Stephan: When a body politic stops being flooded by poison look what happens.
“The findings, from Jan. 9 through Friday,” reports the Washington Post, “highlight how falsehoods flow across social media sites—reinforcing and amplifying each other—and offer an early indication of how concerted actions against misinformation can make a difference.” Credit: Gage Skidmore/Flickr
A new analysis of online misinformation released Saturday showed that false and wildly misleading content regarding the outcome of the 2020 presidential election was reduced by nearly three-fourths overall after President Donald Trump was barred from posting on major social media sites in the wake of the January 6 attack on the U.S. Capitol building by his supporters.
The research firm Zignal Labs, as the Washington Postreports, calculated that conversations based on misinformation “plunged 73 percent after several social media sites suspended President Trump and key allies last week.”
The findings, from Jan. 9 through Friday, highlight how falsehoods flow across social media sites—reinforcing and amplifying each other—and offer an early indication of how concerted actions against misinformation can make a difference.
Twitter’s ban of Trump on Jan. 8, after years in which @realDonaldTrump was a potent online megaphone, has been […]
Stephan: I think it is time that we acknowledge that there is a large segment of the American population who are ruled by their fears, hates, and emotions and are incapable of rational thought. This story makes the point very clearly.
WASHINGTON, DC – JANUARY 06: Thousands of Donald Trump supporters storm the United States Capitol building following a “Stop the Steal” rally on January 06, 2021 in Washington, DC. Credit: Spencer Platt/Getty
A new poll has found that a majority of Republican voters still believe anti-fascist activists were responsible for the storming of the Capitol last week, despite clear statements from GOP leaders and law enforcement dispelling the conspiracy theory.
An Economist/YouGov poll published on Wednesday evening shows more than two-thirds of the Republicans surveyed blame anti-fascist activists—colloquially known as antifa—for the violence, which was actually perpetrated by Donald Trump supporters and conspiracy theorists seeking to overturn the result of November’s presidential election. (emphasis added)
The surveys were conducted using a nationally representative sample of 1,500 American adults interviewed online between January 10 and 12, just days after a mob breached the Capitol building. The poll’s margin of error is around 3.6 percent.
Sixty-nine percent of Republicans surveyed said anti-fascist activists were involved in the Capitol takeover. Only nine percent said they were not, with the remaining 22 percent unsure.
Vida Johnson, Associate Professor of Law, Georgetown University - AlterNet
Stephan: The rise of fascism in a nation is always accompanied by fascists infiltrating law enforcement agencies, the government, and the military. And it is happening right here in America, which should alarm all of us. Remember Dr. Franklin's admonition. When asked by a woman as he came down the steps of Constitution Hall in 1787 what kind of government the Founders had created he answered, "A Republic if you can keep it." The question has never been more relevant. The answer is not so clear, at least not to me.
Stephan: In four years Trump and his Trumper followers have reduced the stature of the United States in the world from a position of unique status to one of contempt. Look at the Gallup Organization's data and that with a few exceptions the stronger a nation's democracy, the greater its disapproval of what we have become. It is a decline that will be noted by historians for centuries. And Trump's place in United State's history will be seen in the same category as Caligula, Nero, or Commodus in the history of Rome. Are you happy with this; I certainly am not.
As data continue to pour in from Gallup’s 2020 surveys across the globe, approval ratings of U.S. leadership before Inauguration Day next week are still tracking lower than they have at most points in the past decade.
Across 60 countries and areas surveyed during the last year of Donald Trump’s presidency, median approval of U.S. leadership stands at 22%. The highest global rating for U.S. leadership during the Trump administration was 33% in 2019.
While generally unpopular across much of the world and particularly among key allies, U.S. leadership did find favor among the majority of the population in seven of the 60 countries: Dominican Republic (66%), Cameroon (62%), Georgia (61%), Zambia (56%), Albania (56%), the Philippines (55%) and Uganda (53%). U.S. leadership garners the lowest approval ratings in Germany (6%), Iran (6%) and Iceland (5%).
Stephan: Trump is a narcissistic psychopath, virtually any psychiatrist or psychologist in the country will tell you that if you ask, indeed dozens, perhaps hundreds of them have already said so publicly in interviews and in print. What is particularly evil about this is that he tries to sabotage what he cannot control and, as this story describes, he will willingly and actively work to destroy the future of humanity to get back at his former opponent, who defeated him. How is it that anyone can still support this man? Today I got a lesson that taught me the answer.
I got an email this morning from a reader who said to me, "Your vitriol against Trump has bothered me for some time. I believe this is a misplaced emotion and the man, an outsider, not part of the corrupt parties, a populist and a very good man deserves better from you." At first, I could hardly take his comment seriously. Trump's corruption is legendary; hundreds of contractors, ordinary people stiffed in their contract with Trump attest to this, as do people grifted into enrolling into Trump University, or... well, I could go on for pages. How could the writer of that email not notice this? Or how could anyone see Trump as a populist. His entire life has been spent exploiting and holding ordinary people in contempt. Look at America's failure with the Covid pandemic that has cost thousands their lives because he didn't care enough to develop the proper national policies. How is it possible that anyone thinks of Trump as a "very good man"? Then I realized this was a Trumper letter, and that Trumpers really do live in a fantasy world, and there is no point reasoning with them because reason has no place in their world.
Smoke rises from a coal-fired power plant on February 01, 2019 in Romeoville, Illinois. The recent polar vortex taxed power systems across the Midwest as demand for electricity climbed as temperatures plunged. Credit: Scott Olson/Getty
In a surprise move, the Environmental Protection Agency on Wednesday will unveil a climate rule that will effectively prohibit the future regulation of greenhouse gases from any stationary industry other than power plants.
The rule comes just eight days before the inauguration of President-elect Joe Biden, who has pledged a multitrillion-dollar initiative that would combat climate change by making sharp cuts in the United States’ carbon dioxide pollution. The new regulation could hamstring much of that agenda, for example by prohibiting Biden’s EPA from setting carbon limits on oil and gas wells or refineries.
The vehicle for the latest EPA action was also surprising: The agency included it in a long-planned Trump administration regulation that had originally been aimed at a much narrower target — easing greenhouse gas limits for coal plants that might be built in the future. It never sought public comment on […]
