5mo ago

While Democracy Burns, Democrats Prioritize… Demolishing Section 230?

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5mo ago

While Democracy Burns, Democrats Prioritize… Demolishing Section 230?

www.techdirt.com /2025/02/21/while-democracy-burns-democrats-prioritize-demolishing-section-230/

Technology @lemmy.ml

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5mo ago

While Democracy Burns, Democrats Prioritize… Demolishing Section 230?

www.techdirt.com /2025/02/21/while-democracy-burns-democrats-prioritize-demolishing-section-230/

17 comments

This is something I wrote on a recent post. I think it's something that we should help as many people as possible understand:
This really tracks for me. I grew up around wealthy liberals and am intimately familiar with how these motherfuckers think. I have been telling my friends for months that we cannot expect the Democratic establishment or our current batch of elected Democratic representatives to address the problem.
People are like "Don't they understand that it's a war?"
Most of these people think we're idiots for thinking of it as war.
Their high spending donors think we're idiots for thinking of it as a war.
They think Republicans are angry idiots who have to be negotiated with so we can "get on with business."
They see Republican voters MAGAing and rioting on Jan 6th and they think "What a bunch of yahoos!" (my multimillionaire boomer dad's literal words).
They see Leftist protests turning out en-masse and they think "What a bunch of yahoos!" (again, my multimillionaire boomer dad's literal words).
My father has literally said about the second Trump presidency.
"This will all blow over."
"You just watch, the system will slow all of this down."
See, it's not just our "elected dems in office," who don't seem to get it, it's the entire leftish / center leaning, privileged ass, rich ass, mostly white, mostly older demographic, all comfy with their owning of multiple homes and their inflated stock portfolios and their rubbing shoulders with billionaires. We complain about the "elected dems in office," because we see them out there being like this in public, in the news in front of everybody. But this whole demographic is like this and that's why we keep seeing it.
EDIT:
The only way we'll change this is to STOP ELECTING DEMS FROM THAT DEMOGRAPHIC. They're not "spineless cowards," they just DON'T ACTUALLY REPRESENT YOU. They represent other neolibral rich people (people just like them, in other words). Those people's highest values are
Stability.
Business Economics (the price of gas and eggs doesn't really effect them that much).
Maintaining their comfy "compassionate upper class" culture.
They DO genuinely care about
Philanthropy (usually of a sort of egocentric variety).
Social safety nets (most of them genuinely value compassion especially when it doesn't really cost them anything).
Sound fiscal policy.
Science (they believe in climate change and worry about their children and grandchildren).
They LOVE to reassure and prop themselves up by talking about all the good they're able to do because they're rich / influential.
On that note, they tend to embrace a kind of leftist, New Agey take on Prosperity Gospel and see wealth as something that enables them to do good in the world and help people (See? Greed is GOOD!). Some of that has merit, but it is NOT nearly as true as they tell themselves and others it is.
Faced with chaos and instability they will
Try to negotiate with the people causing it, to get things "back to normal."
Compromise with those people to keep things as stable as possible Every. Fucking. Time.
Run off to meditation retreats and vacation homes and time shares in Hawaii or ritzy parts of Mexico to "find their center."
Abandon their higher values to circle the wagons around the first, basic three (Stability, Business, Culture).
Importantly,
They DO NOT see you as being "like them," "their people," or "part of their culture." They're actually VERY aware that you are NOT part of their culture.
They usually honestly think that that's because they made better choices than you. They ARE able to acknowledge that there are people less fortunate then them, and even that they may have an obligation to these people. But they don't think they OWE you anything.
When I say culture, I'm not talking about your Italian heritage, your black southern cuisine or how your abuela only speaks Spanish. I'm talking about private school / charter jets / fundraiser dinners / owning a mint condition classic car / keeping your boat in the garage of the OTHER house you own on the same street as your primary home.
They do not feel obligated to go out of their way to defend your culture. Although if your culture is artistic, entrepreneurial, agitates for social justice, or is tangential to their own religious beliefs (looking at you Buddhism), they might be willing to fund it.
They DEFINITELY feel entitled to exploit or profit off your culture, if they see an opportunity to do so, and will pat themselves on the back for "the good they're doing in the world" and "how they were able to help people" the WHOLE WAY TO THE BANK.
This doesn't mean they're bad people or lack compassion for you.
When we're asking our congressmonsters to fight, we're asking them to take up our values in ways that many of them (rightly or wrongly) see as abandoning their own core values. THAT'S why they're angry.
They're NOT cowards. They just don't actually value the same things you do and their core priorities aren't in the same place yours are. They never have been. And as long as we primarily elect Dems from this demographic, they NEVER will be.
- MLK never stops being relevant and right to a 'T'.
  You may well ask: "Why direct action? Why sit ins, marches and so forth? Isn't negotiation a better path?" You are quite right in calling for negotiation. Indeed, this is the very purpose of direct action. Nonviolent direct action seeks to create such a crisis and foster such a tension that a community which has constantly refused to negotiate is forced to confront the issue. It seeks so to dramatize the issue that it can no longer be ignored. My citing the creation of tension as part of the work of the nonviolent resister may sound rather shocking. But I must confess that I am not afraid of the word "tension." I have earnestly opposed violent tension, but there is a type of constructive, nonviolent tension which is necessary for growth. Just as Socrates felt that it was necessary to create a tension in the mind so that individuals could rise from the bondage of myths and half truths to the unfettered realm of creative analysis and objective appraisal, so must we see the need for nonviolent gadflies to create the kind of tension in society that will help men rise from the dark depths of prejudice and racism to the majestic heights of understanding and brotherhood. The purpose of our direct action program is to create a situation so crisis packed that it will inevitably open the door to negotiation. I therefore concur with you in your call for negotiation.
  We know through painful experience that freedom is never voluntarily given by the oppressor; it must be demanded by the oppressed. Frankly, I have yet to engage in a direct action campaign that was "well timed" in the view of those who have not suffered unduly from the disease of segregation. For years now I have heard the word "Wait!" It rings in the ear of every Negro with piercing familiarity. This "Wait" has almost always meant "Never." We must come to see, with one of our distinguished jurists, that "justice too long delayed is justice denied."
  You express a great deal of anxiety over our willingness to break laws. This is certainly a legitimate concern. Since we so diligently urge people to obey the Supreme Court's decision of 1954 outlawing segregation in the public schools, at first glance it may seem rather paradoxical for us consciously to break laws. One may well ask: "How can you advocate breaking some laws and obeying others?" The answer lies in the fact that there are two types of laws: just and unjust. I would be the first to advocate obeying just laws. One has not only a legal but a moral responsibility to obey just laws. Conversely, one has a moral responsibility to disobey unjust laws. I would agree with St. Augustine that "an unjust law is no law at all."
  I must make two honest confessions to you, my Christian and Jewish brothers. First, I must confess that over the past few years I have been gravely disappointed with the white moderate. I have almost reached the regrettable conclusion that the Negro's great stumbling block in his stride toward freedom is not the White Citizen's Counciler or the Ku Klux Klanner, but the white moderate, who is more devoted to "order" than to justice; who prefers a negative peace which is the absence of tension to a positive peace which is the presence of justice; who constantly says: "I agree with you in the goal you seek, but I cannot agree with your methods of direct action"; who paternalistically believes he can set the timetable for another man's freedom; who lives by a mythical concept of time and who constantly advises the Negro to wait for a "more convenient season." Shallow understanding from people of good will is more frustrating than absolute misunderstanding from people of ill will. Lukewarm acceptance is much more bewildering than outright rejection.
  I had hoped that the white moderate would understand that law and order exist for the purpose of establishing justice and that when they fail in this purpose they become the dangerously structured dams that block the flow of social progress.
  
  "When facing the evil, the lawful neutral stands below the chaotic good."
  Peaceful protests are a great idea, up to a point.
  
  It's unfortunate that bolding doesn't really stand out on here (at least on jerboa).
  I've posted and shared that excerpt about the white moderate, aka, the centrist, the fence sitter, the 'I don't want to take sides'/'I don't know enough to do something'/'I don't want to know', people. (Am white, not moderate, yet surrounded by every type mentioned)
  It is truly amazing and infuriating how so many people are content with being complacent and apathetic.
  Sometimes, I truly hate this world.
- Preach.
  It's not a coincidence that it was Democrats who coined the term "flyover country."
  And it's not a coincidence that "flyover country" won't vote for them.
  And they're okay with that. They'd rather lose than lower themselves so far as to associate with the unwashed masses.
- The problem have isn't that they don't have all the same goals as me. The problem I have is that they're idiots who are going to lose everything they care about because they refuse to accept reality and they'll be mostly fine while the rest of us suffer for their failure.
  
  they’re [...] going to lose everything they care about
  they’ll be mostly fine
  ?
so remember during the BLM movement there was a march that went through a gated community (IIRC), and this dumpy little dude and his wife came out to their front lawn with an AR-15 & little pew pew pistol-bith brandishing it like they've never ever picked them up before but regardless, there they were, armed and ready to shoot someone or something.
now imagine that scenario with MAGA going in to a liberal gated community....what do you think would happen?
My money is on the MAGAs shooting (or worse) the couple who were just .... incredulous and indignant about the whole thing up until they died.
America is ugly now, it will get a whole lot worse when they start shooting each other while those with means escape the chaos.
- now imagine that scenario with MAGA going in to a liberal gated community…what do you think would happen?
  My guess? The couple wouldn't bring any guns out to begin with, mostly because MAGA protesters would be white.
  Liberal communities have plenty of racism. It just happens through ignorance & a lack of thinking instead of direct malice.
I hate that neither the article nor any comment explains what section 230 actually is.
- There are several links in the article. Otherwise that is what we have web search engines for.
  
  Alright then, if you're gonna be that unhelpful, I'm gonna be the change I want in the world.
  No provider or user of an interactive computer service shall be treated as the publisher or speaker of any information provided by another information content provider.
  From Wikipedia
  Search engines are getting worse by the year, by the way. It'll do us all well not to treat them like the providers of information we once thought of them, especially when the most used search engines are Google and Bing, which will happily fall in line with whatever Trump wants to fabricate as Truth, as we've now seen with the Gulf of Mexico.
  And it's just plain polite to provide pertinent information like that for context for such an article.
- you have at your disposal all the tools you need to learn the answer to that question within a minute
This isn't ignorance or missing the point - they know exactly what they're doing.
Calling my useless rep on this and dumb dumbass Durbin too
- duckworth annoys me more as she is to ok with security over rights. to much military indoctrination with that one.

17 comments