The truly depressing thing is, a lot of people are actually happy about this action. How did things get so bad, so quickly?
People who lived under authoritarian regimes have long said that things move slowly at first, but after an inflection point, get real bad, real fast. It's one thing to understand that intellectually, quite another to witness it first hand.
Hopefully, the judiciary will block this particular madness, but then again, given the concerted effort over the past decade by Republicans to appoint right wing judges, the odds are not that great.
> People who lived under authoritarian regimes have long said that things move slowly at first, but after an inflection point, get real bad, real fast.
If you want an indication why the US could go into dictatorship mode, look no further than to what is happening now. Dictatorship coups are extremely fragile in the initial phase. The very recent example is South Korea. It only takes a few determined people to sabotage the coup. In the same fashion, Trump would immediately stop if enough people were to take it to the street. So far, the silence is extremely loud.
It didn't. Conservatives in this country have explicitly been headed this direction since they decided to never let another Nixon happen. Not that they would prevent another criminal Republican. But they would ensure that Republicans are never punished for behavior like this. It led to Fox News and Gingrich and Rush Limbaugh and Tucker Carlson, etc. The writing has been on the wall in plain sight for everyone to see for literally decades. The people who have been pointing it out and stating this is exactly where the country has been headed are called radicals and casually dismissed. The only reason Romney lost is because he didn't lean into the hatred his base was demanding[1]. Trump delivered what they wanted.
I dont, and instead would build on this argument further.
There is no political winning, at any time in the future, unless the structural issue with information and news ecosystems is dealt with. The best evidence I have seen, shows that news consumption on the right in America is sealed, and has no traffic with the center or left.
There is no future for ANY liberal democracy, if there is no fair debate between its citizenry. We aren’t even fighting for the table stakes of informed citizenry, but we are talking about the scraps of not debating fantasy.
This isn’t even about misinformation; the total consumption of misinformation as a portion of total content can only shift so much, given the number of hours in a day. It’s not the production of more misinformation which matters - it is the championing of misinformation by leaders that makes it a ‘fact’.
This then decides the talking points for debates. The side which has to do research that requires interrogating reality - slower, probabilistic, uncertain processes - is inefficient when competing with a party that can create facts.
The reason that the Stanford Internet Observatory and other content moderation arms are being targeted, is because for all their warts and issues, these teams were trying to ensure a fair market place of ideas, and as a result ended up slowing the spread of narratives on the right. Or potential new recruits.
I think it is a product of raising stakes as wall between the public sphere and government control collapses.
Norms around free speech and free behavior been eroding for decades. Now that they are gone, each side sees it as an existential struggle. In an existential struggle, it makes sense to sacrifice any values you had because the alternative is worse.
e.g. if there is going to be a oppressive government, you want one that will oppressive others for your benefit.
e.g. even if you don't want a race war, if you are convinced will be one, you want your side to win.
You see similar situations in national wars (strike first before they strike you), or prisoners dilemma where both parities defect.
Society at large is an unstable solution to the prisoners dilemma
built on trust.
IMO we got here from erosion of trust in government and society in general.
If you only allow the loud-crazies of one side to be in the public sphere for about a decade, people will associate those crazies with one side of the political aisle. While being under the impression that the other side is far more sane.
People who lived under authoritarian regimes have long said that things move slowly at first, but after an inflection point, get real bad, real fast. It's one thing to understand that intellectually, quite another to witness it first hand.
Hopefully, the judiciary will block this particular madness, but then again, given the concerted effort over the past decade by Republicans to appoint right wing judges, the odds are not that great.