you set up your timeline, Twitter and Facebook allow a well-rounded and fully informed look at both sides of the political spectrum. I don’t think that will be true of Parler and Mewe, which are already being billed as “conservative” social media platforms.

In other words, these new sites will be a bubble of confirmation bias where Republicans don’t hear ideas that run counter to the party line. As I wrote last week, the prevalence of confirmation bias in the conservative media was a major reason that Donald Trump lost the election. Now many Republicans are doubling down on what amounts to retreating to a safe space for groupthink when what they really should be doing is engaging with undecided voters and liberals in an attempt to stress-test their beliefs and win others to their cause.

It takes a certain amount of maturity and intellectual honesty to listen to competing ideas, but if conservative ideas can stand up to scrutiny then we have nothing to fear from being challenged. For me, discussions are much more interesting when there is disagreement. I don’t like being confined to an “amen corner” where every reply to a post is a thumbs-up or people agreeing with you.

We need to hear the truth, even if it is unpleasant and shakes the foundations of our beliefs. You don’t learn about potential weaknesses in your ideas from a crowd of yes-men. That has been a serious problem for the Trump Administration.

The key to a good discussion is being able to agree in a civil manner. This is a problem with people on both sides of the political spectrum (take it from someone who draws fire from both parties). Retreating to conservative websites is not going to make people behave with more logic and civility. With the promise of less moderation and fewer differing viewpoints to learn from, the opposite is likely to be true.

If Parler and MeWe do not moderate, they are likely to quickly become cesspools of profanity, hate, conspiracy theories, obscenity, child sexual abuse, and calls to violence from factions like the Boogaloo Bois. There are indications that this is already happening. Despite billing itself as a place for “free expression without violence and a lack of censorship,” Parler has already had to have a come-to-Jesus moment with users who were testing the site’s limits by posting obscene and pornographic material. I’ve seen all of this sort of stuff on Facebook as well, but the site does try to maintain a basic community standard. Many of the areas where I’ve seen really bad stuff on Facebook are private groups that threaten to ban members who report posts.

But, you ask, what about censorship by Facebook and Twitter? I do agree that there is a bias against conservatives and Republicans but I also think that bias is overstated. In my experience, there is a culture of victimhood on the right where people push the boundaries because they get a certain amount of “street cred” for doing time in “Facebook jail” or “Twitmo.” How many times have you seen posts that begin with “Let’s see how long Zuck [Mark Zuckerberg] will leave this up” or “I’ll bet this gets Zucked?”

I have run a conservative Facebook page, “The Common Sense Conservative,” for more than a decade. In my years as a Facebook admin, I’ve only run afoul of community standards twice. The first time, several years ago, was for posting a meme that listed the two symbols for the male and female genders which were labeled “genders.” This was followed by a list of symbols for other hybrid genders which was labeled “mental disorders.” I got a warning for that one.

More recently, I received a 24-hour ban for two unspecified posts last summer. The problem with this incident was that I don’t know which posts were at issue or what community standard I violated. Facebook allowed an appeal, but there was no way to obtain more information on the case.

So why is it that I can admin a conservative page for years with almost no problems while others are banned on what seems like a weekly basis? I’ve tried to keep my page entertaining yet civil and welcomed people with differing viewpoints as long as they followed the page rules, which include no name-calling, no profanity, and generally keeping things civil. Despite these simple rules, I’ve had to ban a plethora of people over the years who can’t follow stay within the guidelines. Liberals would come to attack me out during the Obama years and now Trump supporters mob the page to call me names and cuss me out. These are the same people who get into trouble with Facebook and who see the appeal of Parler. If you’re like me and don’t want a social media experience filled with anger and insults, the new social media platforms probably aren’t for you.

Social media rules can be opaque and often seem to be applied in a biased fashion, but as I wrote earlier this year, that is permissible under Section 230, which gives social media companies a lot of leeway to moderate posts. Social media companies can and should do a better job of giving clear and objective standards and moderation, but a majority of the problems that conservatives have with social media companies could be avoided by simply being responsible users and not engaging in personal attacks, posting profanities and obscenities, and not sharing fake news and conspiracy theories. In other words, this is stuff that we, as responsible adults and discerning Christians, should be doing anyway.

Alternative social platforms are tempting for many conservatives, but ultimately they may do the movement more harm than good. Already too many on the right live in alternative reality bubbles of conspiracy theories, confirmation bias, and groupthink. Retreating from the public square to a safe space will only make that problem worse. In the end, political movements are built and parties are won by engaging opponents and winning them over, not by retreating to a safe space.

Originally published on The First TV

What does Section 230 actually say?

 One recurring theme of the past few years has been conservative allegations of unfairness on social media. Often these allegations have been paired with calls to reform or repeal Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act, which governs internet companies such as Facebook and Twitter. Twitter’s removal of the Hunter Biden email story is only the most recent example.

Many of the people who are talking about Section 230 have probably never read it. As a result, there is a lot of bad information about what the law says and does. In the words of Inigo Montoya, “I do not think it means what you think it means.”

To begin with, it’s important to understand why Section 230 became law in the first place. Last January, David French explained in Time how the law had its origins in a pair of federal court rulings from the 1990s. One ruling held that Compuserve could not be held liable for user-posted content because it did not moderate the discussion boards while the second did hold Prodigy liable because it moderated and removed comments that violated user guidelines.

Essentially, the two rulings created an all-or-nothing situation in which companies took on massive liability if they enforced any standards on users. The situation created an incentive for companies to take a hands-off approach from user forums, which would quickly allow the internet to deteriorate into a cesspool of filth.

Congress saw the problem and uncharacteristically took action. In 1996, Section 230 became law with strong bipartisan support in an attempt to find a middle ground between the two extremes. You can read the full text of Section 230 here, but the meat of the law is section (c):

(c) Protection for “Good Samaritan” blocking and screening of offensive material

(1) Treatment of publisher or speaker No provider or user of an interactive computer service shall be treated as the publisher or speaker of any information provided by another information content provider.

(2) Civil liability No provider or user of an interactive computer service shall be held liable on account of—

(A) any action voluntarily taken in good faith to restrict access to or availability of material that the provider or user considers to be obscene, lewd, lascivious, filthy, excessively violent, harassing, or otherwise objectionable, whether or not such material is constitutionally protected; or

(B)any action taken to enable or make available to information content providers or others the technical means to restrict access to material described in paragraph (1).

One of the misconceptions about Section 230 is that social media companies are not considered publishers, but note that the law exempts them from being considered a publisher only in the case of posts “by another information content provider.” In other words, Twitter is not a a publisher of content posted by its users, but it is a publisher when it posts its own content.

As an example, when a news website posts an article, it is the publisher of that article and liable for its content. It is not, however, the publisher of the comments section and has no liability for what individuals post in response. This is as it should be.

Note also that Section 230 does not require viewpoint neutrality or objectivity. The law gives social media companies broad latitude to set their own standards and to enforce them. Content can be “constitutionally protected” and still be banned by the social media platform.

This is also as it should be. Social media companies are private platforms and the right to set their own standards is covered by the First Amendment right to free expression. Social media users have a First Amendment right to expression as well, but that right does not include a right to access on a platform that belongs to someone else.

Because social media companies are private, not government entities, the First Amendment does not apply in cases of posts being throttled or removed. Ironically, the right-wing calls for more regulation of social media are literally requests to restrict the First Amendment to combat perceived censorship. The idea is absurd on its face.

It’s also ironic that much of the battle against social media censorship is being carried out on… wait for it… social media. The fact that social media platforms are, for the most part, open marketplaces of ideas is evident by the fact that Donald Trump and a myriad of others can attack Twitter for censorship on Twitter itself undercuts the argument that social media censorship is a serious problem.

This isn’t to say that social media standards and enforcement don’t have problems. There definitely seems to be a bias against conservatives and Republicans. The social media giants should be evenhanded in the enforcement of their standards, but this is more of a customer service issue than one of censorship.

And some of the problem is self-induced by right-wing posters. I know many people who push the bounds of decency and then brag about being banned. In some circles, victim status from having spent time in “Facebook jail” or “Twitmo” gives the user street cred.

More than encouraging fairness, the effect of repealing Section 230 would likely be to end social media as we know it. Companies would have the choice of either no regulation, a world in which threats and obscene material could not be removed, or strict liability for everything posted by every user. Many discussion forums would probably be taken down. If not, decent people would flee as social media became even more vile.

Rather than an expansion of government and encroachment on the First Amendment, a better solution would be for disaffected Twitter and Facebook users to vote with their feet and find an alternative. Parler was the rage among Republicans a few months ago and other competitors will arise to fill any niche created by tech company bias. The social media giants can change or risk losing traffic and revenue. The solution is in free markets, not growing government.

This is especially true on the eve of an election in which Republicans are preparing for a bloodbath. Allowing government to determine what is “fair” strikes me as a bad idea at any time but especially when Democrats are about to take control of both the White House and Congress.

Originally published on The First TV

Trump Suggests Delaying Election

President Trump touched the third rail of pandemic politics this morning with a suggestion that this year’s election be delayed. In a mid-morning tweet, the president once again assailed mail-in voting and suggested the country “delay the Election until people can properly, securely and safely vote.”

Until this morning, the prospect that the Trump Administration would use the pandemic as an excuse to delay the election was the province of left-wing alarmists and conspiracy theorists (who are not solely on the right). That changed with the tweet in which the president seemed to embrace the idea.

The tweet itself is a mishmash of confusing and contradictory information. For starters, the president does not have the authority to delay the election. The date of the election is established by federal law to be “the Tuesday next after the 1st Monday in November, in every even-numbered year.” There is no provision within the law to alter that date. Congress would almost certainly not pass a law to change the date.

Likewise, the president’s claim that mail-in voting is bad but absentee voting is good is a head-scratcher. There is variation in state rules but the two are essentially the same as FactCheck.org noted in an analysis back in June. (My advice on all fact-check articles is to read the article, not just the headline). It’s reminiscent of the famous “Office” meme:

If you’re keeping score at home, we now have a good sense of what President Trump thinks are safe and unsafe behaviors during the pandemic. It is safe to send your kids to school or to go to work yourself. You can go to church and you can take part in the economy.

On the other hand, voting is definitely not safe. It’s also not safe to stay in prison (if you are Paul Manafort, Michael Cohen, or Roger Stone). Lockdowns are also dangerous and not going to school will probably kill more kids than the virus.

It is tweets like this that are driving the president’s approval rating into the ground. One cannot read this tweet without coming to the conclusion that Donald Trump is either incompetent, corrupt, or, and I judge this to be most likely, both. He seems to have little knowledge of the Constitution or the rule of law and, after nearly four years in office, no interest in learning.

Criticisms of Joe Biden’s mental capacity are valid and concerning but so are criticisms about Donald Trump’s mental fitness. Joe Biden at least has the good sense to stay out of the limelight where Donald Trump cannot stand to not be the center of attention. As a wise man once said, “It is better to remain silent at the risk of being thought a fool than to talk and remove all doubt of it,” but President Trump compulsively shows the world his foolishness on a daily basis.

There is one point in the president’s tweet that hit the nail on the head, however. The world is watching as Americans choose a new president from the worst two candidates since… well, since 2016.

“It will be a great embarrassment to the USA,” Trump said in the tweet.

You got that right, Mr. President.

Originally published on the Resurgent

Why Trump’s Social Media Executive Order Is Both Illegal And Unwise

Today Donald Trump signed an Executive Order punishing social media companies for the way they moderate online content. The order was specifically aimed at Twitter, which has embarrassed the president this week by add fact-checks to several Trump tweets.

The meat of the Executive Order attacks Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act of 1996, saying, “When an interactive computer service provider removes or restricts access to content and its actions do not meet the criteria of subparagraph (c)(2)(A), it is engaged in editorial conduct. It is the policy of the United States that such a provider should properly lose the limited liability shield of subparagraph (c)(2)(A) and be exposed to liability like any traditional editor and publisher that is not an online provider.”

Here is what subparagraph (c)(2)(A) says:

No provider or user of an interactive computer service shall be held liable on account of—(A) any action voluntarily taken in good faith to restrict access to or availability of material that the provider or user considers to be obscene, lewd, lascivious, filthy, excessively violent, harassing, or otherwise objectionable, whether or not such material is constitutionally protected

Communications Decency Act, subparagraph (c)(2)(A)

The law gives social media companies, “interactive computer services,” wide latitude to moderate a wide variety of objectionable content. The law specifically says that even constitutionally protected material can be restricted if the action is taken in good faith.

Another relevant portion of the law is subparagraph (c)(1) which is literally one sentence before the paragraph cited by the president’s Executive Order. That line says:

No provider or user of an interactive computer service shall be treated as the publisher or speaker of any information provided by another information content provider.

In other words, the law specifically says that social media companies cannot be treated as publishers of information that they do not produce. Despite the plain language of the law, the president’s Executive Order calls on social media companies to be treated like “any traditional editor and publisher that is not an online provider.” Since laws passed by Congress have more weight than an Executive Order, President Trump’s decree is illegal on its face.

Beyond the illegality of the order, its premise is also wrong. In contrast to many Republicans who claim that Section 230 gives special protections to social media companies, the law actually offers protection based on activity rather than status. When Twitter moderates or removes tweets published by its users, it is protected from liability under the law but, when it produces its own content, it is legally a publisher.

“In plain English, this means that my comments on Twitter or Google or Yelp or the comments section of my favorite website are my comments, and my comments only,” David French explained in Time back in January, adding that Section 230 “allows websites to take down racial slurs – all without suddenly also becoming liable for all the rest of their users’ speech.”

This is exactly what Congress intended when it passed the law. In response to several court cases in the 1990s, Congress designed Section 230 to encourage internet providers to moderate and remove offensive content from their platforms rather than allowing the internet to continue to be a cesspool of insults, pornography, and fake news. Well, even more of one anyway.

As Jeff Kosseff, author of The 26 Words That Created The Internet, explained, “For Congress, the motivator for Section 230 was that it did not want platforms to be these neutral conduits, whatever that means. It wanted the platforms to moderate content.”

The rub is that if the government leaves it up to the internet providers to moderate content then there will be as many different versions of what is offensive as there are internet providers. However, the alternative is that the government become the arbiter of what is fair and what is offensive for all companies.

That is where President Trump wants to go. Trump’s Executive Order calls on the Secretary of Commerce, the Attorney General, the National Telecommunications and Information Administration (NTIA), and the FCC to issue regulations determining when internet providers are not acting in good faith, act inconsistently with terms of service, and without a meaningful explanation or allowing users to be heard.

While censorship on social media platforms is not currently a First Amendment issue since the Bill of Rights restricts the government and not private companies, Trump’s plan could make it more difficult to moderate offensive content on the internet by inserting the government into the equation. Twitter has the right to remove content as a private company but if the government directs Twitter to remove or moderate content then it could constitute a First Amendment violation.

Allowing the government to make subjective decisions about the management of content on the internet is never a good idea, but the summer of 2020 is a particularly bad time for Republicans to make such a move. Aside from the strategic fact that Trump’s proposal is an expansion of government into policing free speech on the internet, there are tactical considerations as well.

As we head into the 2020 elections, it looks increasingly likely that Republicans will lose both the presidency and the Senate. If Trump and company act now to set up an infrastructure for micromanaging speech on the internet, it is very possible that a Joe Biden Administration will put that policy fully into place. That fact alone should have been enough to slam the brakes on the Executive Order.

Regardless of the outcome of this year’s election, whatever bureaucratic restrictions the Trump Administration puts on free speech will one day be administered by Democrats. When that happens, it is very likely that the Democrats will use those rules against conservatives. When Republicans give the government a new weapon to brandish, they should remember that sooner or later it will be turned against them.

Originally published on The Resurgent

Warning Bells For 2020

In modern turbine airplanes, when something goes wrong it triggers a chime in the cockpit and a flashing light to get the pilots’ attention, along with a message that describes the problem. Problems that are serious but that aren’t yet life-threatening present an amber caution light and single chime. If a problem is serious enough, triple-chime sounds and a red warning light flashes. The chimes continue and the lights flash until the pilot presses the button to cancel the alarm. Sometimes, when things get really bad, the messages are generated so fast that the chimes are going off continuously.

Over the last week leading up to the Resurgent Gathering in Atlanta, that has been the case for the Republican Party. Warning lights have been flashing, one after another, for days on end. Last week began with a discussion about President Trump’s tweets about Baltimore. The tweets were widely interpreted to have racial overtones and, whether that was the president’s intention or not, it put a predominantly white party in the awkward position of explaining to 38 million black Americans why Donald Trump is not a racist.

The president’s tweets were not problematic only for their effect on race relations. On August 2, Mr. Trump tweeted that Kim Jong Un “has a great and beautiful vision for his country” and called the North Korean dictator “a friend” despite North Korea’s launch of two short-range missiles. The president further tweeted that “these missiles tests are not a violation of our signed Singapore agreement” although he conceded “there may be a United Nations violation.”

https://twitter.com/realDonaldTrump/status/1157306452228366336?s=20

Outside of Twitter, last week also gave us the abortive John Ratcliffe nomination to replace Dan Coats as director of national intelligence. Ratcliffe is a Republican member of the House Intelligence Committee, but otherwise had scant qualifications for the top intelligence post except for the fact that he seemed to have caught Trump’s attention with his questioning of Robert Mueller. With public opposition to the nomination from Democrats and little, if any, support from Republicans, President Trump withdrew the nomination on Friday, less than a week after he had made it.

Yet another caution chime is the building wave of Republican retirements for 2020. On Thursday, Rep. Will Hurd, the sole black Republican in the House, announced his retirement. Hurd was a frequent critic of Donald Trump, including saying that Trump’s tweets were “in essence telling someone because you don’t look like them, that you are not American,” but said on ABC News that he plans “to support the Republican nominee.”

More than his differences with Donald Trump, Hurd may be worried about re-election. His 23^rd district in Texas, with a majority Hispanic population, is a swing district that voted for Hillary Clinton in 2016. In 2018, Hurd won by less than 1,000 votes, a half percent margin.

Hurd isn’t the only Republican stepping down in 2020. Rep. Martha Roby (R-Ala.) and Rep. Susan Brooks (R-Ind.), two of only 13 House Republican women are retiring next year. The announcement of Rep. Kenny Marchant brings the total of retiring Texas Republicans to four. The two women won their last elections by comfortable margins, but Marchant was re-elected by only three points.

Republicans are retiring for a variety of reasons, but many of those reasons can be traced back to the Trump Administration. Whether the Republicans are personally opposed to Trump or not, many can read the writing on the wall for 2020. In 2018, Republicans lost 60 percent of women and 78 percent of nonwhite voters. Recent polling suggests that 2020 may be worse among both women and minorities, driven largely by his racial tweets. The 2018 Republican losses were presaged by a similar wave of retirements.

The amber cautions turned to a red warning with the El Paso mass shooting. The murder’s manifesto mirrors President Trump’s rhetoric on immigration is only the most recent incident on a growing list of white supremacist and right-wing violence. While there is no evidence that Mr. Trump directly incited the attack, it is credible that his speeches and tweets contributed to the racially-charged political climate that apparently inspired the shooter. In a clear warning sign, a supporter even mentioned shooting illegal immigrants at a Trump rally in Florida back in May.

As I write this, the president is drawing criticism from both sides for his failure to quickly condemn white supremacy after the El Paso shooting. Despite calling the murders “an act of cowardice” and a “hateful act,” the president waited until today, two days later, to specifically condemn the ideology behind the attack.

https://twitter.com/realDonaldTrump/status/1157868518823596032?s=20

Earlier today, President Trump did acknowledge the racist motive of the El Paso shooter, saying, “The shooter in El Paso posted a manifesto online, consumed by racist hate. In one voice, our nation must condemn racism, bigotry and white supremacy.”

In an airplane, when these warning and caution chimes go off, the proper response is to “identify, cancel and call for the checklist.” The pilots identify the source of the problem by looking at the message that describes the condition that generated the alert. Then they press the master warning or caution button to cancel the chime and flashing light, acknowledging that they see the problem. Finally, the pilot addresses the problem by calling for the appropriate checklist or memory item for that issue. The problem in today’s GOP is that too many are ignoring the flashing lights and chimes that are warning them of problems.

Often, when there is a serious problem, the stack of alert messages on the screen gets long. A major problem can spark many associated problems in related systems. In many cases, the root cause of the problem is revealed in messages that are near the bottom of the stack since the warning computer posts messages in the order that they occur. An honest appraisal of the current state of the Republican shows that many problem indications can be traced back to President Trump.

Despite all of these things happening over the last week, there was almost no mention of them by the Republican speakers at the Resurgent Gathering. When elected Republicans spoke about the president, it was in glowing terms. One example was Georgia’s Rep. Doug Collins, who said, “The thing I say about this president is that this president is the same on the stage as he is off the stage.”

“He has big ideas that come all the time,” Collins continued. “His ways, at times, can offend people and grate on people. They’re not used to somebody who just comes out and, a lot of the time, just speaks truth. If you hit at him, he will hit you back. I think some people are understanding that now.”

There were hints that some Republicans see that there is a problem. A speaker from the Heritage For America commented, “Some people say the election will be a referendum on President Trump, but that’s defeatist talk.” Reading between the lines, if Donald Trump was a popular president, a referendum on his administration would be a good thing for Republicans and would not be seen as “defeatist.” Likewise, Grover Norquist of Americans for Tax Reform, while praising the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act of 2017, remarked that one of the easiest things that President Trump could do to lower taxation and help the economy would be to end the tariff war.

The most direct acknowledgment of the warning chimes was from the Washington Examiner’s David Drucker. Drucker pointed out that while some Republicans look past Trump’s behavior because of his policies, others are being driven toward the Democrats, noting their complaint that, “if one of his rallies is on tv that I can’t watch it with children in the room.” Far from the common assumption that President Trump is assured a landslide in 2020, Drucker said that the Trump campaign is working toward another Electoral College victory with a popular vote loss, but warned, “The election could go either way as of today.”

“As I like to tell Republicans,” he added, “there’s no telling what can happen if Democrats nominate someone who is likable, trustworthy, and not under FBI investigation.”

In airplanes, 12-step programs and politics, the first step is admitting that you have a problem. So far, most Republicans have been unwilling to take that step. Admitting that you have a problem doesn’t mean that the flight will end in a crash. I’ve experienced engine failures, hydraulic failures, and a multitude of other problems, but I’ve always returned to earth safely. Very often it isn’t the fact that you have a problem that leads to disaster but the fact that the problem is ignored.

There is no emergency checklist for dealing with the Republican 2020 problem, but there are several options. The most obvious one is for Republicans to rein in Donald Trump. This might also include taking his phone away or convincing him to let staffers prescreen his tweets. At the other end of the spectrum is replacing Trump with another candidate for 2020. Neither of these options would be easy.

The bottom line for Republicans is that, if they want to win in 2020, it will require more than just pointing at Democrats and yelling, “Socialist!” in a manner reminiscent of Donald Sutherland in “Invasion of the Body Snatchers.” Republicans have 15 months in which to build a positive case for why voters should return them to power. It is also 15 months in which Donald Trump’s tweets and public comments will be threatening to undermine their argument. Ignoring that problem won’t make it go away.

Originally published on The Resurgent

Another Weekend, Another Racial Trump Tweet

You might think that a politician who spent the better part of the last two weeks defending himself against charges of racism would be careful about what he says. In the case of Donald Trump, you’d be wrong.

After drawing intense criticism for his tweets telling unnamed “’Progressive’ Democrat Congresswomen, who originally came from countries whose governments are a complete and total catastrophe” to “go back” to their home countries, President Trump was at it again this morning with a series of tweets attacking Rep. Elijah Cummings (D-Md.). In the tweetstorm, Trump called Cumming’s Baltimore district “a disgusting, rat and rodent infested mess” where “no human being would want to live.” To top the rant, Trump alleged that Cummings was a thief.

https://twitter.com/realDonaldTrump/status/1155073964634517505?s=20

https://twitter.com/realDonaldTrump/status/1155073965880172544?s=20

https://twitter.com/realDonaldTrump/status/1155076476930338816?s=20

Where Trump’s “go back” seemed bigoted and tiptoed up to the line of racism, today’s tweets jump over the line with both feet. The statement that “no human being” would want to live in the district, which is 55 percent black, has clear racial overtones.

There are several accurate statements that President Trump could have made about Cummings’ seventh congressional district. It is the poorest district in the state with almost 18 percent of its residents below the poverty line per data from BiggestCities.com. It ranks dead last among Maryland districts for income per household. Crime is a problem in parts of the district. On the other hand, the Washington Examiner points out that the district is in the upper half of House districts nationally and also includes many upscale neighborhoods, including one named the safest place in the country in 2018.

I’m not going to call Trump a racist. I don’t pretend to know what is in his heart. What I am going to say is that Donald Trump says things sound bigoted on a fairly regular basis. He seems to relish the controversy and the attention that his outlandish statements bring, perhaps holding to the theory that any publicity is good publicity.

That doesn’t necessarily hold true in politics.

Trump’s antics regularly distract from the news cycle in a self-defeating way. His “go back” tweets unified Democrats who had been in the midst of a veritable civil war. The president’s attack on Cummings comes only hours after the Supreme Court handed him a victory on funding for the border wall. On a day when Republicans should have been gloating over their judicial triumph, they suddenly find themselves once again explaining why Donald Trump is not a racist.

If President Trump wanted to drive minority voters en masse from the GOP, he wouldn’t have to act very different from how he already behaves. After three years of Trump, the Republican Party has precious few minority voters to lose, but there are many white voters who will flee a party that they perceive to be headed by a racist. Trump’s long list of quasi-racist statements is akin to making Hillary Clinton’s “deplorable” comment a dozen times over.

If Republicans don’t want to be thought of as racists, the obvious solution would be to not say things that sound racist and to condemn and retract statements that break the first rule. However, Republicans are once again caught between a rock and a hard place by the president’s unforced error. They must explain away Trump’s statements by focusing on Baltimore’s crime and poverty and not the fact that the president singled out a black congressman representing a predominantly black district in a predominantly black city. If they break ranks from the president, Republican officials risk alienating the Trump base in their primary election. Republicans have the choice of tarring themselves with the racist brush in the eyes of moderates and minorities or looking like a squish to the Republican base.

Maybe Donald Trump’s defenders are right. Maybe he isn’t a bigot and only has a bad habit of making clumsy statements (although being a straight talker was supposed to be one of his big advantages over other politicians). On the other hand, when Trump keeps stepping into the same steaming pile of excrement over and over, it lends credence to the theory that he is saying exactly what he means.

If it walks like a duck and talks like a duck, maybe it’s a duck.

  
Originally published on The Resurgent

Jesse Kelly Speaks Out About His Lifetime Ban From Twitter

Jesse Kelly, the conservative pundit and Iraq War veteran who received a lifetime ban from Twitter over the weekend, talked about his ban with Tucker Carlson on Fox News yesterday. Kelly said that he still doesn’t know exactly why Twitter banned him.

“Nobody knows” exactly what prompted the Twitter ban, Kelly told Carlson. “Twitter kicked me off the platform because I was a mainstream voice on the right that spoke the truth.”

“They’ve given me no explanation as they told Congress they would give explanations,” he added. “All they sent was an email that said, ‘You are permanently banned and you can’t appeal it for repeated rule violations,’ only I don’t violate their rules. I don’t cuss at people on there, I don’t harass people on there. I don’t do any of those ugly things that some people do.”

“My account vanished like a Hillary Clinton email,” Kelly joked ruefully.

When asked if he had contacted Twitter, Kelly said that there was no phone number to call and that his account was totally disabled so that he could not even email Twitter’s customer support team. He said that he had emailed some people who worked at Twitter but did not expect a response.

“They did exactly what I said they would do,” Kelly told Carlson. “They came for Alex Jones first because he’s a nut job and they wanted to see how the right would react. They got him and I knew they were coming for me. They’ll come for you too.”

“It’s not a big deal that I got kicked off Twitter,” Kelly said. “It hurts Twitter worse than it hurt me because they finally kicked off somebody that woke everybody on the right up. People are now starting to realize what Twitter has become.”

Kelly said that Twitter is “a blank piece of paper” that “somehow woke up and decided… that they were in control of what gets put on that piece of paper.”

“That’s not where their power lies,” he added.

“If they continue along this path, it’s going to be nothing but two feminists screaming at each other because one of them accidentally found a boyfriend,” Kelly joked.

The social media giants “have the best of both worlds,” Kelly said. “They are treated like media platforms… where people can post what they want as long as it’s not inciting violence, only they are acting like Think Progress, they are acting like the New York Times, because these radical voices on the left never get censored.”

“Even [Louis] Farrakhan, that complete scumbag that has a tweet still up comparing Jews to termites, he still has an account, but I post things about Velveeta and mine gets banished,” Kelly complained.

  Originally published on The Resurgent

Liberal Stephen Colbert Writer Celebrates Politics Of Personal Destruction

We all know that politics is toxic these days but from time to time, an unguarded comment lets slip just how vicious the political arena has become. That was the case over the weekend when a writer for comedian Stephen Colbert’s show applauded the fact that Brett Kavanaugh’s life had been “ruined.”

In a Saturday afternoon tweet, Ariel Dumas opined, “Whatever happens, I’m just glad we ruined Brett Kavanaugh’s life.”

Within hours, Dumas deleted the tweet but the thought process that was behind it remains all too common on both sides of the political spectrum. Political disagreement has morphed into a scorched earth mentality in which the attitude is if you disagree with us, we will destroy you. Even if we lose, you lose because your reputation, your business, your family will be in ruins.

Ironically, Stephen Colbert has decried the current state of politics in a monologue that might have been written by Dumas herself. On November 9, 2016, Colbert said, “So how did our politics get so poisonous? I think it's because we overdosed, especially this year. We drank too much of the poison. You take a little bit of it so you can hate the other side. And it tastes kinda good. And you like how it feels. And there's a gentle high in the condemnation.”

I think that Colbert was right. The poisonous political discourse is like an addictive drug. It isn’t enough to disagree with the opposite on policy. We ascribe bad motives to them and claim they are out to destroy the country. This makes us feel better about ourselves as well as getting results in the form of turning out the base and generating views and clicks. But, like crack and meth, we have to up our dosage of extremism and anger to get the same high and the same result. The crisis never ends. These days the fate of the Republic hinges on every election. For every overreaction, there is an unequal but opposite overreaction.

A separate but related problem is that if we assume that people on the other side of the political spectrum are evil people who want to ruin the country and deserve to be destroyed, it makes it pretty tough to work together to accomplish anything. Is it any wonder that Congress is stalemated and attempts to build the bipartisan compromises that we have celebrated throughout our history are denounced as traitorous? The current political climate in which almost any significant legislation is passed by bare majorities on near-partisan votes long predates the Trump Administration.

Likewise, the phrase, “the politics of personal destruction,” was made popular during the Clinton Administration, but the strategy of razing an opponent’s reputation can be traced, at least in the modern era, to the Supreme Court confirmation hearings of Robert Bork. Regardless of which side began the strategy, both sides have used it to their own advantage and both are complicit in the degradation of political discourse.

To her credit, Dumas not only deleted the tweet but apologized as well. In another tweet the following day, she wrote, “The last couple of weeks have been hard for the country and for me personally. The complexity of frustration, anger and sadness can’t be accurately conveyed on twitter, and I regret my tone-deaf attempt at sarcasm in the wake of it.”

I applaud Ms. Dumas’s apology and hope that it makes her and others rethink how they view the other side. Partisans who make personal attacks and pine for the personal destruction of their political adversaries should take a step back and remind themselves that the people on the other side are Americans too and that the vast majority of us want what is best for our country. We aren’t going to get the best by making politics so toxic that we can’t even talk to each other.

Chill out, America. Justice Brett Kavanaugh isn’t going to turn the clock back to 1942 as one liberal tweeter alleged. We also survived net neutrality and quitting the Paris Accords. Contrary to predictions from the right, the Affordable Care Act also did not kill the Republic. Neither did Dodd-Frank, NAFTA, the NDAA or Jade Helm.

America is resilient. We have faced worse as a country and survived. Both sides need to tone down their rhetoric, but this too shall pass. 

 Originally published on The Resurgent

Ben Sasse Tweets About Putin

The big item on the agenda for today is the face-to-face meeting between Donald Trump and Russian President Vladimir Putin. The meeting in Helsinki, Finland comes three days after Special Counsel Robert Mueller indicted 12 Russian intelligence officers in connection with cyberattacks on the Democratic National Committee and the US election infrastructure in 2016.

In advance of the meeting, polling shows that Russia and Putin have become more popular in the US. Since the 2016, despite revelations about Russian cyberattacks, there has been a “reset” of opinions about the country, primarily among Republicans. Gallup recently found that the share of Republicans who view Moscow as an ally has doubled since Donald Trump took office. Perhaps that is why Nebraska Republican Ben Sasse felt compelled to take to Twitter to educate the public about Mr. Putin.

Sasse has recently reappeared on Twitter after a self-imposed hiatus that has lasted most of this year. The Trump-sized tweetstorm on the senator’s popular Twitter account began with the questions, “Exactly who is Vladimir Putin, the Russian leader our president is about to meet with in Helsinki? And what does he want?”

“It’s a complicated question. But here’s what we do know,” Sasse continued.

“Putin is a murderer. He has ordered the assassinations of political adversaries and used outlawed chemical weapons to do it.  He oversees Russian military units that shot down Malaysian flight 17 and murdered almost 300 civilians.

https://twitter.com/BenSasse/status/1018679209101791232

“Putin is a crook and a liar.  He has broken almost every agreement he has signed with the United States, including on Syria and Ukraine. He has become one of the world's richest men through embezzlement and stealing from his own people.

https://twitter.com/BenSasse/status/1018679838381608960

“Putin is an enemy of America. He sees us as his main enemy and is engaged in ongoing attacks on our nation through information warfare and hacking our infrastructure.  It’s not just that he messed with our election in 2016; he attacks us regularly, and will again in 2018.

https://twitter.com/BenSasse/status/1018680626520772609

“Remember, Putin ordered the influence operations that have been exposed in the most recent indictments, did not hesitate to invade Ukraine and Georgia, organized a coup in Montenegro, funded xenophobic political parties across Europe, and crippled Estonia with cyberattacks.

https://twitter.com/BenSasse/status/1018681102519685121

“No matter how much Putin flatters the President, he is a KGB thug who jails political opponents, encourages/orders the murder of Russian dissidents and defectors at home and abroad, and who directs a military that bombs women, children, and the injured in hospitals in Syria.”

https://twitter.com/BenSasse/status/1018681879355158528

The Sasse tweetstorm abated with advice for President Trump. “I don't think President Trump should be dignifying Putin with this meeting,” Sasse said. “When Reagan met with Gorbachev, he did so from a position of strength & moral clarity about the evil empire that the Soviet Union was, and w/ a clear purpose to end the Soviet Union's threat to the US.”

https://twitter.com/BenSasse/status/1018684157780774912

“President Trump should have only one message for Putin tomorrow,” Sasse concluded. “Quit messing with America.”

https://twitter.com/BenSasse/status/1018686986046050305

But Sasse wasn’t completely finished yet. President Trump, who has yet to condemn the Russian cyberattacks on the US addressed in the indictment, tweeted this morning, it was to attack the “Rigged Witch Hunt” rather than the Russian assault on the foundation of American democracy.

“Our relationship with Russia has NEVER been worse thanks to many years of U.S. foolishness and stupidity and now, the Rigged Witch Hunt!” the president tweeted before his historic closed-door meeting with the neo-Soviet ruler.

https://twitter.com/realDonaldTrump/status/1018738368753078273

“A better thing, Mr. President, would be to declare: ‘Russia is the enemy of America and our allies, and we will expose and respond to their continued cyber-attacks against our nation,’” Sasse replied.

https://twitter.com/BenSasse/status/1018816046868914176

Welcome back to Twitter, Sen. Sasse. We have missed your outspokenness and honesty over the past few months.

Originally published on The Resurgent