Freedom to lie

I didn't watch too much of last night's debate but one interchange really bothered me. Vance was asked about certifying the last election and this is what we got:

"You have said you would not have certified the last presidential election, and would have asked the states to submit alternative electors. That has been called unconstitutional and illegal,” moderator Norah O’Donnell said to Vance. “Would you again seek to challenge this year’s election results, even if every governor certifies the results?”

Vance said that instead of the threats to democracy decried by Democrats, what’s really worrying is the threat of “big technology companies silencing their fellow citizens.” Vance said Harris would like to “censor people who engage in misinformation,” which he described as “a much bigger threat to democracy than anything we’ve seen” in the last four or 40 years.

This has been a popular topic on the part of many on the right of late, the right to engage in patently and often knowingly false information. The Alex Jones types who push theories that school shootings are staged, the Q Anon nonsense that liberals are harvesting christian children's blood at pizza parlors, the ridiculous drivel from Stone, Giuliani, RFK jr. and Bannon.

So now the enemy is fact checking and those that would interfere in our freedom to prevaricate. The GOP thinks we need to make a stand for misinformation. They are even targeting researchers studying the subject. And they are bummed when reporters call them on their bull crap, witness last night:

Republicans are crying foul after CBS' Face the Nation anchor Margaret Brennan, one of two debate moderators for the vice presidential showdown on Tuesday, fact-checked false claims by Sen. JD Vance, R-Ohio, that "illegal immigration" was the root cause of a crisis in Springfield, Ohio.

Vance himself admitted in the past that he was "creating a story" about Haitian immigrants to draw attention to the apparent suffering of his constituents, who now face bomb threats from people who think Springfield is the epicenter of immigrant pet-eating and other crimes.

The right wing wants the freedom to lie and they say that it is a matter of their freedom of speech. I think it merits jail terms. We the American people should not be "down with dissembling."

60 minutes ran a story earlier this year on this topic which I think was good and accurate. Misinformation is largely coming from one direction, the right.

"We were very specifically looking at misinformation about election processes, procedures and election results," said Kate Starbird, a professor at the University of Washington and a leader of the Election Integrity Partnership, a group she helped launch in 2020. "If we saw something about that, we would pass it along to the platforms if we thought it violated one of their policies."

Researchers flagged a November 2020 tweet saying that election software in Michigan switched 6,000 votes from Trump to Biden. Twitter labeled the post with a warning.

Starbird said her research has found that more misinformation is spread by conservatives. 

And GOP leadership is clearly down with it if it serves their ends.

House Judiciary Committee chairman Jim Jordan, a Republican from Ohio, argues that tech companies shouldn't remove most of what they call misinformation. 

"I think you let the American people, respect the American people, their common sense, to figure out what's accurate, what isn't," Jordan said in an interview.

While Jordan acknowledges there is misinformation online, he sees a bigger problem in what he views as an attack on First Amendment liberties. His committee last year produced a report that concluded there was a "censorship industrial complex" where the federal government and tech companies colluded with academic researchers to disproportionately silence conservatives — an allegation that Starbird vigorously denies. 

Do you respect the American people's ability to figure out what is accurate? I thought I did, until one party decided to deliberately form their base from a demographic of uneducated people who never went to college. 

The Ignorance Party.

Flat earthers who think Elvis is still alive out there with JFK Jr. and calling the shots from their bunker somewhere. A plurality of Republicans do not believe in evolution, or climate change for that matter. You know, the earth is less than six thousand years old and Jesus rode a pet dinosaur.

You certainly have a right to believe in anything you want and I have the right to think you are batshit crazy as well as incredibly ignorant.

But neither of us have the right to broadcast knowing lies and misinformation that is not clearly parody. There are too many people who lack critical thinking skills and will believe anything they are told to believe. 

And that is why Covid mortality rates were so much higher in areas where people refused to vaccinate, wear masks or not congregate on Sundays.

The United States experienced 1 277 697 excess deaths between March 2020 and July 2023. Almost 90% of these deaths were attributed to COVID-19, and 51.5% occurred after vaccines were available. The highest excess death rates first occurred in the Northeast and then shifted to the South and Mountain states. Between weeks ending June 20, 2020, through March 19, 2022, excess death rates were higher in states with Republican governors and greater Republican representation in state legislatures.

Oh wait, I know. That's just another lie. Jim Jordan told you so.

*

Make them riot.