Thank you so much for this. I followed the ‘antics’ of Trump for the 4 years he was in office and found it exhausting and stressful. I prayed we had seen the back of him at the end of his term. I’ve watched the ‘leaders’ in this country follow the Trump playbook and have been concerned about the direction we are heading. I saw Trump as extremely dangerous then but now it’s not just Trump, his family and the rich cronies and the totally transformed Republican Party now the Party of Trump. It’s the Oligarchs, the control of the narrative, the links to other fascists and the times are even more dangerous. The US is even more divided but all will watch as he, I fear, will disregard the Constitution will continue to disregard the norms and no one will be able to touch him because he is surrounded by Oligarchs and men as dangerous if not more dangerous than he is. I fear a Presidency as we see in Russia with all in the Trump world ensuring 4 years term is of no importance. The western world and our own country better have plans to counter what is surely coming ‘down the road’.
Carol, this doesn’t address the rot in our main stream media and political class. The Amsterdam debacle has shown that we are surrounded by disinformation directly from our ‘democratically’ elected corporate state. Paying for media doesn’t eliminate this and actually reinforces it. For almost two years The Guardian has exposed itself as another disinformation site. Paywalled sites no better. The most honest information I get comes from a social media which you are on and without which myself and others would be blind to disinformation realities.
Carol, your brave work is invaluable, and yet there is another part of the story. Our main stream media and political class have waved through this Broligarchy algorhythm phenomenon. History tells us that a malevolent ruling class will capture all forms of media. For example, even "trustworthy", left-leaning mainstream news sources have selectively gone Full-Orwell on the Middle East, Palestine and, more recently, Amsterdam. Reportage from The Guardian, trustworthy on other subjects, cannot be trusted on those subject areas. The most honest information I get comes from triangulating the information output of political commentators, journalists (such as yourself), tax experts and academics on social media. I agree with you that once the justice system and the algorhythm comes for those brave commentators, the lights will go out on reliable information and we will enter the darkest of dark ages.
Thank you for continuing your journalism. I hopped over here from your post on Twitter to support you. That was one of the few and the last good thing to come my way from that platform as I shall now delete it.
"The enemy is within" said the kremlin troll to the dork maga cryptobros. Within the Oval now. What next, q-cult agent Flynn for ministry of religion? Putin annexation underway, SOS USA 🚨
I've just been listening to Andrew Marr's interview with Vladimir Kara-Murza, a Russian-British former journalist and prominent Putin opposition activist. I can highly recommend listening in the light of the new fear that journalists have in the US. It gives us an insight to see how history tells us that democracy will eventually establish itself again.
I sometimes wonder had the printing press made publishing of opinions as easy as social media has made it today, whether society would have collapsed shortly after its invention. Of course we will never really know because although the printing press completely upturned the way information was shared and even owned, its infrastructure remained in very limited hands.
But there probably would have been a better chance for society’s survival back then even had the printing press become ubiquitous, only because democracy did not yet exist. Democracy, gives us unimaginable freedoms, providing we accept its institutions and the moderation they bring to our discourse, among other things. But in today's keyboard warrior and troll farm world we have the weakest of political systems in place to protect humanity from an unfiltered and relentless tsunami of information, lies, stupidity, manipulative discourse, and hate.
As humans we are simply not built to effectively deal with such a tsunami (or a sewer as you rightly put it). What we forget is that our species has evolved very little in our social (read also political) intelligence from when we were hunter gatherers. For example, we subconsciously need enemies because it reinforces our tribe's cohesion. Also, we will be scared far more quickly than we can be enthused because when you get killed that's for ever. And of course we are far less generally intelligent than we like to think we are, because, like any other animal, we are wired to be decent or good in just a couple of things.
Social media threw us, at the speed of light, into a world in which humanity needed to up its game tremendously on the intelligence level. Or it required putting in place stronger information filters than we previously had.
As a species we were of course totally unable to grow to super human intelligence levels. And we (in democratic societies) refrained from stronger filters because it would have gone against freedom of speech which is the essence of our system. In hindsight, we should have added filters precisely because it would have protected our democratic system and therefore also freedom of speech. But that is the beauty (and frustration) of hindsight.
The cat is out of the bag now. And it seems very difficult to imagine that it will ever be put back in. I suppose society, in some form, will continue to exist 100 years from now, even if climate change will be yet another force to be reckoned with. It may be in the process of picking up the pieces and trying to re-start in one way or another. But I would be immensely amazed if it were flourishing. From whatever angle I look at it, I am simply unable to see how the social media revolution will have allowed for progress more than it has already destroyed and will destroy further.
I am still confused at how “filters” are supposed to work. When a bad guy gets into office, then you will be the one filtered out. That’s the point of the First Amendment.
The entire premise here seems to be that people are more commonly drawn to lies over truth. If that were the case, democracy wouldn’t work. Indeed, humanity would be lost, because it would always choose to be lost when given the choice.
But that’s not how it has played out in free societies.
Thank you so much for this. I followed the ‘antics’ of Trump for the 4 years he was in office and found it exhausting and stressful. I prayed we had seen the back of him at the end of his term. I’ve watched the ‘leaders’ in this country follow the Trump playbook and have been concerned about the direction we are heading. I saw Trump as extremely dangerous then but now it’s not just Trump, his family and the rich cronies and the totally transformed Republican Party now the Party of Trump. It’s the Oligarchs, the control of the narrative, the links to other fascists and the times are even more dangerous. The US is even more divided but all will watch as he, I fear, will disregard the Constitution will continue to disregard the norms and no one will be able to touch him because he is surrounded by Oligarchs and men as dangerous if not more dangerous than he is. I fear a Presidency as we see in Russia with all in the Trump world ensuring 4 years term is of no importance. The western world and our own country better have plans to counter what is surely coming ‘down the road’.
Carol, this doesn’t address the rot in our main stream media and political class. The Amsterdam debacle has shown that we are surrounded by disinformation directly from our ‘democratically’ elected corporate state. Paying for media doesn’t eliminate this and actually reinforces it. For almost two years The Guardian has exposed itself as another disinformation site. Paywalled sites no better. The most honest information I get comes from a social media which you are on and without which myself and others would be blind to disinformation realities.
Carol, your brave work is invaluable, and yet there is another part of the story. Our main stream media and political class have waved through this Broligarchy algorhythm phenomenon. History tells us that a malevolent ruling class will capture all forms of media. For example, even "trustworthy", left-leaning mainstream news sources have selectively gone Full-Orwell on the Middle East, Palestine and, more recently, Amsterdam. Reportage from The Guardian, trustworthy on other subjects, cannot be trusted on those subject areas. The most honest information I get comes from triangulating the information output of political commentators, journalists (such as yourself), tax experts and academics on social media. I agree with you that once the justice system and the algorhythm comes for those brave commentators, the lights will go out on reliable information and we will enter the darkest of dark ages.
Thank you for continuing your journalism. I hopped over here from your post on Twitter to support you. That was one of the few and the last good thing to come my way from that platform as I shall now delete it.
Thanks for getting rid of Xitter! EVERYONE needs to abandon Musk’s cesspool.
Your quip about the "information sewers" brought to mind one of my favorite poems by William Blake, "London":
I wander thro' each charter'd street,
Near where the charter'd Thames does flow.
And mark in every face I meet
Marks of weakness, marks of woe.
In every cry of every Man,
In every Infants cry of fear,
In every voice: in every ban,
The mind-forg'd manacles I hear
How the Chimney-sweepers cry
Every blackning Church appalls,
And the hapless Soldiers sigh
Runs in blood down Palace walls
But most thro' midnight streets I hear
How the youthful Harlots curse
Blasts the new-born Infants tear
And blights with plagues the Marriage hearse
Who among us can say what plagues await this "Marriage hearse"? It fills me with great sadness, the depths of which I have barely begun to plumb.
“Enjoy your clean, hygienic, fact-checked news” [from the NYT].
I’m new here. Are you being facetious?
"The enemy is within" said the kremlin troll to the dork maga cryptobros. Within the Oval now. What next, q-cult agent Flynn for ministry of religion? Putin annexation underway, SOS USA 🚨
Why Dems really lost the support & enthusiasm they needed in key demographics: genocide & war crimes https://www.commondreams.org/news/does-israel-need-us-weapons
I've just been listening to Andrew Marr's interview with Vladimir Kara-Murza, a Russian-British former journalist and prominent Putin opposition activist. I can highly recommend listening in the light of the new fear that journalists have in the US. It gives us an insight to see how history tells us that democracy will eventually establish itself again.
Prize fighting words from a prize winning journalist. You write with such power Carole, never stop. Thank you
I sometimes wonder had the printing press made publishing of opinions as easy as social media has made it today, whether society would have collapsed shortly after its invention. Of course we will never really know because although the printing press completely upturned the way information was shared and even owned, its infrastructure remained in very limited hands.
But there probably would have been a better chance for society’s survival back then even had the printing press become ubiquitous, only because democracy did not yet exist. Democracy, gives us unimaginable freedoms, providing we accept its institutions and the moderation they bring to our discourse, among other things. But in today's keyboard warrior and troll farm world we have the weakest of political systems in place to protect humanity from an unfiltered and relentless tsunami of information, lies, stupidity, manipulative discourse, and hate.
As humans we are simply not built to effectively deal with such a tsunami (or a sewer as you rightly put it). What we forget is that our species has evolved very little in our social (read also political) intelligence from when we were hunter gatherers. For example, we subconsciously need enemies because it reinforces our tribe's cohesion. Also, we will be scared far more quickly than we can be enthused because when you get killed that's for ever. And of course we are far less generally intelligent than we like to think we are, because, like any other animal, we are wired to be decent or good in just a couple of things.
Social media threw us, at the speed of light, into a world in which humanity needed to up its game tremendously on the intelligence level. Or it required putting in place stronger information filters than we previously had.
As a species we were of course totally unable to grow to super human intelligence levels. And we (in democratic societies) refrained from stronger filters because it would have gone against freedom of speech which is the essence of our system. In hindsight, we should have added filters precisely because it would have protected our democratic system and therefore also freedom of speech. But that is the beauty (and frustration) of hindsight.
The cat is out of the bag now. And it seems very difficult to imagine that it will ever be put back in. I suppose society, in some form, will continue to exist 100 years from now, even if climate change will be yet another force to be reckoned with. It may be in the process of picking up the pieces and trying to re-start in one way or another. But I would be immensely amazed if it were flourishing. From whatever angle I look at it, I am simply unable to see how the social media revolution will have allowed for progress more than it has already destroyed and will destroy further.
I am still confused at how “filters” are supposed to work. When a bad guy gets into office, then you will be the one filtered out. That’s the point of the First Amendment.
The entire premise here seems to be that people are more commonly drawn to lies over truth. If that were the case, democracy wouldn’t work. Indeed, humanity would be lost, because it would always choose to be lost when given the choice.
But that’s not how it has played out in free societies.