David Leonhardt's (really-really) obtuse New York Times essay — about Facebook and Trump

© 2021 Peter Free

 

06 May 2021

 

 

OMG, the brain-shame

 

The New York Times — that ultra-reliable Military Industrial Complex propaganda machine — printed the following intellectually (severely) obtuse piece — just this morning:

 

 

Facebook’s suspension of Donald Trump will continue for now, the company announced yesterday. But it still has not resolved the central problem that Trump has created for social media platforms and, by extension, American democracy.

 

The problem is that Trump lies almost constantly. Unlike many other politicians — including other recent presidents, from both parties — he continues to make false statements even after other people have documented their falseness.

 

This behavior undermines the healthy functioning of American democracy, particularly because Trump has such a large following.

 

His lies about the 2020 election are the clearest example.

 

But Facebook has decided that the health of American democracy isn’t its problem.

 

Facebook continues to allow politicians to spread many falsehoods, saying it does not want to police truth. Distinguishing among truth, opinion and falsehood can indeed be tricky — but Trump’s claims about electoral theft are not a nuanced case.

 

The issue here isn’t the enduring philosophical question of what constitutes truth; it’s whether Facebook is willing to tolerate obvious and influential lies.

 

So far, the company has decided that it is. It has drawn a line somewhere between blatant untruths and incitement to violence.

 

Facebook has evidently decided that undermining the credibility of democratic elections does not violate international human rights standards.

 

If it maintains that position, Trump may be back on Facebook six months from now.

 

© 2021 David Leonhardt, Facebook Ducks the Big Issue, New York Times (06 May 2021)

 

 

'Oh David — my dear-dear, lost-lost — Child of Stalwart Stupidity'

 

Mr. Leonhardt raises the question of nuance and then immediately forgets that detecting nuance's edges is an impossible task — when (or where) actually preserving Free Speech is a legitimate concern.

 

First, Leonhardt assumes that Donald Trump's claims that the 2020 election was stolen have been persuasively disproved. That so, even under circumstances that clearly indicate a lack of thorough and transparent efforts to actually do so.

 

For its part, the American judicial branch ran away from the issue. And the Biden-supporting Deep State did its best to smother the question with emotionally inflaming anti-Trump propaganda.

 

Don't forget that this same Deep State — and its Democratic Party enforcement arm — did their best (for more than four years) to persuade the public — on the basis of one lie after another — that Trump was Vlad the Impaler's puppet.

 

You mean that sort of proof, Dave?

 

Second — and even more absurdly obviously — there exists the problem of Who is deciding where the lies lie.

 

Given that the New York Times has been one the nation's foremost concocters and spewers of the Russiagate nonsense — I doubt that Mr. Leonhardt (and his editors) can lay claim to Unassailable Omniscience regarding who is lying and who is not.

 

Third, even the most patriotic of Americans recognize that the United States is no longer a democracy. Instead, it is an Oligarchy that buys Government and then ignores (what might loosely be defined as) the People's will.

 

Consequently, Leonhardt's whiny self-righteous plea about preserving democracy is pure sham.

 

What the New York Times is really after is substituting a Right Thinking Police State in current America's place.

 

Fourth, Leonhardt's implicit argument that Trump's stolen election claims were (or are) a deadly invitation to 'imminent' (the Free Speech-suppressing constitutional standard) nation-destroying violence — is unalloyed bullshit.

 

The 06 January 2021 Capitol Riot was closer to Vladimir Putin's claimed "stroll" than it was to an insurrection. And the only person killed during that "stroll" was an unarmed Trump-supporting trespasser, who was arguably manslaughtered by an ostensibly State-protecting cop.

 

 

So exactly which group was the (allegedly imminently) deadly, lie-based destruction directed at?

 

 

Are you, Dave, suggesting that Speech should be suppressed — so as to keep Society's unruly members permanently constrained — no matter which side ultimately winds up doing the killing?

 

If so, that sounds like the perfect premise upon which to erect a Nazi, Stalinist or Maoist state:

 

 

We're caging Speech, so as to protect y'all from your disorderly, Freedom-seeking tendencies.

 

 

Fifth — how on Earth, Dave, did you did you manage to drag Human Rights onto the wrong side of the Free Speech issue?

 

How do Human Rights support censorship and brain-jailing?

 

Are you continuing to make the Maoist claim that we should be repressing We the People for their own good?

 

 

All told, Mr. Leonhardt . . .

 

I would have trouble with coming up with a more intellectually ridiculous and easily shredded argument than the one that you just presented.

 

 

The moral? — Monopolistic Big Tech has no business censoring anyone . . .

 

. . . in a supposedly Free Speech (alleged) democracy.

 

And the perpetually mendacious, warmongering, corporatist-mentality — We the People-suppressing — New York Times has no legitimate business telling anyone what they should, or should not, say.

 

On this issue, I am apparently with arch-conservative Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas.

 

Monopolistic corporations that provide speech platforms should fall under the constitutional constraints of the First Amendment. Exactly because those corporate entities have substituted themselves for Government's power.