No one paying attention will take that institution seriously until there are some major changes.
They're so clearly corrupt, and they're the highest court in the land. And ain't no one with power doing shit about it.
Motherfuck the fucking Supreme Court.
I was born in 1965. I grew up with the implicit understanding that Congress was corrupt, backed by one explicit scandal after another. It continues today.
I had faith in the office of the Presidency, flawed men, all, but more visible by themselves, less able to be truly corrupt. Then Trump came along. He might have just been the one that got caught the most, who knows?
My last faith in the U.S. government was the courts. That faith was shaken with my involvement in the criminal justice system, not that I felt I was persecuted, I totally broke the law, but I saw how the system was rigged to accommodate pleas, deals, workarounds, how there was a specialized system, specialized language that no layman could ever hope to negotiate on their own. But, shaken, not broken.
Within the last ten years, the blatant political influencing of the Supreme Court became more and more obvious, unfortunately trending toward the conservative side of most issues. The overturn of Roe, while not entirely unexpected, was a rude blow to the body politic. It opened up the destruction of women's reproductive rights in the U.S. I have no doubt, whatsoever, that Loving v. Virginia will soon be overturned.
Or it might be Title IX, as a smokescreen to reverse the small gains made by the LGBTQ community since the days of the Stonewall riots.
I'm no conspiracy theorist but I know history and I've been alive long enough to see that we are headed back to the 1940's/1950's as far as individual rights are concerned. I hope I'm wrong, I sincerely hope I am.
But things aren't looking so good, right now.
Ditto. You summed up my
own feelings.
I used to reflect on naxi Germany as an abstract freak of nature never to be repeated. Now I look at the systematic , dumbing down of American society and think it’s just matter of time.
It’s not new, it’s who we always were. There were nazi rallies all over America right up until Pearl Harbor.
To clarify: this is a mournful observation about the worst element of our society, not a boast/rallying cry to piece of shit nazi sympathizers.
We are. The design of our government isn't.
The American political system wasn't designed to stay mostly static for ~200 years. And, if it was, it's a bad design.
That's nearly 200 years for bad actors to figure out how to compromise and control the system. It was only a matter of time before this all happened again.
The quote "Those who forget history are doomed to repeat it" applies mostly to the people who aren't in power. Those in power use history as a recipe book.
At what point in 200 years did they NOT control the government? Was there a few fleeting moments that the people had control or was it an illusion? At best we have been fighting and beating back those bad actors almost continuously in our history.
Dozens of nations have come into existence since the end of WW2 and colonialism…guess how many picked up the vaunted American Constitution….zero point zero.
No one is better than any of it. And that complacency is what allows things like this to take root. This is why it’s important to stay vigilant and stay aware of socio-political trends. The left has been talking about this for a decade, since Gamergate, if you’re aware of that whole shitshow. But I digress
It’s important to be aware of that complacency within yourself and without. And why it’s important to have those difficult talks with family and friends. It may take a deft hand and a lot of emotional labor, but it’s crucial to preventing things like this from happening.
My family is fully supportive of Democratic norms, as are nearly all of my friends. I do have a few MAGA friendly friends, but conversations with them are like talking to a TV blaring FoxNews and OAN.
It's a lot easier for me to understand how NAZI Germany reached the point of committing genocide thanks to being able to watch this contemporary example.
>I used to reflect on naxi Germany
Actually it’s a little known fact that [the Naxi people of northern Yunnan](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Nakhi_people) never conquered Germany
Wow--well said. Yeah, I'm '77, and the same thing--I always knew that Congress was a mess (although honestly, they used to follow customs and standards of practice--that's no longer true, thank you, Mr. Gingrich), that the president was perhaps flawed but at the very worst, still accountable, and that the Court may have been selected by presidents, but that they would rule fairly over enough time. And, not for nothing--we all thought this as late as 2001, when the Court ruled (basically) that Bush would be our 43rd president. We all kind of went along with that, because there was still trust there.
But all that is gone. The 20th Century standard of electing a president as our moral leader is laughable now. The Court is not only bought and sold, but a secondary legislative branch corrupted to deliver goals desired by the Federalist Society. And Congress... ugh. With a couple of bright exceptions, congress is just embarrassing.
How far we've fallen, in such a short period of time! Social media had a part in it, but I think conservative media is mostly to blame--it's misinformation + rage at the speed of sound. It's almost impossible to properly inform the populace when Fox News etc. is misinforming so quickly.
Anyway. I feel you. I think we'll get through all this and find better days, but it's going to be a bumpy couple of years.
experiencing the legal system firsthand is a great way to shake trust in the system, for even the smallest of infractions
just going to serve jury duty, which can mean being repeatedly frisked for weapons and herded around like cattle, can be pretty demoralizing
Jury duty demonstrated how stupidly dense people can be. How you can sit through the same demonstration of evidence and testimony yet walk away with completely different conclusions based on prejudice.
You left out that some conservative states rolling back working age laws to allow child labor again. It's so obvious to me that some states are owned by big corporations, but hey, wth do I know.
Roe was about overturning precedent. Any ruling now can be reversed. Also an attack on the 13 amendment. They will keep taking rights and making corruption legal, because that’s what Fascists do
It's just bananas to me...I'm not even American, but I'm so incredibly disturbed / aghast at how quickly things seem to be going to shambles...and my country feels like it's taking the same path, but just a little more slowly (Which is almost even worse. Canada has had a front row seat to the ascention of lunacy and cravenness south of the border, and yet a good segment of our populace seems to think "Yeah! Let's also do that!").
The Internet has a lot to do with it. Propaganda, conspiracy theories and false information travel faster than ever and for some odd reason seem to be more attractive than boring old reality. Charismatic oddballs can get a large following in no time, in ways that weren't possible before the 1990's.
I do 100% agree with this.
I can't remember who said it, but:
"A lie can travel half way around the world while the truth is putting on its shoes."
And we know humans sadly have a cognitive bias that may truly mean the more often you hear a lie, the more likely you are to eventually consider it true.
>Charismatic oddballs
One of the things that may have protected Canada for a while, is that I think culturally, we're a little less likely to be swayed by sort of charismatic rhetoric or celebrity worship.
For example...our Constitution talks about principles of "Peace, order and good government" , and this has come to be seen as the Canadian counterpart to the American “life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness” and the French “liberty, equality, fraternity.”
Frankly, in comparison, our principles are a little boring...but maybe that has served us well, for a time.
Edit: Also...our federal campaigns are freaking short compared to what feels like an incessant electoral period in the US. Federal election campaigns here can last for like, a maximum of I think 51 days...just a whole lot less time for us to be inundated by the lies.
Years ago as a state worker, I once got reprimanded because our ethics claims require reporting any gift over $25. I got a T-shirt that I thought was worth, like $15-$20, so I didn't bother reporting it (we bought some stuff from a vendor. The sales person gave me a shirt). Someone in another department got the same shirt and actually look up what they sold for and it was $25.99. The reported it as over the allowable limit and given to the ethics officer like we're supposed to do. Then our ethics officer saw me in the shirt at a store a few days after that. The following Monday, I had an ethics reprimand and had to give the worn shirt to the state (didn't even wash it, 'cause fuck'em). And here I now know all I had to do was call it a 'gratuity' and it's all fine.
Fuck this SC. I can't take any of this shit remotely seriously. What they're teaching isn't "do the right thing" it's "don't get caught and if you do, bluff your way out of responsibility. Oh, and go big or don't even bother".
> specialized language that no layman could ever hope to negotiate on their own.
I'm honestly not sure how this can be fixed. The language needs to be highly technical to work around edge cases and loop holes as best we can. I agree that it sucks that this means its incredibly obtuse and hard to understand I just can't see there being any solution to this particular point.
Absolutely agree with the post though, it's insane how much has been rolled back in just a few years what it took half a century to build up.
And so, your last bastion of hope, the courts, was usurped, and you fear for your country?
Yeah, me too. The Court has been corrupted and recourse is limited.
Vote, and vote blue.
> I have no doubt, whatsoever, that Loving v. Virginia will soon be overturned.
They want to dismantle affirmative action, wouldn't it go the other way to overturn Loving?
Exactly what Putin is aiming to, because it clear that the United States may not survive as a nation when all their rights and liberties are either eliminated for one or more groups and the other sponsored and helped by Putin, entrenches itself in power in infinitum
Oklahoma has a Republican state representative who wants to restore "values" from , I shit you not, [the *1600s*](https://www.rightwingwatch.org/post/why-cant-we-go-back-christian-nationalist-state-sen-dusty-deevers-wants-to-go-back-to-the-1600s/).
Yep. The plan got implemented with the Reagan Administration. The plan was laid out reasonably clearly (and much more moderately) in [the Powell Memo](https://www.virginiabusiness.com/article/confidential-memorandum-attack-on-american-free-enterprise-system/).
Reagan was such a bitch of Wall Street that the CEO of Merrill Lynch leaned in real close to tell him what to do so that everyone on the stockroom floor could hear it: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QTcL6Xc_eMM
I mean we all take them seriously in the sense that they still are as effective as they have always been. Nobody is ignoring their rulings regardless of how corrupt they are.
The Supreme Court having life terms is one of the major flaws of the founding fathers. They thought that everyone would appoint people who were intelligent, rational, and interested in the betterment of the country, the advancement of our society, and the good of the common people. That happened for a short while. Now we should regard the SCOTUS as enemies of freedom, enemies
Of logic, and enemies of rational thought.
Talia Jane
June 26, 2024
/
11:52 a.m. ET
Share This Story
Even the conservative Supreme Court thinks the far-right’s FBI conspiracy theory is ridiculous.
Supreme Court building
NICOLAS ECONOMOU/NURPHOTO/GETTY IMAGES
The Supreme Court issued a surprising decision on Wednesday, finding that complaints that the Biden administration had forced censorship on conservative social media users were unfounded. In its 6–3 decision, the Supreme Court laid a death blow in particular to the conspiracy theory that the FBI forced social media companies to suppress stories about Hunter Biden’s laptop.
One of the main conspiracy theories that has kept conservatives in a chokehold for the past three years is that the FBI forced social media companies to remove content discussing Hunter Biden’s laptop to protect the Bidens. In reality, social media companies cracked down on the dissemination of photos purporting to have come from Biden’s laptop in accordance with their boilerplate hacked-materials policies, which enforce against the dissemination of content obtained through illegal means, such as revenge porn. That enforcement resulted in a removal of posts discussing Biden’s laptop that included those photos, but discussions of the laptop on their own weren’t restricted.
One plaintiff in the Supreme Court case was Jim Hoft, founder of the failing far-right conspiracy website Gateway Pundit. Hoft elevated the FBI interference conspiracy and claimed moderation efforts taken by Twitter caused him harm. Hoft embedded Twitter posts made by his brother, Joe Hoft, sharing photos claiming to be from Biden’s laptop. Twitter suspended Joe Hoft’s account, which resulted in the posts embedded on Gateway Pundit turning up as dead links. Hoft was likely trying to pull a sneaky workaround to avoid licensing and verifying the images himself, instead sourcing to content published on Twitter, and the effort failed. Hoft claimed the FBI interfered to remove the photos and that doing so caused him harm.
The Supreme Court meticulously ripped these claims to shreds, hilariously sourcing Hoft’s own claims that the crackdown came from Twitter’s existing hacked materials policy.
“Hoft points to the FBI’s role in the platforms’ adoption of hacked-material policies. And he claims that Twitter, in December 2020, censored content about the Hunter Biden laptop story under such a policy,” the Supreme Court opinion reads. “Hoft’s own declaration reveals that Twitter acted according to its ‘rules against posting or sharing privately produced/distributed intimate media of someone without their express consent.’”
Further twisting the knife in the FBI conspiracy, the decision notes, “Hoft provides no evidence that Twitter adopted a policy against posting private, intimate content in response to the FBI’s warnings about hack-and-leak operations.”
Twitter screenshot @MarshallCohen: The founder of far-right conspiracy site Gateway Pundit claimed the FBI coerced Twitter into censoring his posts about Hunter Biden's laptop in 2020. But SCOTUS disagrees, finds several problems with his theory, and says "evidence does not support the conclusion" that Twitter's actions can be traced to the government.
Twitter nuked posts from The New York Post and other conservative accounts that circulated Hunter Biden’s hacked photos. The conservative blowback was intense, yet the Federal Election Commission ruled that Twitter acted lawfully in restricting the circulation of Hunter Biden’s hacked photos. Soon after, Twitter decided to change its policy to allow for the circulation of hacked materials, so long as the poster isn’t the hacker or someone working “in concert” with the hacker.
Yes but part of the problem with the plaintiffs’ standing arguments was the lack of causal link between government actions and social media actions, as the alleged harm was the plaintiffs’ being censored by social media. So the opinion explains why the argument that the FBI forced social media to censor the laptop story was total nonsense.
Courts are also known to occasionally pen “and if you think this is a procedural issue, let me spell ‘dont come back with this shit’ out for you a bit more” opinions. This seems like one of them.
Holy shit, that case was from Jim Hoft?! He's been such a fucking moron for about fifteen years now. I first read about him on [Charles Johnson's, Little Green Footballs site](https://littlegreenfootballs.com/weblog/lgf-search.php?page=11&maxPerPage=25&searchFrom=2001-02-07&searchTo=2024-06-27&searchWhat=entries&searchWith=lgf&searchString=jim+hoft) (I linked a search to Jim Hoft articles dating back to 2010, and you can see he's always been a hateful troll). I haven't been to that site in years, but I just visited it to see if he had reported on this, and he hasn't yet. This was one of my go-to sites in the Tea Party/Occupy Wall Street days.
Without checking, my guesses are Alito, Thomas, and Gorsuch
Edit: from NY Times article, "Justice Samuel A. Alito Jr., joined by Justices Clarence Thomas and Neil M. Gorsuch, dissented."
Kavanaugh isnt a true believer like Alito, Thomas and Gors. He is a brutal climber at heart. If he wants the chief spot hell side with the libs occasionally
I agree. Maybe it was old gork. Kavanaugh is basically any man in a polo tucked into pleated chinos with a cell phone belt holster at a frontage road target anchored strip mall in any US region where the horizon is flat.
Not of any use and generally harmless, but a real PoS if you talk trash about the only two outlets for personal expression in his life, mass produced IPAs and his three frat bothers from 30 years ago that are still the foundation of his identity.
> If he wants the chief spot hell side with the libs occasionally
I'm not sure he could ever become Chief Justice. He's too liberal/moderate for the MAGA folks.
Also he held down a screaming woman and attempted to violently rape her. Just in case anyone forgot that Brett Kavanaugh is an evil, predatory, inhuman monster who should have been locked up as a teenager for the rest of his life
So…essentially, every conspiracy about everything the right continues to spew, stolen election, federal government censorship, Biden corruption, everything, has been found to untrue? Too bad it’s too late and the maga mushroom base will never hear about the truth, or even believe it if they did hear it.
I hope the campaign is able to message this to all these swing voters I hear so much about and that are important to the democrats in the election. 2000 Mules is fake. Buriama is fake. China is fake. Censorship/1st amendment is fake.
Jesus Christmas. Is there anything that the republicans say that is true at this point? Trump allowed conspiracies into the fucking White House and gave them legitimacy. Like Putin did in Russia. He’s now going full Hitler and white nationalist project 2025. Tariffs. wtf America? Can we please get our shit together?
Just for a little while? Please?
“It just hasn’t been proven… yet.” -GOP
The simple fact that these dorks are convinced that there had to be incriminating evidence on Hunter’s laptop leads me to believe we should be checking a few more laptops.
"It hasn't been DISPROVEN yet" is how it actually works. Same fallacy used by theists. You can't say unicorns are real because they haven't been proven to not exist.
It's literally no wonder that religious people are the most likely to believe conspiracy theories. Their basis of reality is a conspiracy theory.
I was never what you would call a Republican, but I used to sway into the right on some issues. Trump ruined my ability to sway. He pushed the party to full clown territory. Now I get sent dumb memes and right wing rap videos from friends trying to show how they are fighting for truth. The TRUTH is they are all idiots ready to break the law to prove their point.
It's so disheartening to hear my very religious parents say that some of the best presidents had the worst character. As if that's a virtue for people in the office.
> Is there anything that the republicans say that is true at this point?
Yeah all the stuff they say they want to do on Project 2025 is true, they do honestly want to do all that vile stuff
They gave Trump his own little binder to carry! His says Agenda 47 on it. Embossed in cheap gold leaf. It’s like project 2025, just dumbed down. Small words, large print and pictures, I’d guess.
I mean, in this case and others where posts were taken down for a similar reason sure.
Twitter had a policy that you couldn’t post assets from a hacked computer. His post of content claimed to be from Hunter Biden’s laptop was removed and he sued the FBI thinking it was them. All this ruling is, at the heart, is that user agreements supersede free speech and that the post was removed because it violated Twitter’s user agreement.
> Jesus Christmas. Is there anything that the republicans say that is true at this point?
"I could shoot someone on Fifth Avenue and not lose any voters," was pretty fucking spot on.
I watched a live reaction of my FiL to the verdict, with him somehow coming to the conclusion that the only dissent was purely on procedural grounds, not on the nature of the case or the conspiracy itself.
Even when blatantly presented the facts he refused to recognize it.
You can't logic your way into that kind of position.
Hannah Arendt argued that “The essential thing was that they exploited the age-old Occidental prejudice which confuses reality with truth, and made that ‘true’ which until then could only be stated as a lie.” Fascists lie about **everything** in order to not only distort the truth but to decay our perception of the fabric of reality. Reality is right in front of us but it can’t be observed because it is obstructed by a cloud of lies masquerading as truth, so that arguing with their lies becomes meaningless. We lose our ability to know what’s a lie and what’s real.
I relate it to a seeming epidemic of cluster b personalities and my personal experience with them. My mother lied about every little thing. Things that it made no sense to lie about. One of the first things I recognized when I was in counseling, ultimately to figure out why I was afraid of my mother, was why she did that. Originally I was in counseling bc of anxiety disorders, and why was I anxious? Well, the first clue was when she panicked bc I was in counseling and she feared my therapist would “turn me against her.”
It turned out that the objective of her weird lies was to erode my ability to discern fact from fiction, to observe and acknowledge what is real and what is not so that I would rely on her to know anything. It was conditioning I was subjected to my whole life and it made it very difficult for me to recognize that while she wasn’t physically beating me up (not regularly anyway) and wasn’t constantly being obviously cruel or belligerent that I was nonetheless under complete control and in an abusive situation.
When government agents perform mass psychological conditioning like lying constantly, culminating in bigger and bigger lies, it has a pretty obvious affect on us. Some people either rely on them or just stop caring because it seems futile. It’s confusing, exasperating, it makes us feel powerless and as if we are doomed, that they’re all powerful and bc so many people fall for the lies or give up trying to hold on to the ever cloudier truth, we eventually will succumb to fascism.
I like both of them but let’s face it, this isn’t just relegated to them. It’s so rampant with reporting nowadays. I guess since people just read headlines and move on.
THIS SUNDAY^SUNDAY^SUNDAY THE SUPREME COURT IS CLAPPING BACK!!!
WATCH AS THEY SLAM, ROAST, AND ABSOLUTELY NUKE THIS LAPTOP CASE WITH THEIR MOST BRUTAL^BRUTAL^BRUTAL RULING OF THE YEAR!!!
Edit: I have just discovered that AI chatbots are good enough to parse any and all internet headlines into MONSTERTRUCK ANNOUNCER VOICE, truly the future is NOW^NOW^NOW
More like SCOTUS rules in favor of corporations again
(I don’t disagree with this ruling but y’all should be reading user agreements. You give up more rights than you realize)
The FBI warned twitter (and facebook) that Russia was going to try and influence the 2020 election, like they did in 2016
The result was twitter taking down accounts and posts linked to Russian disinformation, some of those accounts were talking about Hunter Biden
The fact that Republicans have never let this go, is VERY telling who they work for
Yes. However conservatives heard about 1960s post modernism and went whole hog. They think that just because they want something to be true, it might be if they never shut about it and might become true if they convince enough people of it. They know this works because their voting base is built upon people whos ability to reject plain evidence in favor of “faith” are stupid enough to be lead to believe anything as long as they get something out of it and comes from mouths they like.
And thats the strategy, up and down.
It is quite the threatening side arm.
However as I am sure you are aware, Im talking about the centuries old habit of conservatives to be as absolutely as dumb as possible as a voting block which is exactly why it works. God help the elite if republicans ever pick up a book they mistakenly think is written by an AM radio host.
Yeah but the dumb asses kept including those pics in otherwise normal right-wing grievance threads. They were the most sensational magnets for upvotes views they couldn’t help themselves. They got greedy.
It was a couple different versions of private companies making their own policy for their own benefit and the government reporting violations of those policies for the private actors to act on at their own discretion exactly as they otherwise would have when they found it themselves
They had more pressing things to deal with first like institutionalizing corruption, destroying environmental regulations, and obliterating the rights of citizens
Whatever political advantage to be gained has been gained. Whatever political damage to be done was done. And NOW the Supreme Court decides to .. ..
>NUKE Hunter Biden laptop conspiracy in brutal ruling?
Day late and a dollar short from the kangaroo court. It's not like pictures of Hunter Biden's enormous penis haven't already been wave around on the House floor or printed into GOP fundraising mailers.
This is actually going to be a significant ruling for tech go forward. It upholds that the user agreement supersedes this misguided idea that we can post whatever we want on the internet. Sure if you own the domain you can post whatever you want without consequence from the government. But if you post it on someone ELSE’S site, you’re subject to their rules and regulations.
I see no issue with this. Working as intended.
[удалено]
The fact that they took the case at all elevated the standing of the conspiracy theory. And a third of the court still dissented on this decision.
If they didn’t take the case, they would have left the fifth circuit opinion in place. Wouldn’t that have been worse?
They could have just Shadow Docketed it like they seem to like to do and not waste everyone's time, including their own.
No one paying attention will take that institution seriously until there are some major changes. They're so clearly corrupt, and they're the highest court in the land. And ain't no one with power doing shit about it. Motherfuck the fucking Supreme Court.
I was born in 1965. I grew up with the implicit understanding that Congress was corrupt, backed by one explicit scandal after another. It continues today. I had faith in the office of the Presidency, flawed men, all, but more visible by themselves, less able to be truly corrupt. Then Trump came along. He might have just been the one that got caught the most, who knows? My last faith in the U.S. government was the courts. That faith was shaken with my involvement in the criminal justice system, not that I felt I was persecuted, I totally broke the law, but I saw how the system was rigged to accommodate pleas, deals, workarounds, how there was a specialized system, specialized language that no layman could ever hope to negotiate on their own. But, shaken, not broken. Within the last ten years, the blatant political influencing of the Supreme Court became more and more obvious, unfortunately trending toward the conservative side of most issues. The overturn of Roe, while not entirely unexpected, was a rude blow to the body politic. It opened up the destruction of women's reproductive rights in the U.S. I have no doubt, whatsoever, that Loving v. Virginia will soon be overturned. Or it might be Title IX, as a smokescreen to reverse the small gains made by the LGBTQ community since the days of the Stonewall riots. I'm no conspiracy theorist but I know history and I've been alive long enough to see that we are headed back to the 1940's/1950's as far as individual rights are concerned. I hope I'm wrong, I sincerely hope I am. But things aren't looking so good, right now.
Ditto. You summed up my own feelings. I used to reflect on naxi Germany as an abstract freak of nature never to be repeated. Now I look at the systematic , dumbing down of American society and think it’s just matter of time.
The lesson we should learn from the Nazi regime is just how easy it is to get normal people to be ok with some really fucked up shit.
It’s not new, it’s who we always were. There were nazi rallies all over America right up until Pearl Harbor. To clarify: this is a mournful observation about the worst element of our society, not a boast/rallying cry to piece of shit nazi sympathizers.
Hell, they even filled up Madison Square Garden.
I thought we were better than all this.
We are. The design of our government isn't. The American political system wasn't designed to stay mostly static for ~200 years. And, if it was, it's a bad design. That's nearly 200 years for bad actors to figure out how to compromise and control the system. It was only a matter of time before this all happened again. The quote "Those who forget history are doomed to repeat it" applies mostly to the people who aren't in power. Those in power use history as a recipe book.
At what point in 200 years did they NOT control the government? Was there a few fleeting moments that the people had control or was it an illusion? At best we have been fighting and beating back those bad actors almost continuously in our history.
But they have significantly more wealth and power now.
Dozens of nations have come into existence since the end of WW2 and colonialism…guess how many picked up the vaunted American Constitution….zero point zero.
We were...unfortunately all systems break down at some point, I guess it's our turn to see who's left standing when the music stops
Seriously. I'm really disappointed.
No one is better than any of it. And that complacency is what allows things like this to take root. This is why it’s important to stay vigilant and stay aware of socio-political trends. The left has been talking about this for a decade, since Gamergate, if you’re aware of that whole shitshow. But I digress It’s important to be aware of that complacency within yourself and without. And why it’s important to have those difficult talks with family and friends. It may take a deft hand and a lot of emotional labor, but it’s crucial to preventing things like this from happening.
My family is fully supportive of Democratic norms, as are nearly all of my friends. I do have a few MAGA friendly friends, but conversations with them are like talking to a TV blaring FoxNews and OAN.
Exactly
It's a lot easier for me to understand how NAZI Germany reached the point of committing genocide thanks to being able to watch this contemporary example.
>I used to reflect on naxi Germany Actually it’s a little known fact that [the Naxi people of northern Yunnan](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Nakhi_people) never conquered Germany
Wow--well said. Yeah, I'm '77, and the same thing--I always knew that Congress was a mess (although honestly, they used to follow customs and standards of practice--that's no longer true, thank you, Mr. Gingrich), that the president was perhaps flawed but at the very worst, still accountable, and that the Court may have been selected by presidents, but that they would rule fairly over enough time. And, not for nothing--we all thought this as late as 2001, when the Court ruled (basically) that Bush would be our 43rd president. We all kind of went along with that, because there was still trust there. But all that is gone. The 20th Century standard of electing a president as our moral leader is laughable now. The Court is not only bought and sold, but a secondary legislative branch corrupted to deliver goals desired by the Federalist Society. And Congress... ugh. With a couple of bright exceptions, congress is just embarrassing. How far we've fallen, in such a short period of time! Social media had a part in it, but I think conservative media is mostly to blame--it's misinformation + rage at the speed of sound. It's almost impossible to properly inform the populace when Fox News etc. is misinforming so quickly. Anyway. I feel you. I think we'll get through all this and find better days, but it's going to be a bumpy couple of years.
Fox "News" and especially Rupert Murdoch, are enemies of America.
And also Roger Ailes and nowadays it’s Elon Musk.
Don’t forget all the churches & their contributions to the destruction of the country
experiencing the legal system firsthand is a great way to shake trust in the system, for even the smallest of infractions just going to serve jury duty, which can mean being repeatedly frisked for weapons and herded around like cattle, can be pretty demoralizing
Jury duty demonstrated how stupidly dense people can be. How you can sit through the same demonstration of evidence and testimony yet walk away with completely different conclusions based on prejudice.
You left out that some conservative states rolling back working age laws to allow child labor again. It's so obvious to me that some states are owned by big corporations, but hey, wth do I know.
Florida being one of the biggest examples. Happy to be leaving soon
Roe was about overturning precedent. Any ruling now can be reversed. Also an attack on the 13 amendment. They will keep taking rights and making corruption legal, because that’s what Fascists do
They basically ruled that it's OK for government officials to accept gratuities from suppliers after the suppliers are hires.
It's just bananas to me...I'm not even American, but I'm so incredibly disturbed / aghast at how quickly things seem to be going to shambles...and my country feels like it's taking the same path, but just a little more slowly (Which is almost even worse. Canada has had a front row seat to the ascention of lunacy and cravenness south of the border, and yet a good segment of our populace seems to think "Yeah! Let's also do that!").
The Internet has a lot to do with it. Propaganda, conspiracy theories and false information travel faster than ever and for some odd reason seem to be more attractive than boring old reality. Charismatic oddballs can get a large following in no time, in ways that weren't possible before the 1990's.
I do 100% agree with this. I can't remember who said it, but: "A lie can travel half way around the world while the truth is putting on its shoes." And we know humans sadly have a cognitive bias that may truly mean the more often you hear a lie, the more likely you are to eventually consider it true. >Charismatic oddballs One of the things that may have protected Canada for a while, is that I think culturally, we're a little less likely to be swayed by sort of charismatic rhetoric or celebrity worship. For example...our Constitution talks about principles of "Peace, order and good government" , and this has come to be seen as the Canadian counterpart to the American “life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness” and the French “liberty, equality, fraternity.” Frankly, in comparison, our principles are a little boring...but maybe that has served us well, for a time. Edit: Also...our federal campaigns are freaking short compared to what feels like an incessant electoral period in the US. Federal election campaigns here can last for like, a maximum of I think 51 days...just a whole lot less time for us to be inundated by the lies.
Years ago as a state worker, I once got reprimanded because our ethics claims require reporting any gift over $25. I got a T-shirt that I thought was worth, like $15-$20, so I didn't bother reporting it (we bought some stuff from a vendor. The sales person gave me a shirt). Someone in another department got the same shirt and actually look up what they sold for and it was $25.99. The reported it as over the allowable limit and given to the ethics officer like we're supposed to do. Then our ethics officer saw me in the shirt at a store a few days after that. The following Monday, I had an ethics reprimand and had to give the worn shirt to the state (didn't even wash it, 'cause fuck'em). And here I now know all I had to do was call it a 'gratuity' and it's all fine. Fuck this SC. I can't take any of this shit remotely seriously. What they're teaching isn't "do the right thing" it's "don't get caught and if you do, bluff your way out of responsibility. Oh, and go big or don't even bother".
> specialized language that no layman could ever hope to negotiate on their own. I'm honestly not sure how this can be fixed. The language needs to be highly technical to work around edge cases and loop holes as best we can. I agree that it sucks that this means its incredibly obtuse and hard to understand I just can't see there being any solution to this particular point. Absolutely agree with the post though, it's insane how much has been rolled back in just a few years what it took half a century to build up.
And so, your last bastion of hope, the courts, was usurped, and you fear for your country? Yeah, me too. The Court has been corrupted and recourse is limited. Vote, and vote blue.
There's no conspiracy, it's the Heritage Foundation's years of influence with republicans coming to fruition.
> I have no doubt, whatsoever, that Loving v. Virginia will soon be overturned. They want to dismantle affirmative action, wouldn't it go the other way to overturn Loving?
Exactly what Putin is aiming to, because it clear that the United States may not survive as a nation when all their rights and liberties are either eliminated for one or more groups and the other sponsored and helped by Putin, entrenches itself in power in infinitum
More like the 1850s.
Oklahoma has a Republican state representative who wants to restore "values" from , I shit you not, [the *1600s*](https://www.rightwingwatch.org/post/why-cant-we-go-back-christian-nationalist-state-sen-dusty-deevers-wants-to-go-back-to-the-1600s/).
So he wants to marry a 10 year old. Got it.
67' here, it's been a slow motion train wreck since the 80's.
There are corrupt justices bc the corrupt gop installed then there
This was the plan 45 years ago. Pack the courts, tax cuts, deregulation Citizens United and gerrymandering.
Yep. The plan got implemented with the Reagan Administration. The plan was laid out reasonably clearly (and much more moderately) in [the Powell Memo](https://www.virginiabusiness.com/article/confidential-memorandum-attack-on-american-free-enterprise-system/). Reagan was such a bitch of Wall Street that the CEO of Merrill Lynch leaned in real close to tell him what to do so that everyone on the stockroom floor could hear it: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QTcL6Xc_eMM
Its no longer corrupt because they legalized it. Big brain moves..
It's only corrupt if you have morals. Or ethics. Or logic. Or reason. Or character. Or class. Or honor.
Sen Whitehouse is trying..
2016. But her emails. People were told but they didn't care.
I mean we all take them seriously in the sense that they still are as effective as they have always been. Nobody is ignoring their rulings regardless of how corrupt they are.
That’s just it. They have the power because we allow them to have it. However the alternative is unthinkable.
No, they’re not corrupt, because they made corruption legal, so it’s not corruption anymore.
The fact that this got a 6-3 vote shows that there are some serious issues with the supreme court
Well they also legalised political bribery this week so yes there are serious issues with them.
Ruled 13,000$ bribe is a gift. Effectively legalizing bribery
New RVs for everyone!
It’s the kind of ruling that keeps congress in your favor.
I’m scared when I see a decent ruling as they usually follow it up with a horrible one. As if the decent one will mask the bad one.
I thought this was matched with the "bribes must be notarized" ruling
I fear it’s to make up for a bad call they are about to make on presidential immunity.
The fact that this even made it to the court shows how far we have fallen.
Still. It was a 6-3 decision meaning 3 of them are still completely nuts.
They’re not even a court. They’re a Star Chamber in service of a King
Thank you for your detailed insight for this case.
Clowns bring joy. How dare you slander them by comparing them to millionaire religious extremists?
They do this. They throw in a sanity bone every now and then to distract from their main goals.
Esp after their acceptance of gifts ruling.
You should take the time to review the split on rulings. Reason has an informed price up now.
*FDA*, *CFPB*, *Rahimi* are all against you, just from this term alone
You mean pay to pay supreme Court don't you 😁
The Supreme Court having life terms is one of the major flaws of the founding fathers. They thought that everyone would appoint people who were intelligent, rational, and interested in the betterment of the country, the advancement of our society, and the good of the common people. That happened for a short while. Now we should regard the SCOTUS as enemies of freedom, enemies Of logic, and enemies of rational thought.
Talia Jane June 26, 2024 / 11:52 a.m. ET Share This Story Even the conservative Supreme Court thinks the far-right’s FBI conspiracy theory is ridiculous. Supreme Court building NICOLAS ECONOMOU/NURPHOTO/GETTY IMAGES The Supreme Court issued a surprising decision on Wednesday, finding that complaints that the Biden administration had forced censorship on conservative social media users were unfounded. In its 6–3 decision, the Supreme Court laid a death blow in particular to the conspiracy theory that the FBI forced social media companies to suppress stories about Hunter Biden’s laptop. One of the main conspiracy theories that has kept conservatives in a chokehold for the past three years is that the FBI forced social media companies to remove content discussing Hunter Biden’s laptop to protect the Bidens. In reality, social media companies cracked down on the dissemination of photos purporting to have come from Biden’s laptop in accordance with their boilerplate hacked-materials policies, which enforce against the dissemination of content obtained through illegal means, such as revenge porn. That enforcement resulted in a removal of posts discussing Biden’s laptop that included those photos, but discussions of the laptop on their own weren’t restricted. One plaintiff in the Supreme Court case was Jim Hoft, founder of the failing far-right conspiracy website Gateway Pundit. Hoft elevated the FBI interference conspiracy and claimed moderation efforts taken by Twitter caused him harm. Hoft embedded Twitter posts made by his brother, Joe Hoft, sharing photos claiming to be from Biden’s laptop. Twitter suspended Joe Hoft’s account, which resulted in the posts embedded on Gateway Pundit turning up as dead links. Hoft was likely trying to pull a sneaky workaround to avoid licensing and verifying the images himself, instead sourcing to content published on Twitter, and the effort failed. Hoft claimed the FBI interfered to remove the photos and that doing so caused him harm. The Supreme Court meticulously ripped these claims to shreds, hilariously sourcing Hoft’s own claims that the crackdown came from Twitter’s existing hacked materials policy. “Hoft points to the FBI’s role in the platforms’ adoption of hacked-material policies. And he claims that Twitter, in December 2020, censored content about the Hunter Biden laptop story under such a policy,” the Supreme Court opinion reads. “Hoft’s own declaration reveals that Twitter acted according to its ‘rules against posting or sharing privately produced/distributed intimate media of someone without their express consent.’” Further twisting the knife in the FBI conspiracy, the decision notes, “Hoft provides no evidence that Twitter adopted a policy against posting private, intimate content in response to the FBI’s warnings about hack-and-leak operations.” Twitter screenshot @MarshallCohen: The founder of far-right conspiracy site Gateway Pundit claimed the FBI coerced Twitter into censoring his posts about Hunter Biden's laptop in 2020. But SCOTUS disagrees, finds several problems with his theory, and says "evidence does not support the conclusion" that Twitter's actions can be traced to the government. Twitter nuked posts from The New York Post and other conservative accounts that circulated Hunter Biden’s hacked photos. The conservative blowback was intense, yet the Federal Election Commission ruled that Twitter acted lawfully in restricting the circulation of Hunter Biden’s hacked photos. Soon after, Twitter decided to change its policy to allow for the circulation of hacked materials, so long as the poster isn’t the hacker or someone working “in concert” with the hacker.
6-3??? ffs
Just imagine how grumpy the three looked
Not to be pedantic but didn't they kick this on standing rather than anything of substance?
Yes but part of the problem with the plaintiffs’ standing arguments was the lack of causal link between government actions and social media actions, as the alleged harm was the plaintiffs’ being censored by social media. So the opinion explains why the argument that the FBI forced social media to censor the laptop story was total nonsense.
Courts are also known to occasionally pen “and if you think this is a procedural issue, let me spell ‘dont come back with this shit’ out for you a bit more” opinions. This seems like one of them.
*Arguendo…*
Well should help hunter with his several defamation cases. His accusations are already dicta at the Scotus level, the leave actual malice on the table
Part of the opinion is in the article.
Fair
Kicked it out on standing with a spanking on the way out the door.
What is the role of the FBI in all this? It sounds like the case is actually against social media companies.
Holy shit, that case was from Jim Hoft?! He's been such a fucking moron for about fifteen years now. I first read about him on [Charles Johnson's, Little Green Footballs site](https://littlegreenfootballs.com/weblog/lgf-search.php?page=11&maxPerPage=25&searchFrom=2001-02-07&searchTo=2024-06-27&searchWhat=entries&searchWith=lgf&searchString=jim+hoft) (I linked a search to Jim Hoft articles dating back to 2010, and you can see he's always been a hateful troll). I haven't been to that site in years, but I just visited it to see if he had reported on this, and he hasn't yet. This was one of my go-to sites in the Tea Party/Occupy Wall Street days.
He's been known as "the Dumbest Man on the Internet" since at least 2010.
So who dissented?
Without checking, my guesses are Alito, Thomas, and Gorsuch Edit: from NY Times article, "Justice Samuel A. Alito Jr., joined by Justices Clarence Thomas and Neil M. Gorsuch, dissented."
The three horsemen of the Qpocalypse at it again
More like Three Asses of the Qpocalypse
Alito, Thomas and probably Kavanaugh. Alito wrote the dissent and showed his whole ass as a q anon true believer. Just the dumbest possible timeline.
Dumbest, but the most terrifying, too. These lunatics have way too much power and if Trump wins, they'll have all the power.
I know its like I wish there was a group of people who would go offline and assemble some resources to drive a 100k critical mass and go stop it.
Kavanaugh isnt a true believer like Alito, Thomas and Gors. He is a brutal climber at heart. If he wants the chief spot hell side with the libs occasionally
I agree. Maybe it was old gork. Kavanaugh is basically any man in a polo tucked into pleated chinos with a cell phone belt holster at a frontage road target anchored strip mall in any US region where the horizon is flat. Not of any use and generally harmless, but a real PoS if you talk trash about the only two outlets for personal expression in his life, mass produced IPAs and his three frat bothers from 30 years ago that are still the foundation of his identity.
Yeah it was ole gorky and nice way to put that stereotype into words if I must say so myself.
I got a brother in law in the trades 😂 Thanks :)
Pure poetry
Brilliant.
> If he wants the chief spot hell side with the libs occasionally I'm not sure he could ever become Chief Justice. He's too liberal/moderate for the MAGA folks.
Also he held down a screaming woman and attempted to violently rape her. Just in case anyone forgot that Brett Kavanaugh is an evil, predatory, inhuman monster who should have been locked up as a teenager for the rest of his life
So…essentially, every conspiracy about everything the right continues to spew, stolen election, federal government censorship, Biden corruption, everything, has been found to untrue? Too bad it’s too late and the maga mushroom base will never hear about the truth, or even believe it if they did hear it. I hope the campaign is able to message this to all these swing voters I hear so much about and that are important to the democrats in the election. 2000 Mules is fake. Buriama is fake. China is fake. Censorship/1st amendment is fake. Jesus Christmas. Is there anything that the republicans say that is true at this point? Trump allowed conspiracies into the fucking White House and gave them legitimacy. Like Putin did in Russia. He’s now going full Hitler and white nationalist project 2025. Tariffs. wtf America? Can we please get our shit together? Just for a little while? Please?
“It just hasn’t been proven… yet.” -GOP The simple fact that these dorks are convinced that there had to be incriminating evidence on Hunter’s laptop leads me to believe we should be checking a few more laptops.
"It hasn't been DISPROVEN yet" is how it actually works. Same fallacy used by theists. You can't say unicorns are real because they haven't been proven to not exist. It's literally no wonder that religious people are the most likely to believe conspiracy theories. Their basis of reality is a conspiracy theory.
It’s where faith and manipulation cross paths.
Probably a lot of crickets in the maga conservative sub right now.
Nothing stops the maga train from inbreeding. They are probably spinning this as a win.
“The Supreme Court had to rule this way or they would have all been murdered by the deep state you dumb sheep”
I was never what you would call a Republican, but I used to sway into the right on some issues. Trump ruined my ability to sway. He pushed the party to full clown territory. Now I get sent dumb memes and right wing rap videos from friends trying to show how they are fighting for truth. The TRUTH is they are all idiots ready to break the law to prove their point.
It's so disheartening to hear my very religious parents say that some of the best presidents had the worst character. As if that's a virtue for people in the office.
> Is there anything that the republicans say that is true at this point? Yeah all the stuff they say they want to do on Project 2025 is true, they do honestly want to do all that vile stuff
That is why Trump is denying it! That is how you know it is true... Trump denies it.
They gave Trump his own little binder to carry! His says Agenda 47 on it. Embossed in cheap gold leaf. It’s like project 2025, just dumbed down. Small words, large print and pictures, I’d guess.
I mean, in this case and others where posts were taken down for a similar reason sure. Twitter had a policy that you couldn’t post assets from a hacked computer. His post of content claimed to be from Hunter Biden’s laptop was removed and he sued the FBI thinking it was them. All this ruling is, at the heart, is that user agreements supersede free speech and that the post was removed because it violated Twitter’s user agreement.
> Jesus Christmas. Is there anything that the republicans say that is true at this point? "I could shoot someone on Fifth Avenue and not lose any voters," was pretty fucking spot on.
I watched a live reaction of my FiL to the verdict, with him somehow coming to the conclusion that the only dissent was purely on procedural grounds, not on the nature of the case or the conspiracy itself. Even when blatantly presented the facts he refused to recognize it. You can't logic your way into that kind of position.
Hannah Arendt argued that “The essential thing was that they exploited the age-old Occidental prejudice which confuses reality with truth, and made that ‘true’ which until then could only be stated as a lie.” Fascists lie about **everything** in order to not only distort the truth but to decay our perception of the fabric of reality. Reality is right in front of us but it can’t be observed because it is obstructed by a cloud of lies masquerading as truth, so that arguing with their lies becomes meaningless. We lose our ability to know what’s a lie and what’s real. I relate it to a seeming epidemic of cluster b personalities and my personal experience with them. My mother lied about every little thing. Things that it made no sense to lie about. One of the first things I recognized when I was in counseling, ultimately to figure out why I was afraid of my mother, was why she did that. Originally I was in counseling bc of anxiety disorders, and why was I anxious? Well, the first clue was when she panicked bc I was in counseling and she feared my therapist would “turn me against her.” It turned out that the objective of her weird lies was to erode my ability to discern fact from fiction, to observe and acknowledge what is real and what is not so that I would rely on her to know anything. It was conditioning I was subjected to my whole life and it made it very difficult for me to recognize that while she wasn’t physically beating me up (not regularly anyway) and wasn’t constantly being obviously cruel or belligerent that I was nonetheless under complete control and in an abusive situation. When government agents perform mass psychological conditioning like lying constantly, culminating in bigger and bigger lies, it has a pretty obvious affect on us. Some people either rely on them or just stop caring because it seems futile. It’s confusing, exasperating, it makes us feel powerless and as if we are doomed, that they’re all powerful and bc so many people fall for the lies or give up trying to hold on to the ever cloudier truth, we eventually will succumb to fascism.
SC claps back in their most brutal ruling this year!!!
Republicans DECIMATED by Supreme Court ruling that OBLITERATED their talking points, leaders in shambles
Fox News: Divided court makes ruling on Biden’s attack on your Constitutional right of freedom of speech
*Far-left activist justices stifle tech entrepreneurs*
> Republicans DECIMATED by Supreme Court ruling that OBLITERATED their talking points, leaders in shambles …and here’s why this is bad for Biden…
Republicans In Disarray!!
Brian Tyler Cohen and John Iadarola both do good work, but man, their video titles are always so exaggerated and cringy.
I like both of them but let’s face it, this isn’t just relegated to them. It’s so rampant with reporting nowadays. I guess since people just read headlines and move on.
THIS SUNDAY^SUNDAY^SUNDAY THE SUPREME COURT IS CLAPPING BACK!!! WATCH AS THEY SLAM, ROAST, AND ABSOLUTELY NUKE THIS LAPTOP CASE WITH THEIR MOST BRUTAL^BRUTAL^BRUTAL RULING OF THE YEAR!!! Edit: I have just discovered that AI chatbots are good enough to parse any and all internet headlines into MONSTERTRUCK ANNOUNCER VOICE, truly the future is NOW^NOW^NOW
More like SCOTUS rules in favor of corporations again (I don’t disagree with this ruling but y’all should be reading user agreements. You give up more rights than you realize)
Yeah... but what about his dick? What about Hillary? - MAGATS
Yeah! What about Hillary's dick!?
Haha I chuckled big-time.
Bill's still hanging around
That's her Willy, not her Dick.
Don’t give them any ideas
Conservatives are much more laser focussed on Michelle Obama’s dick. Get your priorities straight (or curved slightly to the left).
Another round of Buttery Males.
Didn't this just boil down to them asking to take Hunter Biden revenge porn off Twitter?
The FBI warned twitter (and facebook) that Russia was going to try and influence the 2020 election, like they did in 2016 The result was twitter taking down accounts and posts linked to Russian disinformation, some of those accounts were talking about Hunter Biden The fact that Republicans have never let this go, is VERY telling who they work for
Yes. However conservatives heard about 1960s post modernism and went whole hog. They think that just because they want something to be true, it might be if they never shut about it and might become true if they convince enough people of it. They know this works because their voting base is built upon people whos ability to reject plain evidence in favor of “faith” are stupid enough to be lead to believe anything as long as they get something out of it and comes from mouths they like. And thats the strategy, up and down.
Whole hog is the right term here. Hunter’s got a full pork loin down there.
It is quite the threatening side arm. However as I am sure you are aware, Im talking about the centuries old habit of conservatives to be as absolutely as dumb as possible as a voting block which is exactly why it works. God help the elite if republicans ever pick up a book they mistakenly think is written by an AM radio host.
Yeah but the dumb asses kept including those pics in otherwise normal right-wing grievance threads. They were the most sensational magnets for upvotes views they couldn’t help themselves. They got greedy.
It was a couple different versions of private companies making their own policy for their own benefit and the government reporting violations of those policies for the private actors to act on at their own discretion exactly as they otherwise would have when they found it themselves
Three votes in favor of allowing social media companies to spew conspiratorial nonsense without consequences.
Alito, Thomas, and…?
Gorsuch
Ughhh.
It was him or Kavanaugh. Honestly surprised it wasn’t both.
And it only took 10 years for them to do it.
They had more pressing things to deal with first like institutionalizing corruption, destroying environmental regulations, and obliterating the rights of citizens
Whatever political advantage to be gained has been gained. Whatever political damage to be done was done. And NOW the Supreme Court decides to .. ..
>NUKE Hunter Biden laptop conspiracy in brutal ruling?
Day late and a dollar short from the kangaroo court. It's not like pictures of Hunter Biden's enormous penis haven't already been wave around on the House floor or printed into GOP fundraising mailers.
This is actually going to be a significant ruling for tech go forward. It upholds that the user agreement supersedes this misguided idea that we can post whatever we want on the internet. Sure if you own the domain you can post whatever you want without consequence from the government. But if you post it on someone ELSE’S site, you’re subject to their rules and regulations. I see no issue with this. Working as intended.
*Takes your notes* erm there’s nothing in here!
Fuck everything about this clickbait headline