All Purpose News and Politics Thread Part IV: The Center Cannot Hold

[InformationGeek]

Well that's just terrible.

Executive Grant of Clemency (Full Pardon) granted by @POTUS for former @USArmy First Lieutenant Michael Behenna who, in 2009, a military court sentenced to 25 years in prison for unpremeditated murder in a combat zone.

[InformationGeek]

Ooooh, WBE!!

Texas Sen. Bryan Hughes' new bill, S. Bill 9, will disallow driving of elderly, disabled, or poor people to the polls. It would ban efforts with vans full of elderly from nursing homes, disabled people, poor people who don’t have cars, would be illegal in Texas

[aja_christopher]

"Murders by white supremacists in US more than doubled in 2017"

"These findings are a stark reminder that domestic extremism is a serious threat to our safety and security,” said ADL chief executive Jonathan Greenblatt.

He added: “When white supremacists and other extremists are emboldened and find new audiences for their hate-filled views, violence is usually not far behind.

“We cannot ignore the fact that white supremacists are emboldened, and as a society we need to keep a close watch on recruitment and rallies such as Charlottesville, which have the greatest potential to provoke and inspire violence.”

The death of Heather Heyer, an anti-fascist demonstrator killed in August when James Alex Fields rammed into a crowd opposing the “Unite the Right” rally in Charlottesville, Viriginia, was among the 18 white supremacist murders counted by the ADL.

Following the rally, the ADL condemned US President Donald Trump for defending the far-right and claiming the “alt-left” counter-demonstrators were equally to blame for the violence."

https://www.independent.co.uk/news/w...-a8165416.html

[aja_christopher]

"Twitter Can’t Ban Racism Because They’d Have to Ban Republicans, Too"

"When people complained about ISIS using the Twitter platform to share beheading videos, the corporation figured out how to solve the problem. Their approach was heavily reliant on blunt-force algorithms that auto-banned a lot of legitimate accounts, including some from groups who were acting as ISIS watchdogs. This is widely seen as an acceptable tradeoff, but many people are wondering why Twitter can’t do the same thing to eradicate white nationalist hate speech. It turns out that the the algorithm approach cannot be applied to white nationalists is that it would also auto-ban a lot of Republicans, including some officeholders, and that would make it politically divisive.

At a Twitter all-hands meeting on March 22, an employee asked a blunt question: Twitter has largely eradicated Islamic State propaganda off its platform. Why can’t it do the same for white supremacist content?

An executive responded by explaining that Twitter follows the law, and a technical employee who works on machine learning and artificial intelligence issues went up to the mic to add some context…

…With every sort of content filter, there is a tradeoff, he explained. When a platform aggressively enforces against ISIS content, for instance, it can also flag innocent accounts as well, such as Arabic language broadcasters. Society, in general, accepts the benefit of banning ISIS for inconveniencing some others, he said. In separate discussions verified by Motherboard, that employee said Twitter hasn’t taken the same aggressive approach to white supremacist content because the collateral accounts that are impacted can, in some instances, be Republican politicians.

One common response to this revelation is to point to the GOP and say, “See, look how racist they are!” But I’d like to focus on something related but different. We hear people theorize all the time that Trump’s racism has given people permission to voice their own racist thoughts, and even inspired acts of racial or religious violence. It’s hard to measure something like that, just as it’s hard to know how many violent acts are inspired by portrayals of violence in media or video games.

In this case, we have something tangible that we can explore. The difficulty of banning white nationalist hate rhetoric from Twitter stems directly from the fact that it would be politically divisive and therefore problematic for the company. The divisiveness doesn’t primarily derive from limitations on free speech. While some people are obviously sympathetic to the ideology and actions of ISIS, the number is too small to create a significant backlash when their content is banned. Likewise, relatively few people are supportive of Nazis and Klansmen, and their content would not be missed if it were suddenly absent. The divisiveness in this case arises from the fact that the subjects of the ban have political power.

Any move that could be perceived as being anti-Republican is likely to stir backlash against the company, which has been criticized by President Trump and other prominent Republicans for having an “anti-conservative bias.” What this means is that everyone is subjected to hate speech on Twitter solely because there are Republicans who engage in hate speech. So, while we can consider Trump’s influence on the rise of racist speech to be theoretical, we don’t need to be in any doubt about whether the party as whole is responsible for the visibility of hate speech. This establishes a solid line of responsibility.

It shows how having leaders engage in racist rhetoric winds up permeating everything with the result that racism is more socially acceptable. This isn’t some sociological conundrum or difficult question of causality of the kind we grapple with when he look at violence on television. A major social media corporation feels compelled to allow white supremacists to operate on their platform because of the actions and attitudes of Republican Party officeholders.

This is another example of why leadership is so important. It’s not just how leaders speak that is important. In some cases, it is devastating that they’re saying something at all."

https://washingtonmonthly.com/2019/0...publicans-too/

[aja_christopher]

I'd argue that many aren't in denial but simply see it as a means to an end.

-----
"Conservatives Are In Denial About White Supremacy"

Recognizing the role of ideology in attacks like the Poway synagogue shooting would require them to grapple with their own complicity.

"Some will look at this weekend’s Poway synagogue shooting,” writes Jim Geraghty in the National Review, “and argue that it reflects an anti-Semitism problem.” Yes, I should say so. Minutes before the attack, the killer, 19 year-old John Earnest, posted a lengthy manifesto to the website 8chan describing the necessity of murdering Jews, who, he wrote, were conspiring to destroy the white race. It would be quite a feat to look at this event—which took place six months after the murder of eleven worshippers at the Tree of Life synagogue in Pittsburgh, an attack Earnest cited as inspiration—and not see an anti-Semitism problem.

Yet Geraghty would rather we focus on a different issue. After conceding that those who see an anti-Semitism problem “aren’t wrong,” he goes on to observe that “it’s just as easy to compare the Poway suspect’s case to those of other mass shooters and see a ‘young men who find normal life unfulfilling or too difficult and choose to risk or end their lives in violent rampage’ problem...”

[R]ecognizing the rising tide of white extremism means grappling with its origins, and that in turn would require American conservatives to deal with their own complicity. The Republican Party is now run by people, including the President and members of Congress, who endorse conspiracy theories about, for example, George Soros paying Central American migrants to “storm” the United States border and vote in our elections. The party’s full-time propaganda network, Fox News, devotes its primetime programming to whipping up its viewers’ fears of a migrant “invasion” stoked by ["open borders"] Democrats.

It’s hard, then, for even “never Trump” Republicans to wash their hands of white supremacist violence, no matter how personally horrified they may be, so long as they support a party that increasingly stakes its electoral future on inflaming white racial anxiety."

https://washingtonmonthly.com/2019/0...ite-supremacy/

[Dalak]

Well that's just terrible.

He just offed a muslim terrorist and tried to cover it up, that's practically worth the Medal of Freedom to Trump right there.

[Dalak]

Medal of Freedom is a civilian award. Since he is in the military, you should say Medal of Honor.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Medal_of_Honor

The guy isn't military anymore, and it was clearly a joke relating to him giving the Medal to a golfer.

[WestPhillyPunisher]

I'd argue that many aren't in denial but simply see it as a means to an end.

-----
"Conservatives Are In Denial About White Supremacy"

Recognizing the role of ideology in attacks like the Poway synagogue shooting would require them to grapple with their own complicity.

"Some will look at this weekend’s Poway synagogue shooting,” writes Jim Geraghty in the National Review, “and argue that it reflects an anti-Semitism problem.” Yes, I should say so. Minutes before the attack, the killer, 19 year-old John Earnest, posted a lengthy manifesto to the website 8chan describing the necessity of murdering Jews, who, he wrote, were conspiring to destroy the white race. It would be quite a feat to look at this event—which took place six months after the murder of eleven worshippers at the Tree of Life synagogue in Pittsburgh, an attack Earnest cited as inspiration—and not see an anti-Semitism problem.

Yet Geraghty would rather we focus on a different issue. After conceding that those who see an anti-Semitism problem “aren’t wrong,” he goes on to observe that “it’s just as easy to compare the Poway suspect’s case to those of other mass shooters and see a ‘young men who find normal life unfulfilling or too difficult and choose to risk or end their lives in violent rampage’ problem...”

[R]ecognizing the rising tide of white extremism means grappling with its origins, and that in turn would require American conservatives to deal with their own complicity. The Republican Party is now run by people, including the President and members of Congress, who endorse conspiracy theories about, for example, George Soros paying Central American migrants to “storm” the United States border and vote in our elections. The party’s full-time propaganda network, Fox News, devotes its primetime programming to whipping up its viewers’ fears of a migrant “invasion” stoked by ["open borders"] Democrats.

It’s hard, then, for even “never Trump” Republicans to wash their hands of white supremacist violence, no matter how personally horrified they may be, so long as they support a party that increasingly stakes its electoral future on inflaming white racial anxiety."

https://washingtonmonthly.com/2019/0...ite-supremacy/

Conservatives as a whole simply shrug and say, “Well, white supremacists vote too. And they don’t vote Democrat”. In my opinion, it’s not denial, it’s complicity.

[Kevinroc]

The Coming Generation War
The Democrats are rapidly becoming the party of the young—and the consequences could be profound.

https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/ar...on-war/588670/

Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez is often described as a radical, but the data show that her views are close to the median for her generation. The Millennials and Generation Z—that is, Americans aged 18 to 38—are generations to whom little has been given, and of whom much is expected. Young Americans are burdened by student loans and credit-card debt. They face stagnant real wages and few opportunities to build a nest egg. Millennials’ early working lives were blighted by the financial crisis and the sluggish growth that followed. In later life, absent major changes in fiscal policy, they seem unlikely to enjoy the same kind of entitlements enjoyed by current retirees.

Under different circumstances, the under-39s might conceivably have been attracted to the entitlement-cutting ideas of the Republican Tea Party (especially if those ideas had been sincere). Instead, we have witnessed a shift to the political left by young voters on nearly every policy issue, economic and cultural alike.

As a liberal graduate student and a conservative professor, we rarely see eye to eye on politics. Yet we agree that the generation war is the best frame for understanding the ways that the Democratic and Republican parties are diverging. The Democrats are rapidly becoming the party of the young, specifically the Millennials (born between 1981 and 1996) and Gen Z (born after 1996). The Republicans are leaning ever more heavily on retirees, particularly the Silent Generation (born before 1945). In the middle are the Gen Xers (born between 1965 and 1980), who are slowly inching leftward, and the Baby Boomers (born between 1946 and 1964), who are slowly inching to the right.

This generation-based party realignment has profound implications for the future of American politics. The generational transition will not dramatically change the median voter in the 2020 election—or even in 2024, if turnout among young voters stays close to the historical average. Yet both parties are already feeling its effects, as the dominant age cohort in each party recognizes its newfound power to choose candidates and set the policy agenda. Drawing on opinion polls and financial data, and extrapolating historical trends, we think that young voters’ rendezvous with destiny will come in the mid to late 2020s.

[Darkspellmaster]

The Coming Generation War
The Democrats are rapidly becoming the party of the young—and the consequences could be profound.

https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/ar...on-war/588670/

I would say as someone on the older cusp of the age bracket here I would agree. A lot of us came out of college during the recession and could not get employment in our fields. And in a lot of cases now people are blaming us for the fall of various markets, or trying to pit us against Gen Z.

It's weird to see the boomers inch right because weren't they supposed to be the Generation that was all about the anti establishment movement? I get the silent Generation, given that most were born during the depression and were teens during the war and how that probably fueled their view points, but I thought better of the Boomers.

[PwrdOn]

The Coming Generation War
The Democrats are rapidly becoming the party of the young—and the consequences could be profound.

https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/ar...on-war/588670/

While Democrats are waiting for long term demographic shifts to eventually bring them to power, Republicans are busy packing the courts and redrawing electoral boundaries to ensure that none of that will ever matter.

[Malvolio]

I would say as someone on the older cusp of the age bracket here I would agree. A lot of us came out of college during the recession and could not get employment in our fields. And in a lot of cases now people are blaming us for the fall of various markets, or trying to pit us against Gen Z.

It's weird to see the boomers inch right because weren't they supposed to be the Generation that was all about the anti establishment movement? I get the silent Generation, given that most were born during the depression and were teens during the war and how that probably fueled their view points, but I thought better of the Boomers.

Well, unfortunately, a lot of the boomers weren't really in it for the politics; they were only in it for the sex.

[KOSLOX]

I would say as someone on the older cusp of the age bracket here I would agree. A lot of us came out of college during the recession and could not get employment in our fields. And in a lot of cases now people are blaming us for the fall of various markets, or trying to pit us against Gen Z.

It's weird to see the boomers inch right because weren't they supposed to be the Generation that was all about the anti establishment movement? I get the silent Generation, given that most were born during the depression and were teens during the war and how that probably fueled their view points, but I thought better of the Boomers.

I think people drastically overstate the freelove and antiestablishment movement. Boomers are also the generation that embraced Gordon Gecko as a hero and cemented the idea of 80s corporatism and material excess.

[Jack Dracula]

There are two arguments. Did he agree with the tweet? Probably. The objection is to the person making the point, rather than the point being so out of line it's disqualifying for anyone to agree with it.

The second argument is that he should know more about the people he retweets. That's fair enough, although it may be difficult to implement/ insist on as a universal rule.

Trump's tweets are often made without adviser input. There's the visual that he's in his bed at 3AM complaining about whatever he sees on Fox News.

It's also not clear that the level of vetting/ collaboration you insist on is useful. There were all the emails back and forth about a Hillary Clinton tweet during her campaign, where it took 12 staffers 12 hours and ten different drafts to make an innocuous comment about wages.

https://www.realclearpolitics.com/vi...one_tweet.html

One of the appeals of twitter is the ideal of getting the individual's views, rather than those of their advisers. When politicians are more careful, it begs the question of what kind of things they're hiding about their views and understandings, if they're so afraid of voters and constituents finding out.

(1) I'd argue that The President of the United States retweeting any point put out by anyone serves to lend some level of credence to the individual and validation to any other point that individual has posted. What's more it communicates a certain level of tacit consent and approval of that individuals beliefs.

(2) Since when are we conflating professionalism with suspicious behaviour? Trump is an outlier who says whatever pops into his head and the fact that no one in the GOP seems to want to hold him accountable seems more suspicious to me than any whataboutism concerning Hillary Clinton. When the President of the United States tweets or says something, especially if it's related to the economy or foreign relations it has a direct impact on worldwide financial markets. For that reason alone he should've had his twitter membership revoked when it became clear that he wasn't willing to edit his tweets. Why no one in Congress or the Senate has suggested that remains a mystery to me.

[Kevinroc]

While Democrats are waiting for long term demographic shifts to eventually bring them to power, Republicans are busy packing the courts and redrawing electoral boundaries to ensure that none of that will ever matter.

This is absolutely an important thing to remember, and explains a lot about why Republicans are acting as they are right now.

It's about power. It's always been about power.