7 ms·

> If Twitter is going to police people, it needs to be across the board. One way to look at this is that that's exactly what Twitter has started doing. The pre

by paulgb 6y ago

> If Twitter is going to police people, it needs to be across the board. One way to look at this is that that's exactly what Twitter has started doing. The president violated the TOS, and got the treatment prescribed under the TOS. His EO yesterday essentially asked for everyone to be treated in accordance with the TOS, so he's (ironically) getting exactly what he asked for. It remains to be seen whether, in compliance with the EO, they apply this to everyone in a transparent and uniform way from now on. I hope they do.

dfxm12 6y ago
Wait, Trump, the guy who had a platform plank complaining about his predecessors' use of executive orders as "power grabs" [0], actually issued an executive order about Twitter's TOS? 0 - https://www.latimes.com/world-nation/story/2019-10-19/trump-presidential-executive-orders https://www.latimes.com/world-nation/story/2019-10-19/trump-...
- bcrosby95 6y ago
  It's nothing new. Politics is a team based sport. My brother calls Obama "King Obama" but is still a huge fan of Trump. I've discussed some of this stuff with him: in his eyes, Obama did stuff he shouldn't have, so Trump can do stuff he shouldn't.
  - dfxm12 6y ago
    I can understand how people can rationalize some of his failures, but, the second time around, how can someone vote for a guy who has failed on delivering on a very simple and basic campaign promise, one that he can do that unilaterally? “The country wasn’t based on executive orders,” Trump said at a South Carolina campaign stop in February 2016. “Right now, Obama goes around signing executive orders. He can’t even get along with the Democrats, and he goes around signing all these executive orders. It’s a basic disaster. You can’t do it.” I know I'm probably pissing in the wind here, but I was looking forward to a president ceding some of his power back to congress, so this one really sticks in my craw. Oh well.
    - praestigiare 6y ago
      Because, while this is not true of individual republicans, republican party media strategy has been based on positional ethics for a long time. Free speech is good when it is our free speech. Executive orders are bad when they are your executive orders.
      - ocdtrekkie 6y ago
        Both parties do this. For instance, Republicans are generally the party of "states' rights", but Democrats are jumping up and down about how the federal government shouldn't overrule the rights of liberal states now. Things like the fighting the FCC trying to prohibit states from making their own net neutrality rules, or legalizing marijuana, which is still technically illegal nationwide according to the federal government. Generally, if you run the federal government, you don't want states objecting to your agenda. And if the opposition is running the federal government, you insist on your right to do things at the state level. Watching Democrats and Republicans make the exact same arguments depending on whose in power is absolutely hilarious, and it leads to great soundbites, like those of Trump and McConnell talking about what the President should and shouldn't do... depending who the President is.
        jakelazaroff 6y ago
        Conservative support of "states' rights" has always been a dog whistle for restricting civil liberties. Civil Rights Act? States' rights issue. Same–sex marriage? Let the states decide. Abortion? States should be free to ban. Edit: swapped "Republican" with "Conservative", since the parties' ideologies have shifted over time.
        rayiner 6y ago
        > Civil Rights Act? States' rights issue. Every law called "the Civil Rights Act" passed with overwhelming Republican support. All but one passed with more Republican support than Democratic support. The landmark Civil Rights Act of 1964 received 80% of the republican vote in the house, but only 61% of the democratic vote.
  - moosey 6y ago
    > Politics is a team based sport. That's optional though. The modern media, in the interest of money, has done a good job of causing the population of the US to miscategorize themselves into D/R. If it instead focused on human welfare, then we wouldn't be in this mess.
    - dpoochieni 6y ago
      This so much, I think as people strength in their own opinions has weakened they have replaced it with this us/vs them mentality where you must agree with them in all issues. At root, a narcissistic culture where lack of personality and individuation is overcompensated by external signalling of virtue. "Oh look at those soyboys, we are so much masculine than them." "Oh look at those rednecks who voted for Trump, why can't they get a college education." First case, Why so insecure that you constantly need the other to reaffirm yourself? Second, Why do you need to reaffirm your college education was actually worth something? (Many cases, sad to say but they should sue to get your money back)
      - moosey 6y ago
        I recently read "The Organized Mind". I didn't expect it to be a book on ethics, but it certainly did impact me that way, and caused me to alter an enormous number of faulty mental behaviors, and allowed me to see abuse in language. > "Oh look at those rednecks who voted for Trump, why can't they get a college education." This right here is an example of why it's so easy. Part of what I'm reading there is fundamental attribution error. A person, anywhere right now, that can't get a college education in the US is dealing with a lot of headwind. Our education system is punitive, starting with an A and stripping you of points all the way through, causing undue stress, knowing that if you fail, you probably won't have the money to move forward, and will have great difficulty. Rich people get a free pass on this. Put a system like this together and the reason that people can't get educations is situational, not dispositional. We as a society must do better. I mentioned miscategorization already, which is something that our brains naturally do when seeing people different from us, and requires intentional mental unbundling to see all humans as the same category. This is why racism is so common as well; without intentional work, humans will find categories by which to judge outsiders. Our social media breaks human relationships because far too many interactions are decided publicly, through shame, rather than through communication. An enormous emotional abuse crisis in the US has now reached the highest levels of society, both private and public, and I certainly put enormous amounts of blame not on the companies that make social media sites, but because our brains are simply not well-tasked to deal with it. Further, the end of comprehensive mental health, particularly CBT and emotional withholding and the damages that they cause so many people and relationships. I have a strong feeling that in the coming decade, there will be studies in cognitive psychology demonstrating the connection between stock markets and wealth and the base level fear/reward circuitry of the brain, delaying and reducing ethical and social cognition. Causing a focus on economic power rather than social conformity, and thus damaging society. Regardless, I apologize for blathering, I think about this stuff a lot.
  - Simulacra 6y ago
    I voted for both but for different reasons.
  - ascagnel_ 6y ago
    > I've discussed some of this stuff with him: in his eyes, Obama did stuff he shouldn't have, so Trump can do stuff he shouldn't. This is a terrible line of thinking. I'm no Trump fan, but there's a ton of things neither Trump nor Obama should have done as president, and excusing one with the actions of another doesn't make a bad act good.
    - deleted 6y ago
      [deleted]
  - tareqak 6y ago
    > Politics is a team based sport. I wonder if there is a relationship between the level of competitiveness that a people have for sports with the level of competitiveness that they have in politics and other aspects said people’s lives. Competitive behavior seems to desire to highlight differences amongst the in-group versus the outgroups. Competitive behavior also excels at drumming up visceral desire to act regardless of whether the desire is rational or whether the act truly and completely satisfies the desire. Why is it difficult to immediately associate with the largest in-group i.e. all of humanity / all of life itself / the objective truth? Why not fight a group that has no members i.e. poverty (that which makes and keeps people poor as opposed to the poor), hunger, homelessness, poor health and disease, intolerable / harmful discomfort (difficulty breathing, too much heat, too much cold, too dry, too wet, etc.), pollution, and death (untimely or all death period)?
- jcranmer 6y ago
  Don't worry... he also criticized Obama for golfing too much, and has gone golfing more frequently than Obama. And Senate Republicans have openly asked judges to resign so they can be replaced by conservative judges, and their justification for why it's okay to do this so close to an election but it wasn't okay to confirm Garland so close to an election literally amounts to "Obama's a Democrat, Trump's a Republican."
  - AnthonyMouse 6y ago
    To be fair, the judges asked to resign (really retire) are conservatives. It's the same reason Ginsburg hasn't retired despite her health issues -- everything to do with which party would be nominating her replacement. The next time the Democrats control the Senate and the Republicans the whitehouse, I wouldn't expect them be interested in confirming any judges right before a Presidential election either.
    - ghshephard 6y ago
      Or ever, really. What incentive is there for a party in opposition to ever confirm the opposing party's choice for the Supreme Court.
      - AnthonyMouse 6y ago
        In past times there was a thing called compromise. Not very familiar anymore, I know. Instead of leaving a seat empty for the next ten years until the same party controls the Senate and the whitehouse (and not knowing ahead of time whether it'll be yours or not), the President can nominate a moderate which the opposition party Senate might confirm for the same reason. Better a moderate now than the other guy's candidate later. But when you're looking at electoral math that says you're about to have even odds of taking the whitehouse and probably won't lose the Senate, that doesn't really apply.
        ghshephard 6y ago
        That's probably the most insightful and (to my mind) intelligent assessment I've heard when asking that question. It eliminates any handwaving about "tradition" or "precedent" - and gets right down to the fundamental elements of power and control, and risk.

by paulgb 6y ago

dfxm12 6y ago

Wait, Trump, the guy who had a platform plank complaining about his predecessors' use of executive orders as "power grabs" [0], actually issued an executive order about Twitter's TOS? 0 - https://www.latimes.com/world-nation/story/2019-10-19/trump-presidential-executive-orders https://www.latimes.com/world-nation/story/2019-10-19/trump-...

bcrosby95 6y ago
It's nothing new. Politics is a team based sport. My brother calls Obama "King Obama" but is still a huge fan of Trump. I've discussed some of this stuff with him: in his eyes, Obama did stuff he shouldn't have, so Trump can do stuff he shouldn't.
- dfxm12 6y ago
  I can understand how people can rationalize some of his failures, but, the second time around, how can someone vote for a guy who has failed on delivering on a very simple and basic campaign promise, one that he can do that unilaterally? “The country wasn’t based on executive orders,” Trump said at a South Carolina campaign stop in February 2016. “Right now, Obama goes around signing executive orders. He can’t even get along with the Democrats, and he goes around signing all these executive orders. It’s a basic disaster. You can’t do it.” I know I'm probably pissing in the wind here, but I was looking forward to a president ceding some of his power back to congress, so this one really sticks in my craw. Oh well.
  - praestigiare 6y ago
    Because, while this is not true of individual republicans, republican party media strategy has been based on positional ethics for a long time. Free speech is good when it is our free speech. Executive orders are bad when they are your executive orders.
    - ocdtrekkie 6y ago
      Both parties do this. For instance, Republicans are generally the party of "states' rights", but Democrats are jumping up and down about how the federal government shouldn't overrule the rights of liberal states now. Things like the fighting the FCC trying to prohibit states from making their own net neutrality rules, or legalizing marijuana, which is still technically illegal nationwide according to the federal government. Generally, if you run the federal government, you don't want states objecting to your agenda. And if the opposition is running the federal government, you insist on your right to do things at the state level. Watching Democrats and Republicans make the exact same arguments depending on whose in power is absolutely hilarious, and it leads to great soundbites, like those of Trump and McConnell talking about what the President should and shouldn't do... depending who the President is.
      - jakelazaroff 6y ago
        Conservative support of "states' rights" has always been a dog whistle for restricting civil liberties. Civil Rights Act? States' rights issue. Same–sex marriage? Let the states decide. Abortion? States should be free to ban. Edit: swapped "Republican" with "Conservative", since the parties' ideologies have shifted over time.
        rayiner 6y ago
        > Civil Rights Act? States' rights issue. Every law called "the Civil Rights Act" passed with overwhelming Republican support. All but one passed with more Republican support than Democratic support. The landmark Civil Rights Act of 1964 received 80% of the republican vote in the house, but only 61% of the democratic vote.
- moosey 6y ago
  > Politics is a team based sport. That's optional though. The modern media, in the interest of money, has done a good job of causing the population of the US to miscategorize themselves into D/R. If it instead focused on human welfare, then we wouldn't be in this mess.
  - dpoochieni 6y ago
    This so much, I think as people strength in their own opinions has weakened they have replaced it with this us/vs them mentality where you must agree with them in all issues. At root, a narcissistic culture where lack of personality and individuation is overcompensated by external signalling of virtue. "Oh look at those soyboys, we are so much masculine than them." "Oh look at those rednecks who voted for Trump, why can't they get a college education." First case, Why so insecure that you constantly need the other to reaffirm yourself? Second, Why do you need to reaffirm your college education was actually worth something? (Many cases, sad to say but they should sue to get your money back)
    - moosey 6y ago
      I recently read "The Organized Mind". I didn't expect it to be a book on ethics, but it certainly did impact me that way, and caused me to alter an enormous number of faulty mental behaviors, and allowed me to see abuse in language. > "Oh look at those rednecks who voted for Trump, why can't they get a college education." This right here is an example of why it's so easy. Part of what I'm reading there is fundamental attribution error. A person, anywhere right now, that can't get a college education in the US is dealing with a lot of headwind. Our education system is punitive, starting with an A and stripping you of points all the way through, causing undue stress, knowing that if you fail, you probably won't have the money to move forward, and will have great difficulty. Rich people get a free pass on this. Put a system like this together and the reason that people can't get educations is situational, not dispositional. We as a society must do better. I mentioned miscategorization already, which is something that our brains naturally do when seeing people different from us, and requires intentional mental unbundling to see all humans as the same category. This is why racism is so common as well; without intentional work, humans will find categories by which to judge outsiders. Our social media breaks human relationships because far too many interactions are decided publicly, through shame, rather than through communication. An enormous emotional abuse crisis in the US has now reached the highest levels of society, both private and public, and I certainly put enormous amounts of blame not on the companies that make social media sites, but because our brains are simply not well-tasked to deal with it. Further, the end of comprehensive mental health, particularly CBT and emotional withholding and the damages that they cause so many people and relationships. I have a strong feeling that in the coming decade, there will be studies in cognitive psychology demonstrating the connection between stock markets and wealth and the base level fear/reward circuitry of the brain, delaying and reducing ethical and social cognition. Causing a focus on economic power rather than social conformity, and thus damaging society. Regardless, I apologize for blathering, I think about this stuff a lot.
- Simulacra 6y ago
  I voted for both but for different reasons.
- ascagnel_ 6y ago
  > I've discussed some of this stuff with him: in his eyes, Obama did stuff he shouldn't have, so Trump can do stuff he shouldn't. This is a terrible line of thinking. I'm no Trump fan, but there's a ton of things neither Trump nor Obama should have done as president, and excusing one with the actions of another doesn't make a bad act good.
  - deleted 6y ago
    [deleted]
- tareqak 6y ago
  > Politics is a team based sport. I wonder if there is a relationship between the level of competitiveness that a people have for sports with the level of competitiveness that they have in politics and other aspects said people’s lives. Competitive behavior seems to desire to highlight differences amongst the in-group versus the outgroups. Competitive behavior also excels at drumming up visceral desire to act regardless of whether the desire is rational or whether the act truly and completely satisfies the desire. Why is it difficult to immediately associate with the largest in-group i.e. all of humanity / all of life itself / the objective truth? Why not fight a group that has no members i.e. poverty (that which makes and keeps people poor as opposed to the poor), hunger, homelessness, poor health and disease, intolerable / harmful discomfort (difficulty breathing, too much heat, too much cold, too dry, too wet, etc.), pollution, and death (untimely or all death period)?
jcranmer 6y ago
Don't worry... he also criticized Obama for golfing too much, and has gone golfing more frequently than Obama. And Senate Republicans have openly asked judges to resign so they can be replaced by conservative judges, and their justification for why it's okay to do this so close to an election but it wasn't okay to confirm Garland so close to an election literally amounts to "Obama's a Democrat, Trump's a Republican."
- AnthonyMouse 6y ago
  To be fair, the judges asked to resign (really retire) are conservatives. It's the same reason Ginsburg hasn't retired despite her health issues -- everything to do with which party would be nominating her replacement. The next time the Democrats control the Senate and the Republicans the whitehouse, I wouldn't expect them be interested in confirming any judges right before a Presidential election either.
  - ghshephard 6y ago
    Or ever, really. What incentive is there for a party in opposition to ever confirm the opposing party's choice for the Supreme Court.
    - AnthonyMouse 6y ago
      In past times there was a thing called compromise. Not very familiar anymore, I know. Instead of leaving a seat empty for the next ten years until the same party controls the Senate and the whitehouse (and not knowing ahead of time whether it'll be yours or not), the President can nominate a moderate which the opposition party Senate might confirm for the same reason. Better a moderate now than the other guy's candidate later. But when you're looking at electoral math that says you're about to have even odds of taking the whitehouse and probably won't lose the Senate, that doesn't really apply.
      - ghshephard 6y ago
        That's probably the most insightful and (to my mind) intelligent assessment I've heard when asking that question. It eliminates any handwaving about "tradition" or "precedent" - and gets right down to the fundamental elements of power and control, and risk.