Tag: Twitter

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Common Sense The Draft

Of Honor and Horror

army, twitter, public relations, veterans,

Last week, when the public relations wing of the U.S. Army asked, on Twitter, “how has serving impacted you?” the bulk of the responses were not what was hoped for. What came like tear drops and bursts of rage were thousands of horrific tales, expressions of sorrow, bitterness and despair.

No doubt the intention was to elicit, if not patriotic uplift, at least stories of learning, moral growth, centeredness, and personal victory out of sacrifice and suffering. Almost certainly the Army wanted what the promoters of “national service” now want.

The outcome was far messier.

Now, the Army handled the Twitterflak very well, with a tweet thanking people for their expressions. But a response by Mike Schmidt (@MikeSchmidt69) was probably as upbeat as could be expected, given the ‘writing on the wall’— er, Twitterfeed: “Some say this thread back-​fired but this is just the thread that is needed each [M]emorial [D]ay so we remember the sacrifices military members and their families make and how we as a country need to understand the true cost of service and improve our support.”

Most of the tweets I read were decidedly not upbeat. The anger and pain over battle deaths, wounds, PTSD, mental illness, suicides, and so much indifference to it — it was deep and wide … and heartbreaking.

‘War is hell.’ In self-​defense — defense of These United States — the brave soldier and general is honorable. But that honor is informed by the reticence that comes from actual knowledge of its true costs.

Maybe this Memorial Day President Trump and all policy makers will finally get what service truly is … and stop pitching more of the same unjustifiable-​because-​unwinnable or ‑unendable interventions around the world. 

Of course, demanding peace and sanity and accountability is up to all of us holding the hot dogs.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

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First Amendment rights ideological culture media and media people Regulating Protest

James Woods, Parody, and a Pillow

James Woods, Twitter, censorship, free speech, ban, parody, satire

The beginning of the end of actor James Woods’s time on Twitter likely occurred on July 20, 2018.

Only recently discovering a tweet that he posted then, Twitter has locked Woods out of a forum where his right-​leaning messages have been followed by 1,730,000 people.

His delinquent tweet forwarded an image of giddily grinning guys promising to abstain from voting so that a woman’s vote would be “worth more.” Woods tweeted: “Pretty scary that there is a distinct possibility this could be real. Not likely, but in this day and age of absolute liberal insanity, it is at least possible.”

Twitter told the actor that if he agreed to the deletion of this fake-​news tweet — simple enough — it would let him tweet once again.

Woods refuses.

“Free speech is free speech — it’s not [Twitter CEO] Jack Dorsey’s version of free speech,” Woods says. “The irony is, Twitter accused me of affecting the political process, when in fact their banning of me is the truly egregious interference.… If you want to kill my free speech, man up and slit my throat with a knife, don’t smother me with a pillow.”

There’s lots more where that came from, but you get the idea. I don’t, um, strictly agree with everything Woods says here. But I can only applaud the spirit of his refusal to submit to Twitter’s arbitrary standards of acceptable speech.

Oh, and one other thing: somebody tell Twitter that parodies are inherently fake.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

 

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First Amendment rights general freedom ideological culture media and media people

The Opposite of Infowars

Alex Jones, InfoWars, censorship, Facebook, Twitter, YouTube,

Yesterday’s big story? Several major social media platforms have de-​platformed Alex Jones and his Infowars opinion (“information”?) show. 

Most commenters about this happening hasten to signal to their audiences that they do not approve of Alex Jones. Is this really necessary? When we consider a mass de-​platforming event, do we need to belabor the obvious? 

I hazard that even most of Jones’s viewers and listeners agree with a small amount of what he says. Jones is more like Jon Stewart and Cenk Uygur, a performer whose rants entertain most of all. In his case, because he says things no one else will, Infowars makes for a bracing … alternative.

It should also go without saying that private platforms like Facebook, YouTube and Apple, who are the main players to kick Jones to the curb of the Information Super-​Highway, have the right to include or exclude anyone they want. As Robby Soave at Reason put it, these “companies are under no obligation to provide a platform to Sandy Hook conspiracy theorizing, 9/​11 trutherism, or any of the other insane ideas Jones has propagated.”

But Soave does worry about the goofy rationales provided for the exclusion.

As do I. And it is not just that the proffered reason, “hate speech,” is, as Soave explains, vague, unanchored to any offered specific offenses.

But it’s worse. This whole exclusionary move is not about hate speech. Everyone knows this.

It’s about suppressing ideas that are (a) popular and (b) despised by the dominant culture.

And these insiders seem at a loss to confront Jones’s farragoes with better ideas, failing to provide “counter info” in their war on Infowars. 

They strike below the belt.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

 

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Accountability general freedom ideological culture media and media people

Transcendent Gray Lady

New York Times, The Terror, doxing, firing, racism, double standard

How far are we away from a completely vindictive, murderous madness like The Terror of revolutionary France?

I know, almost no one is talking of guillotines. 

But a lot of people seem determined to destroy others’ lives publicly. We are all too familiar with Twitterstorms where worked-​up outrage forces someone out of a job or a deal  — usually for making jokes.

But it’s not just jokes. Not long ago an actor got in trouble for Tweeting that commentator and Daily Wire host Ben Shapiro seems a nice, honest person on the right that a leftist might listen to. The actor was forced to recant, and then Shapiro himself publicly recanted from some past putatively “dumb” things he “did” or “said.” Or something.

Since we’re talking about Mr. Shapiro, his commentary on the Sarah Jeong case is not irrelevant. The New York Times hired Ms. Jeong despite her past racist tweets. 

Well, racist-​against-​whites. 

“By the rules of the left,” says Shapiro, “this person should now be excised from polite society.”

But the Times is keeping her.

Shapiro finds this “indicative” of more than just the Times. The left at large seems OK with anti-​white racism but not anti-any-other-race.

It’s indicative of a lot more, though, not just racism and anti-​racism and anti-​anti-​racism. 

Outrage and the Twittermob may be fun. But it’s time to stop.

Is the Times leading the way?

Only when the decrepit old rag defends someone not on its own ideological side. Transcending partisan mob mania means first transcending partisanship. 

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

 

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general freedom ideological culture insider corruption media and media people national politics & policies political challengers

Plantation Revolt

#Walkaway, voters, conservatives, culture, liberals, twitter, Facebook, Brendan Straka,

The #Walkaway movement started with Brendan Straka, who proclaimed that his tribe — the liberal Left — had become “intolerant, inflexible, illogical, hateful, misguided, ill-​informed, un-​American, hypocritical, menacing, callous, ignorant, narrow-​minded, and, at times, blatantly fascistic.” 

Mr. Straka’s beef — and the general tenor of the pile-​on Twitterstorm — was not about Democratic Party policy, as Scott Adams noted. It was about the left-​of-​center movement’s rhetorical/​propagandistic rut. Since the election of Donald Trump, Democrats had come to rely almost exclusively on the feeding of frenzy by psychological manipulation, by ginning up fear.

Straka’s appeal to “walk away” became a hit, especially amongst those “racial, sexual, and religious minorities in America” that he says the Democrats have treated as if they owned.

Yet the Washington Post pooh-​poohs the trend as just a social media blip — over-​hyped by the very nature of the medium itself.

Plausible?

David Catron says no. Before the #WalkAway movement, he writes in The American Spectator, African-​American voters had already walked away from Hillary Clinton’s candidacy in enough numbers to allow Trump his victory. And this bodes badly for the Democratic Party, for, as Catron quotes YouTube sensation Candace Owens, “I’ve seen black liberals go conservative, but never seen a black conservative go liberal.”

It doesn’t take many defections, says Carton: “All that is needed is about 5 percent more African-​Americans to vote Republican and another 5 to 10 percent to simply stay home.”

But be warned: wishful thinking and Straka’s litany of political vices — “groupthink, hypocrisy, division, stereotyping, resentment” — can overtake any movement pretty quickly.

Anti-​leftists in general and Republicans in particular are not immune to mass mania and suicide-by-panic.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

 

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crime and punishment First Amendment rights general freedom ideological culture media and media people moral hazard nannyism national politics & policies Regulating Protest too much government

Twitter’s Merkel Tactics or Merkel’s Twitter Tactics?

Twitter, censorship, Germany, Merkel, speech, double standard

Is Twitter cooperating with Germany’s new crackdown on social-​media speech because otherwise it risks steep penalties? Or is Twitter just doing what it would do anyway?

When Germany’s new law against unwelcome speech went into effect this year, many Germans protested. “Please spare us the thought police!” was the headline in one top-​selling paper, Bild.

The law requires social-​media sites to block unapproved content — which includes “hate speech” and “fake news” — within 24 hours or face exorbitant fines. (Of course, every piece of news, no matter how well or shabbily reported, gets decried as hateful “fake news” by somebody.) Under the new law, Twitter suspended the accounts of two officials of the political party Alternative for Germany who tweeted that Muslim men have violent proclivities. Hateful, fake, inexact, whatever, such tweets by themselves threaten nobody and violate nobody’s rights. 

Did Twitter act only under duress here? 

Well, in the U.S., the company is not ordered by our government to muzzle anybody except perhaps terrorists or persons directly instigating a crime. Yet Twitter regularly suspends or bans users whose speech it considers objectionable. Moreover, it has become notorious for especially targeting speech that can be regarded as on the right end of the political spectrum — while leaving intact the tweet-​speech of left-​wing micro-​bloggers no matter how threatening or abusive.

I don’t say America’s government should become involved. It should certainly not compel Twitter to drop its double standard. 

Instead, it is Twitter itself that should become involved … and drop its double standard. 

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

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