From Pine View Farm

Hate Sells category archive

Still Rising Again after All These Years 0

Sam and his crew dissect the falsehoods and delusions in Fox News’s Greg Gutfeld’s call for Civil War v. 2.0.

In a similar vein, Will Bunch highlights Donald Trump’s continuing calls for violence. Just go read it.

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Thought Police 0

In recognition of Banned Books week, the Bangor Daily News reran a column by Stephen King, one that first appeared over three decades ago. Here’s a snippet:

There are people out there who are deciding what your kids can read, and they don’t care what you think because they are positive their ideas of what’s proper and what’s not are better, clearer than your own. Do you believe they are?

The whole piece is worth your while.

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The Lake Effect 0

The Arizona Republic’s E. J. Montini makes a case that there a precedent for Kari Lake in Arizona politics. A snippet:

. . . she is Arizona’s (and America’s) new Joe Arpaio.

Follow the link for his reasoning.

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The Disinformation Superhighway 0

Disinformation campaigns are nothing new. So too are disinformation campaigns on the Disinformaation Superhighway, particularly in the past two decades via “social” media.

At his website, security expert Bruce Schneier offers a thoughtful take on the effects chatbots and large language models on dis coarse discourse. Here’s a bit:

Generative AI tools also allow for new techniques of production and distribution, such as low-level propaganda at scale. Imagine a new AI-powered personal account on social media. For the most part, it behaves normally. It posts about its fake everyday life, joins interest groups and comments on others’ posts, and generally behaves like a normal user. And once in a while, not very often, it says—or amplifies—something political. These persona bots, as computer scientist Latanya Sweeney calls them, have negligible influence on their own. But replicated by the thousands or millions, they would have a lot more.

The entire piece is worth the few moments it will take you to read it.

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Twits on Twitter X Offenders 0

“Freedom of speech” is not freedom to lie, though some persons act as though it is.

A young man falsely accused of being a federal agent posing as a neo-Nazi by Elon Musk and a bunch of other right-wing trolls has launched a lawsuit against the one-time richest man in the world.

(snip)

“The reality is that too many powerful people with enormous audiences are being reckless with their accusations against private people,” reads the lawsuit against Musk. “The damage they cause is not easily repaired by apologies or counter-speech, no matter how persuasive. Repair of reputations, compensation for harm, and effective deterrence can only occur in our courts.”

Much more at the link.

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Still Rising Again after All These Years 0

Fani Willis talks about the threats and hatred directed at her for doing her job.

Via Above the Law.

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Backfire 0

In a longer piece springboarding off Mitt Romney’s decision to retire when his Senate term expires, Paul Krugman sums up how Richard Nixon’s loathsome southern strategy backfired on the Republican Party:

For the basic story of the Republican Party, going back to the 1970s, is this: Advocates of right-wing economic policies, which redistributed income from workers to the wealthy, sought to sell their agenda by exploiting social intolerance and animosity. They had considerable success with this strategy. But eventually the extremists they thought they were using ended up ruling the party.

I commend the complete article to your attention.

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Hate and Mongers of Hate 0

The Portland Press-Herald reports on a surge in antisemitic Zoombombing.

I don’t have any words,

Just go read it for yourself.

Read more »

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Doomed To Scroll 0

At Psychology Today Blogs, Phil Reed looks at the depressing effects of drowning oneself in an unending torrent of news, both from traditional and “social” media. A snippet (emphasis added):

The news fed to digital devices is more-or-less bleak in nature, and its nature is outside people’s control—earthquakes, fires, wars, economic collapse, the impending sale of favourite football players to other teams, warts, and diarrhoea, are beyond the control of the person reading the story. All of this will reduce the strength and breadth of their behavioural repertoire (their willingness to do something),(2) focus their attention on the external,(5) and develop a helpless attributional style.(6) The key difference from traditional bad news is that digital bad news, because of the algorithm relating it to a person’s search strategies, will reinforce more strongly the internal dimension of the helpless attributional style.

Follow the link for the full article, including some suggestions for escaping the maelstrom of maliciousness and maintain a sense of perspective.

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The Enemy Within 0

Michael in Norfolk highlights one of our most toxic fifth columnists.

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A Notion of Immigrants 0

A false notion, spread, natch, on “social” media.

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The Disinformation Industrial Complex 0

At the Las Vegas Sun, Mary Blankenship looks at how our polity has become flooded with lies and falsehoods; she points out that

When false narratives become our identity and reality the problem immediately evolves into a tragedy.

Follow the link for her reasoning.

And, in a similar vein, Robert Jay Lifton looks at a recent book about Timothy McVeigh and explores the influences that led him to violence.

Given the state of dis coarse discourse, both pieces are worth your while.

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None Dare Call It Terrorism . . . 0

. . . because, as the Rude One points out, they are terrified. He cites an article from The Atlantic (warning: language):

And “Later, during the Senate trial, Romney heard the same calculation while talking with a small group of Republican colleagues. When one senator, a member of leadership, said he was leaning toward voting to convict, the others urged him to reconsider. You can’t do that, Romney recalled someone saying. Think of your personal safety, said another. Think of your children. The senator eventually decided they were right.” They’re not talking about crazed leftists going all Bolshevik on their asses. It’s the . . . MAGA cretins who are murdery. They’re the ones, primarily, who call in the death threats and bomb threats and show up at the houses of Democrats, armed to the tits with guns and ammo because open carry.

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Still Rising Again After All These Years 0

At the Idaho State Journal, Leonard Hitchcock looks at the current threat of the New Secesh. His summary gives one pause:

The U.S. is in the midst of a vigorous political backlash aimed at the societal progress that our democracy has managed to achieve over the past fifty years. What we now see in the news every day is a political version of “the return of the repressed”: racists murdering black people at random; men telling women how they must live their lives; sexual minorities being oppressed and deprived of their right to be who they are. And then there’s the threat of our democracy becoming an autocracy.

Nevertheless, he finds some straws at which to grasp. He outlines them at the link.

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A Notion of Immigrants 0

Mike and Farron point out that the “crazy right’s” (to use their term) hate exacts a price.

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A Notion of Immigrants 0

Methinks that Emma Lazarus’s The New Collosus is in sore need of being brought up to date (the edit is italicized).

Herewith I offer an updated version:

Not like the brazen giant of Greek fame,
With conquering limbs astride from land to land;
Here at our sea-washed, sunset gates shall stand
A mighty woman with a torch, whose flame
Is the imprisoned lightning, and her name
Mother of Exiles. From her beacon-hand
Glows world-wide welcome; her mild eyes command
The air-bridged harbor that twin cities frame.
“Keep, ancient lands, your storied pomp!” cries she
With silent lips. “Give me your tired, your poor,
Your huddled masses yearning to breathe free,
The wretched refuse of your teeming shore.
Send these, the homeless, tempest-tost to me,
And I will assault them in the street.”

If you look carefully, you can find why I recommend the revision.

Read more »

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Twits on Twitter X Offenders 0

At the Bangor Daily News, Susan Young discusses Elon Musk’s sinister scapegoating. A snippet:

Musk, one of the world’s most powerful businessmen, has blamed the financial woes of X, the social media platform formerly known as Twitter, on — wait for it — the Jews.

According to Musk, the company’s loss of ad revenue isn’t due to his mismanagement of the company. Or to the foolish renaming of one of the world’s best known companies or the firing of many of its competent employees. Or the platform’s alarming rise in hate speech.

No, it’s because Jews . . . .

I commend her entire article to your attention.

(Misplaced tag placed.)

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Still Rising Again after All These Years 0

Field wonders why so may Trumpettes are willing to life in a fantasy world, believing that Donald Trump won the election and the Deep State is plotting against him, then decides, well, the answer is simple, really.

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Twits on Twitter X Offenders 0

Snopes unpacks (yet another) lie about vaccines.

In related news, self-proclaimed “free speech absolutist” Elon Musk is making noises about suing the Anti-Defamation League for ” (wait for it) exercising free speech.

And we have another example that “social” media isn’t.

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Real Big Men 0

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