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"In some ways one part of the solution is simple: Pass laws that deliver consequences for lying and disseminating false information or fabricating narratives."
by kian 7y ago
"In some ways one part of the solution is simple: Pass laws that deliver consequences for lying and disseminating false information or fabricating narratives."
Something inside me dies every time I hear an American say that the solution to this problem is to set fire to the First Amendment. And who, pray tell, would determine who was lying or misguiding the public? Do you think if such a law were to come into effect while Trump was in power, that he would make sure to use that power justly, instead of as a muzzle to silence political criticism? Or that any other person in power wouldn't abuse the heck out of this?
The price of freedom is eternal vigilance, and like everything else in this country we've racked up an enormous debt without making plans to pay it. It only takes a generation or two forgetting this to destroy everything that made America beautiful.
- tpmoney 7y agoIt’s been somewhat fascinating to me over the past 12 years to watch both sides go absolutely insane with allegations of abuses of power, government overreach and all sort of political nastiness. Yet the answer from both never seems to be a re-evaluation of the systems we’ve put in place over the years that have allowed these things to come to pass, nor a questioning of whether the actors we align or malign should even have the powers they have in the first place or be so protected in those powers. Instead it’s an insistence that if only we get “the right person” in power and then tear away all the institutions that allowed the “wrong people” to challenge, delay or unseat that person then surely everything will work out perfectly forever and always.