Has America Imploded? (1 Viewer)

[Jon]

@Jon, I've been curious about your opinion on repealing section 230 and haven't noticed you weigh in on it.
Where everyone always point to the protections of the big tech sites like twitter and facebook, it also protects you.

To be honest moke, I don't know enough about it or if it even applies to me because I am small fry. I think it is a difficult topic. The US and the UK are slightly different in that the UK has edged towards "polite society" a little bit, and things seem a lot rougher in the US with complete freedom of speech. You only have to compare our news channels to yours to get a flavour of the difference.

I sympathise with big tech on the one hand because the technical implementation of managing hundreds of millions of users input must be very difficult. For example, I only ever read a fraction of the posts here. So, I see that point of view. But if you start censoring based on what you perceive as good intentions, you do so looking at the world through the prism of your own political bias. I see that as a big problem. You end up having an unfair society because the levers that control speech are disproportionately skewed towards the left.

In Trumps case, I do not think we have ever had a leader of a country having their voice box removed. It just seems wrong to me. You can say how dangerous he is, that is views are wrong, racist and so on, but that is only your opinion. There will be tens of millions of others who think the other side is racist and wrong and so on.

Take my stance on BLM, which I claim is a racist political group. The left will find this position utterly irrational, a view of your typical white supremacist who is operating from white privilege and has no perspective on the world. Yet I can assure you I have seen all sides of the argument for an eternity, I have no intention of having any superiority over someone who is black, I have nothing against anyone who is black, I have best friends who were black, dated black girls, love watching movies where the black underdog gets his vengeance, read books on black slavery and so on. Instead, I try to keep a clear head without getting micro-focused on the short-termism when a movement comes along, such as the BLM protests. I said from the outset that there was no evidence of racial bias in what happened to George Flloyd. I also pointed out the lack of protests for the black police officer who shot the white woman who called for their help. This happened 3 years earlier in the same city.

In essence, I believe it is a citizens right to have their voice heard. This is largely done via social media nowadays. Big tech is now preventing Trump speaking to his base with the frequency he desires. That is wrong, in my view.

 

[Pat Hartman]

I think one of the freshman members of the house is going to file articles of impeachment against Biden when Congress reopens What goes around comes around. The bill won't pass but the point will be made.

 

[Jon]

I've started a thread on the impeachment topic. The Democrats have set a precedent that has trashed this particular government lever.

 

[Steve R.]

I think one of the freshman members of the house is going to file articles of impeachment against Biden when Congress reopens What goes around comes around. The bill won't pass but the point will be made.

The House could flip in 2022. Fingers crossed. Also there is the question of Biden making to 2022 as President. Even if Biden does not, Harris would be President and eligible for impeachment.

@Jon: I made an oops in my original post. I missed an obscure point of logic. The US House of Representatives would select the Speaker of the House, in early January, meaning that if the Republicans take over the US House in 2022, they would be selecting a Republican as the Speaker. My original post assumed that the Speaker, at that time, would be a Democrat. That was a mistake.

 

[moke123]

or if it even applies to me because I am small fry.

It specifically applies to you. Its intent, from what I know, is to protect the small frys from liability and nusiance lawsuits.

For instance, If someone were to post copyrighted material on this site and the copyright owner sued you and the poster. Section 230 would allow you to move to dismiss immediately without incurring massive legal bills. What it doesn't protect you from is content that the site posts directly. I'm not sure how that would play out in a scenario where one of your moderators were the ones who posted it. In any event the big boys i'm sure have a much larger war chest than you, no offense, so they could weather that storm with or without 230.

 

[Jon]

No offence taken. I would keel over like a shot duck, legs in the air. "Gulity, m'Lord!"

Does Section 230 apply to any size site, or only to some?

Section 230 only applies to the US. This site has global coverage. Take me to the dungeons!

 

[moke123]

I think one of the freshman members of the house is going to file articles of impeachment against Biden

No offence taken. I would keel over like a shot duck, legs in the air. "Gulity, m'Lord!"

Does Section 230 apply to any size site, or only to some?

Section 230 only applies to the US. This site has global coverage.

All, I believe. Its intent is allow the smaller guys to compete.

Section 230 only applies to the US. This site has global coverage.

I guess that would depend where the suit was brought.

 

[Jon]

I guess that would depend where the suit was brought.

Exactly. I think US traffic maybe 50% of this site. Just a guess.

 

[Pat Hartman]

Once you start censoring people, you are in the business of being a publisher and need to loose the section 230 protection. I think if we actually had a DOJ and FBI we would see a monopoly suit against Amazon, Google, and Apple. I am 100% in favor of the suit being filed and the the three Fascist companies being fined and ground into the dirt. It doesn't make sense to be a shareholder of a company you want to see destroyed so, not being a hypocrite, I sold all my shares in Amazon and Apple the day after they cancelled Parler. I sold my shares in Alphabet years ago when I realized they were spying on me and manipulating my search results to show/hide what THEY decided I should or shouldn't see. I never owned shares in Twitter or FB because they have always censored people. Sadly for America, the DOJ and FBI are working for the Democrat party these days.

 

[moke123]

I think one of the freshman members of the house is going to file articles of impeachment against Biden when Congress reopens What goes around comes around. The bill won't pass but the point will be made.

She's a Qanon conspiracy theorist from Ga.

Greene linked Hillary Clinton to pedophilia and human sacrifice[44] and, in 2017, speculated the Pizzagate conspiracy theory was real.[40] Greene claimed Clinton murdered her political enemies in a revival of the "Clinton Kill List" conspiracy theory.

Greene supported the far-right QAnon conspiracy theory, saying in videos posted in 2017 on Facebook that the theories were "worth listening to".[46][47] She stated in a video, "There's a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to take this global cabal of Satan-worshiping pedophiles out, and I think we have the president to do it."

Greene wrote 59 articles for the now-defunct conspiracy theory website, American Truth Seekers, including one linking the Democratic Party to "Child Sex, Satanism, and the Occult"

After the first round of voting in the 2020 election, Politico re-released videos published by Greene in which she expressed racist, antisemitic, and Islamophobic views. Greene's support for bigotry and the QAnon conspiracy theory in the videos were condemned, including by Republican Congressmen Kevin McCarthy and Steve Scalise.[39][47]

In a 2017 video posted to Facebook, Greene expressed doubt that the perpetrator of the 2017 Las Vegas shooting acted alone,[50] a large-scale incident she believes was intended as an attack on the right to bear arms.[45] She believes the Christchurch mosque shootings in New Zealand were a "false flag" for the same end.[4] She also called George Soros, a Jewish businessman and Holocaust survivor, a Nazi.[51][39]

In 2018, Greene expressed support for a conspiracy theory that a plane did not hit the Pentagon during the September 11 attacks, saying that "it's odd there's never any evidence shown for a plane in the Pentagon," despite video evidence.[52] On another occasion, at a Conservative conference in 2018, she said 9/11 was part of a plot by the United States government.[45] Following a report on her comments by Media Matters for America in August 2020, Greene said on Twitter: "Some people claimed a missile hit the Pentagon. I now know that is not correct. The problem is our government lies to us so much to protect the Deep State, it's hard sometimes to know what is real and what is not."[

 

[Pat Hartman]

She's a Qanon conspiracy theorist from Ga.

Did she tell you this or are you sharing someone else's opinion again?

PS, are you deliberately linking everything to Wikipedia?

 

[Steve R.]

She's a Qanon conspiracy theorist from Ga.

According to whom? Now if your going to play smear game to denigrate someone, how about recognizing the Democrats who, prior to the impeachment, called police thugs, celebrated rioting and looting, and helped bail-out those arrested so they could go out and riot again; now disingenuously praising the police and now demanding that those rioting and looting actually be arrested. People who play the "flip game" can't be trusted, they are liars. Their lies are on tape. Instead of alleging something negative to smear someone, how about actually condemning the Democrats who, prior to the impeachment, supported those rioting, looting, burning, and destroying property.

 

[moke123]

Did she tell you this or are you sharing someone else's opinion again?

PS, are you deliberately linking everything to Wikipedia?

No, its just the easiest place to finds some of the well known examples rather than having to copy and paste from the hundreds of other sites documenting her Qanon ties.

 

[Pat Hartman]

OK, so now Wikipedia is the arbiter of Truth?

 

[moke123]

Live politics updates: Twitter temporarily suspends account of Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene

Greene’s last tweet was a video in which she continued to allege debunked and unfounded conspiracy theories about widespread voter fraud in Georgia.

www.usatoday.com

 

[Isaac]

Glad I read it to the bottom. I was gonna say you have some issues.

Satire.

 

[Isaac]

I don't actually think it matters what any of us says in here. None of us agree with each others point of view, when on opposing sides of the political isle. We go round and round in circles, convinced of our own positions. For some reason, we cannot seem to bridge that gap. Instead, we play lexicon word games to justify our arguments. Perhaps it is a bit like quantum physics, where an electrons spin and location is only determined the moment you measure it. It can be in multiple positions at the same time, like a probability wave. And Trump is innocent and guilty all at the same time, depending on if the observer is a Republican or a Democrat. Just thoughts for the day...

Those are good thoughts, Jon. I've often pondered the same, but don't seem to be able to help myself in putting my relatively useless opinions to writing anyway - as do we all. I think at least some part of it is the intellectual stimulation, mental business we need, and not all bad due to that.

 

[Jon]

Perhaps the compulsion to argue your side is kinda like an evolutionary need to spar, so your skills are honed, ready for those battles that really matter. Or maybe some kind of status game, with the most convincing elevate their position through artful elocution. It could even be said that the former leads to the latter anyway, just like a boxers sparring prepares him for his fights, and that preparation improves his chances of elevating his rank.

 

[zeroaccess]

I see that in the recent riot, the woman shot by a police officer was white. Is there any outrage over this? Or do white lives not matter?

Is breaking into the U.S. Capitol by force with a violent mob dependent on the color of your skin? Or are you claiming she was an innocent bystander who just was accidentally confronted by the cops on her daily routine?

 

[zeroaccess]

Where approximately 50 people committed the crime of breaking into the Capitol building.

Pat I respect you but you need to find better sources of information. The number is in the hundreds.

More than 250 people have been charged in the Capitol insurrection so far