The registry of dissent

I wonder if you've heard about the latest attempt to turn the state of Florida into an autonomous authoritarian oligarchy.

No, I'm not talking about Governor Ron DeSantis's virtual takeover of Disney, although for a party that is supposedly staunchly pro-corporation, it seems like a hypocritical thing to do.  "We're staunchly pro-corporation as long as the corporation toes the far-right line" is nearer the mark.

The particular move I'm thinking of today struck closer to the bone for me, because it's targeted specifically at bloggers.  A bill called "Information Dissemination" proposed by Senator Jason Brodeur would, if passed, require bloggers who post anything critical of Governor DeSantis or other elected officials to sign onto a state registry -- or face fines of up to $2,500.  It's unclear from the wording of the bill if this would apply to bloggers out of state who criticize Florida officials.  This certainly doesn't seem to be overtly excluded, but if so, it raises serious issues of jurisdiction.

The bill tries to dodge First Amendment concerns by limiting itself to bloggers who are financially compensated for their writing -- ostensibly to restrict people from taking money from lobbyists and engaging in criticism-for-pay -- but just about all bloggers get compensated in some way, even if it's just through ad monetization.  So the fact is, this bill is meant to do only one thing: stifle dissent.  

The spirit, and even the wording, of the bill have drawn speculation that it was inspired by a similar law passed by the authoritarian régime of President Viktor Orbán of Hungary in 2010.  This may sound far-fetched, but Orbán is a revered figure amongst the far right, and the elected leaders of Florida have praised him before.  Right-wing commentator Rod Dreher, who is currently living in Budapest, described in an interview a conversation with a reporter who had "talked to the press secretary of Governor Ron DeSantis of Florida and she said, 'Oh yeah, we were watching the Hungarians, so yay Hungary.'"  Steve Bannon calls Orbán "one of the great moral leaders of our time."  It's not certain if Brodeur's bill is a case of imitation or just parallel processes from like minds -- but either way, it's horrifying.

[Image licensed under the Creative Commons Madelgarius, Freedom of speech (3), CC BY-SA 4.0]

Even some GOP members seem to realize Brodeur's bill is a case of serious governmental overreach.  In a statement that would be funny if it weren't so appalling, none other than Newt Gingrich tweeted, "The idea that bloggers criticizing a politician should register with the government is insane.  It is an embarrassment that it is a Republican state legislator in Florida who introduced a bill to that effect.  He should withdraw it immediately."  Which brought to mind the trenchant quote from Stephen King: "Conservatives who for years sowed the dragon's teeth of partisan politics are horrified to discover they have grown an actual dragon."  Gingrich, perhaps more than any other single individual, is the architect of the far right; the fact that the careening juggernaut he created has lurched into authoritarian neo-fascism should come as no surprise to him, or to anyone else.  The subtext has always been "We're the party of small hands-off government until we want big intrusive government;" bills like Brodeur's, and (even more strikingly) the current tsunami of anti-trans legislation being passed in red states across the country, just pull the mask off the ugly agenda that was there from the very beginning.

The optimists say that even if Brodeur's bill passes, it'll be struck down on First Amendment grounds almost immediately.  Me, I wonder.  DeSantis and his ilk are in ascendency, and I'm perhaps to be excused if I suspect it's not so certain as all that.  Here I sit, in upstate New York, far away from the epicenter; but I hope my writer colleagues in Florida will not be cowed into silence.  Believe me, if I did live in Florida, I'd be criticizing Brodeur, DeSantis, and the proposed legislation for all I'm worth.  I'm not usually a "come at me, bro" type, but we can't keep quiet about it and hope that the First Amendment will shield us.  If this bill passes -- and I think it probably will -- it will act as a template for other state legislatures intent on crushing dissenting voices.

If you think this kind of thing can't spread like a contagion, I have only refer you to the history of Germany in the 1930s for a counterexample.

Whatever the legality of extending this law to apply to out-of-state bloggers criticizing Florida legislators, allow me to go on record as stating that this is me, criticizing the absolute shit out of the whole lot of them.  And as far as my ever signing onto a registry for doing so, I am also going on record as stating that Brodeur can take his blogger registry and stick it up his ass.

Sideways.

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Turning feelings into facts

A couple of days ago, I saw the following screed posted:

Do you think that Obama is intentionally trying to destroy America?  Anyone who doesn't see it or believe it is either blind, or prejudiced because of a like nationality...it's such a shame that our first African American president has done so much destruction to our nation!...  Pray very hard that Trump wins because for all his faults he truly loves his country and we WILL NOT survive Hillary Clinton.

I try like hell to avoid politics here on Skeptophilia, partly because I'm not knowledgeable enough to comment on most political topics, partly because I see most issues of governance as so hopelessly complicated that it's unclear that there even is a solution, and partly because most folks enter any political discussion so completely opinionated that it's hard to see how anything I could say would change anyone's mind on anything.

[image courtesy of the Wikimedia Commons]

But this statement was so extreme that it was tempting to post a response, a temptation I successfully resisted.  The comment rankled, though, and ultimately I felt like I had to respond in some way, so here we are with today's topic.

What I find most bizarre about the statement itself is that if you look around you, America is pretty much loping along as it always has, miraculously undestroyed after eight years of Obama's leadership.  And if you dig a little deeper -- by which I mean not simply shrieking an opinion but examining the facts -- you find something even odder.

The Balance, a non-partisan economic and financial media source, just posted an article yesterday that the U.S. economy is pretty healthy -- in fact, the article's author, Kimberly Amadeo, said it's "very nearly a Goldilocks economy."  In the past few years the GDP has grown at an ideal annual rate of between 1.8 and 2.5 percent.  U.S. manufacturing has grown even faster -- up 2.6% this year, and forecast to remain around that rate for the next four years.

What about the deficit?  Since President Obama took office, the deficit has dropped by 2/3, from $1.4 trillion to $489 billion.  (Now, I agree that $489 billion is still a pretty huge number, but at least it's moving the right direction.)

Likewise, the unemployment rate has shown a steady drop, from a high of 10% in October 2009 to 4.8% today.  Even the crime rate -- one of Trump's major issues -- has dropped steadily, and in fact has been on the decline since a peak way back in 1994.  (The same holds true even if you just look at the rate of violent crimes involving guns; so despite the hype in the media, you're actually less likely to be killed by a gun now than you were twenty years ago.)

What about those illegal immigrants "pouring across our borders?"  According to a study by the non-partisan Pew Research Group, the rate of illegal immigration has been stable for years, and in fact was considerably higher in 2007 than it is now.  (You might argue that it's still too high -- but the fact is, it's actually lower today than it was during George W. Bush's presidency.)

Even the common claim that "Obama is comin' for your guns" has turned out to be horseshit.  Look around you.  We're still as heavily armed as ever.

About the only statistics I could track down where Obama's track record kind of sucks is the male/female wage gap (which has barely moved in the past twenty years), the racial wage gap (just a couple of days ago a study by the Economic Policy Institute announced that it's the highest it's been in forty years), and the wealth gap between the richest and poorest (which is going the wrong way -- up -- and has been for thirty years).

So okay, you think that Obama is destroying the nation.  Maybe even deliberately.  Can you show me one metric -- just one -- that shows that that's true?

I mean, I get it if you don't like his policies on pro-choice/pro-life, LGBT issues, and so on.  Those tend to be divisive and engender high emotion.  But if you're trying to tell me that the United States has gone to wrack and ruin in the past eight years, can you show me why?

The whole thing is reminiscent of the interview with Newt Gingrich in which he said that people feel increasingly unsafe from violent crime.  The interviewer said, "Violent crime across the country is down."  Gingrich responded, "The average American... does not think crime is down, does not think they are safer."  The interviewer -- who at this point seemed to be trying to stop herself from laughing in his face -- said, "But we are safer, and it is down."  Gingrich said, "That's your view."

The interviewer said, "No, it's not my view, it's a fact..."

Gingrich interrupted with a patronizing smile and said, "What I said is also a fact."

And this seems to me to be the heart of the problem.  We are at the point that your "feeling" that we're spiraling into chaos trumps my facts that we're not.  Or -- scarily -- that if you're feeling something strongly enough, it becomes a fact.  The world, then, is constrained to fitting into whatever your particular narrative says it is.

Which is all very well until people start voting on the basis of ignoring facts and relying on feelings -- because that is a strategy that can lead to disaster.

The price of free speech

It's been kind of a grim week here at Skeptophilia.  The news over the last few days has been seriously depressing, what with the current political situation, the attack in Orlando (and the chest-thumping by ideologues that followed), and the ongoing turmoil in so many parts of the world.  And much as I'd like to return to my happy world of making fun of people who believe in Bigfoot, aliens, and telepathy, I'm afraid we have (at least) one more rather dismal topic to cover.

This one comes up because of Newt Gingrich, who (according to informed sources) is currently hoping to be chosen as Donald Trump's running mate.  And in what looks like a bid to align himself with Trump's "'Murica!  Fuck Yeah!" platform, Gingrich has proposed recreating the House Committee on Un-American Activities.

[image courtesy of photographer Gage Skidmore and the Wikimedia Commons]

You probably know that the original such committee was founded back in the 1930s, first to keep track of (and stop) any infiltration into the United States by the Nazis, and later to do the same thing with the communists.  The committee did nab a couple of Soviet spies -- notably Elizabeth Bentley and Whittaker Chambers -- but in the process blacklisted hundreds of people whose only crime was attending communist party meetings (or even being friends with someone who had).  Eventually, criticizing the government was all it took (as folk singer Pete Seeger found out).  Careers and reputations were ruined, and the gains in terms of national security were debatable at best.

Now, of course, the target is different; Gingrich wants to go after people with Islamist leanings.  "We originally created the House Un-American Activities Committee to go after Nazis," Gingrich said during an appearance on Fox and Friends this week.  "We passed several laws in 1938 and 1939 to go after Nazis and we made it illegal to help the Nazis.  We're going to presently have to go take the similar steps here... We're going to ultimately declare a war on Islamic supremacists and we're going to say, if you pledge allegiance to ISIS, you are a traitor and you have lost your citizenship.  We're going to take much tougher positions."

Which sounds like a credible position at first.  I certainly have no reason to defend people who have dedicated themselves to ISIS, or whose political and religious beliefs impel them to come over here and harm American citizens.

But the problem is, how do you find out who those people are before they act?  The FBI already monitors people who are suspected Islamists, not that such efforts are foolproof.  But Gingrich seems to be proposing further measures, taking legal action against people who have committed no crime, who have only subscribed to the wrong ideology.

Me, I find this troubling.  It's a slide toward imprisoning people for thought crimes, and one step away from abrogating the right to free speech.

And lest you think I'm overreacting, here; just two days ago, Donald Trump revoked The Washington Post's press credentials because he objected to perceived criticism by the media.  "Based on the incredibly inaccurate coverage and reporting of the record setting Trump campaign," he said in a statement, "we are hereby revoking the press credentials of the phony and dishonest Washington Post."

The Post's executive editor, Marty Baron, replied:

Donald Trump's decision to revoke The Washington Post's press credentials is nothing less than a repudiation of the role of a free and independent press.  When coverage doesn't correspond to what the candidate wants it to be, then a news organization is banished. The Post will continue to cover Donald Trump as it has all along -- honorably, honestly, accurately, energetically, and unflinchingly.  We're proud of our coverage, and we're going to keep at it.

Which is it exactly.  If free speech means anything, it must involve allowing citizens to criticize the government.

So the whole thing is moving in a decidedly scary direction.  Look, it's not that I don't appreciate how hard it must be to craft policies that will protect American citizens, insofar as it is possible, from outside threats.  I can't imagine being tasked with monitoring anyone who is suspicious, and making the right call with respect to when to move in and make arrests -- especially given the backlash either way if you're wrong.

But I do know that restricting the right to free speech, muzzling the media, and harassing Americans for perceived "un-American activities," is not the way to go.  We tried it once before, and it didn't work out so well.  The price of free speech is risk -- but it's a cost that is well worth what you gain.