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mallorys_cameraExcept that yesterday I slid right back down the Facebook rabbit hole!
And I thought to myself, This is insane. This has reached the level of obsession of some 4chan loser playing first-person shooter games.
###
The big controversies in Facebookland yesterday had to do with free speech and publishing private information: Should Nazis have the full protection of First Amendment safeguards, and is doxxing a good thing to do with Nazis?
I suppose in an era where text messages can suffice as grounds for second degree murder convictions and the Justice Department can subpoena for info on visitors to an anti-Trump website, we can all kiss civil liberties protections goodbye.
But just for the record: I’m in favor of the First Amendment and against doxxing.
I feel pretty strongly about it, too, but no – my opinions have nothing to do with any platitudes about civil liberties.
They have to do with the fact that these things are double-edged swords: They can easily be used against people on both sides, and that it is very dangerous to set these kinds of precedents.
When – for example – Obama decided to rule by executive fiat, he basically manurered the ground for assholes like Donald Trump.
Is this a particularly subtle point or something?
Do you honestly want Richard Spencer’s boy scout troop running your face through facial recognition software and showing up at your condo with a tiki torch next time you attend an anti-Trump rally? Because I don’t – and this is absolutely what is going to start happening if doxxing becomes the default.
Any way you slice it, the United States is tilting toward fundamentalism. Whether it’s Mike Pence (™)-brand Christian fundamentalism or some Leftist fascism cobbled together from competing brands of identity politics, I’m not sure. Probably the future seesaws back and forth between these two poles for the next century or so.
But even if you find Nazis scary – and yes, I’m a Jew: of course, I do! – it’s insane to strip away the legal and social protections that protect you against these types of things.
###
Anyway, about the fourth time I got lambasted for Nazi sympathies and “pearl-clutching” – this time by an overweight white guy who made a killing in Palo Alto real estate 30 years ago and who you just know used to read Playboy Magazine for the articles – I thought, Fuck this shit.
I wrote a colorful reply inviting said white guy to cram his head up his narrow-bore rectum to lick his ulcerated duodenum (commiserating, ‘cause I knew his head was so swollen it would be a tight fit.)
And then I resigned from the Sooper Sekrit Political Group.
This should really cut way back on any time I have to spend on Facebook.
###
In other news, I began reading T.C. Boyle’s The Women because it’s a fictionalized account of Frank Lloyd Wright’s love life.
I’ve always thought of Boyle as an exceptionally tight writer, so it was surprising to discover how bad the prose is in this book. It’s actually banal.
You write just as well as Boyle writes! I told myself.
Part of the rah-rah-rah! internal process.
It’s awfully hard for me to see any relevance to my own thoughts, to my own fictions in a world that’s little more than a conveyor belt for awful political events.
And August is half over.
And I thought to myself, This is insane. This has reached the level of obsession of some 4chan loser playing first-person shooter games.
###
The big controversies in Facebookland yesterday had to do with free speech and publishing private information: Should Nazis have the full protection of First Amendment safeguards, and is doxxing a good thing to do with Nazis?
I suppose in an era where text messages can suffice as grounds for second degree murder convictions and the Justice Department can subpoena for info on visitors to an anti-Trump website, we can all kiss civil liberties protections goodbye.
But just for the record: I’m in favor of the First Amendment and against doxxing.
I feel pretty strongly about it, too, but no – my opinions have nothing to do with any platitudes about civil liberties.
They have to do with the fact that these things are double-edged swords: They can easily be used against people on both sides, and that it is very dangerous to set these kinds of precedents.
When – for example – Obama decided to rule by executive fiat, he basically manurered the ground for assholes like Donald Trump.
Is this a particularly subtle point or something?
Do you honestly want Richard Spencer’s boy scout troop running your face through facial recognition software and showing up at your condo with a tiki torch next time you attend an anti-Trump rally? Because I don’t – and this is absolutely what is going to start happening if doxxing becomes the default.
Any way you slice it, the United States is tilting toward fundamentalism. Whether it’s Mike Pence (™)-brand Christian fundamentalism or some Leftist fascism cobbled together from competing brands of identity politics, I’m not sure. Probably the future seesaws back and forth between these two poles for the next century or so.
But even if you find Nazis scary – and yes, I’m a Jew: of course, I do! – it’s insane to strip away the legal and social protections that protect you against these types of things.
###
Anyway, about the fourth time I got lambasted for Nazi sympathies and “pearl-clutching” – this time by an overweight white guy who made a killing in Palo Alto real estate 30 years ago and who you just know used to read Playboy Magazine for the articles – I thought, Fuck this shit.
I wrote a colorful reply inviting said white guy to cram his head up his narrow-bore rectum to lick his ulcerated duodenum (commiserating, ‘cause I knew his head was so swollen it would be a tight fit.)
And then I resigned from the Sooper Sekrit Political Group.
This should really cut way back on any time I have to spend on Facebook.
###
In other news, I began reading T.C. Boyle’s The Women because it’s a fictionalized account of Frank Lloyd Wright’s love life.
I’ve always thought of Boyle as an exceptionally tight writer, so it was surprising to discover how bad the prose is in this book. It’s actually banal.
You write just as well as Boyle writes! I told myself.
Part of the rah-rah-rah! internal process.
It’s awfully hard for me to see any relevance to my own thoughts, to my own fictions in a world that’s little more than a conveyor belt for awful political events.
And August is half over.
no subject
Date: 2017-08-15 09:19 pm (UTC)I have mixed feelings about all this other stuff too. Doxxing, free speech protections, etc. I think my long-term thinking is being overrun by my short-term fear that if I don't do something - anything - it'll be too late to have a long-term anything. If not too late for me, then too late for whatever neighbor has the biggest target on their back this time around.
no subject
Date: 2017-08-16 11:36 am (UTC)However...
The First Amendment isn't in place to protect popular speech. If the speech were popular, it wouldn't need protection.
Moral platitudes aside, though, it protects my speech. When I say things that will be unpopular.
This is a pretty interesting article if you have the time to read it:
http://www.newyorker.com/news/news-desk/is-america-headed-for-a-new-kind-of-civil-war