The cynic in me can't help but notice that all these platforms are suddenly growing a backbone now that we know Democrats will control both the executive and legislative branches.
I think it's impossible to say. The fact that the capitol got stormed the same day as the democrats won control means it's impossible to disaggregate. It might be a cynical move by Facebook but is it also a cynical move by Betsy Devos? What difference did democrat control make to her?
Resign in the last 2 weeks of his presidency when their jobs don't really matter, make the transition process marginally more complicated by leaving, avoid having to take a stand on the 25th amendment, and they can start trying to rehabilitate their images by pretending they were shocked by the administration they've been a part of for 3.9 years
For cabinet members resigning, it helps them avoid being part of the decision to invoke (or not invoke) the 25th amendment. Betsy can say she resigned, rather than be faced with the decision to remove a President from office. So while not linked to Democrats at all (she was 2 weeks from losing her job anyway), resigning was politically safer.
> What difference did democrat control make to her?
In her case a bigger factor is probably that Trump has also fallen off the grace of a lot of Republicans. The guy is done. He's still massively popular and a threat given his popularity amongst pretty fanatical groups of people, but as far as raw, democratic power he lost his election by a pretty decent margin, and lost the House/Senate for Republicans.
A lot of people who sucked up to him and his rhetoric must be realizing it's time to suck up to someone/something else. He's always attracted an uncomfortable amount of media attention and now that he can't attract political power to remain in office he's a liability rather than an asset.
The difference for me is that these companies are blaming it on the rhetoric of Trump and his supporters. However the rhetoric was no different on the morning of the 6th than it was before that. They are simply judging it based off the fact that the violence inciting rhetoric actually resulted in violence this time. If the rhetoric was the problem, these platforms should have acted much sooner.
> What difference did democrat control make to her?
Nothing imo. Before it was probable that there could be careers and jobs outside of the presidency. With these moves it seems like Trump decided to make his bed with the worst of his base and a lot of people have finally decided that it's a bridge too far. Last-minute attempts to distance themselves after playing along the entire time.
I don't think you know who DeVos or her family is. Her family owns the largest private military in the world. They don't need jobs; they aren't going anywhere. They are going to continue shoving billions of dollars of government funds into their pockets.
They will be standing right there to fill key cabinet roles for the next Republican administration.
I think we're agreeing. A lot of people hitched their wagon to Trump as long as it was printing. His supporters attacking the US capitol means that they finally have to make a choice to either stay or cut ties so that they can be there to fill cabinet roles in a Rubio/Cotton/Cruz administration rather than a Trump Jr. one.
The fact the capital got stormed has more to do with the Trumpist sympathize of the Police, then the protesters themselves. If the were a "normal" police reaction (say midway between BLM and this, like in Hong Kong), they would have never gotten inside, and this would be a non-story.
Going after Trump fans is just center-left back-slapping, and all the worse because ignoring the police partisanship is extremely reckless and irresponsible.
Our civil liberates will continue erode for no good reason, and our institutions will be no safer. Replace the police with something else they're not afraid to hold accountable. If there is to be a monopoly of violence, it must be held only in (small d) democratic authority.
Yes. They had to fallback because they didn't have enough police there. Then there's videos of masses of people trying to push their way past masses of police at the entryways to the capitol building. Including rioters using pepper spray.
Police on the ground were overwhelmed. Congress was asking for help. Rioters that were screaming stuff like "Hang mike pence" got to within a hundred feet of the the vast majority of the leaders of our country. Local governors asked permission to intervene from the man that incited it all - whose political opponents rioters were bearing down upon. Permission that was denied.
The more I think about it the more fucked up it all is. January 6th could have been fucking devastating for the country. And lots of people don't seem to really give a shit. We're one step removed from a banana republic.
I think their argument is there's no way in heck that security would have been underprepared if it were some other group protesting. Maybe they were lulled into complacency because this is the "Blue lives matter" group, maybe it was sheer incompetence. Hard to say.
This doesn't explain why the Governor of Maryland was prohibited from moving its troops into DC by the Pentagon while Senators were begging for backup; and why it took Pence, who was in the middle of the siege, to make the call.
IDK anything about the pentagon, but as for why Pence's call would have more gravity than Senators is fairly obvious: he's the second-in-command of the executive branch of the government. Emergency military mobilization is much more the prerogative of the executive than the legislative branch.
> IDK anything about the pentagon, but as for why Pence's call would have more gravity than Senators is fairly obvious
No, what happened was the Senators called Maryland Gov Larry Hogan who has command of the MD National Guard. He mobilized his troops but he needed permission from the Pentagon to move them into DC. He didn't receive authorization for over an hour while the Capitol was being overrun.
This is a separate issue from Mike Pence. This isn't about Pence vs. Senators; the question there is why wasn't Trump the one to make the call? Where was he in all of this in defending the Capitol. Reports are that he was reveling in the chaos, and making calls to Republican senators to lobby them to take more time and raise objections to the electoral certificates.
That is true, but the chain of command for a decision like this isn't that large - in the long run a company is dominated by economics, but you still have to understand that those decisions are implemented by people.
Given that the dow jones closed at a record high while the confederate flag was flying in the capitol building, I think that shareholders are quite happy
One thing I've learned these past 4 years is that most Americans don't "care" about much until you start shitting in their backyard. Democrats or not, I think there will be an outcry of "social media did this to us" and legislation will be used to get this "behind us".
The cynic in me says, this is why changes or repeal of section 230 is possibly dangerous in that government officials already have the big social media sites under control but don't want any one springing up who is not; control being their definition of what is fake news and such.
Now an interesting consideration, for both supporters and Donald Trump himself. What happens if he is effectively locked out of all the big social media sites? Does a site which lets him on suddenly catapult to the top or does it get shouted down by pressure originating from the users who are on the sites which locked him and his supporters out?
I mean we are in a unique situation where by a very public official is being locked out of his accounts because of his actions and his supporters are being similarly locked out. That has never happened before and its both awe inspiring and frightening all at once.
I'd rather think these platforms suddenly realize the keyboard warriors they've been entertaining (as in, hosting) on their platforms are actually capable of carrying out brutal violence...
Just because someone votes for Trump doesn't mean they aren't sick of his incompetence/dishonesty/corruption. It just means they prefer him to the alternative.
Him bringing EC faith into the open, actually hurts GOP for decades if the EC is removed, they'll never win again. It's been a very very long time since GOP has won popular vote. Their entire future rides or dies on the E.C. unless they can become a big tent party, and regain people who have left the party.
Do you legitimately not know the differences between these various groups? There is a lengthy process that takes years to become a citizen and only citizens can vote. There are a variety of legal options to come to the US to study, work, and live without becoming a citizen.
Certainly not legally (until they become citizens), but their children can when they turn 18, and said immigration has been happening for many decades.
And we got to the heart of the issue. The problem for these people isn't immigrants. It is the "wrong" immigrants.
A first generation American is no less American than a 4th generation American and an overwhelming majority of us are the children of immigrants if you go back far enough.
Because there are so many dog whistles used when talking about this issue that usually are just a stand-in for racism.
These accusations are belittling and removing agency from people on multiple levels by saying democrats import immigrants, that immigrants who become citizens shouldn't have a say in how this country is governed, and that immigrants vote for democrats for any reason beyond their political policies.
How does it remove agency from Democrats to suggest that their party supports immigration of certain demographics for their own political benefit?
How does it remove agency from immigrants to point out that, as a group, they have tended to vote for one party over another, and to speculate that said tendency will continue in the future?
Why is easier to believe that Democrats have somehow coerced millions of immigrant (children) into voting democrat, and not the much simpler reasoning that immigrants vote democrat because republicans are quite openly anti-immigrant?
The idea that democrats are somehow acting nefariously for adjusting their policy to meet the demands of the citizenry is sounds completely asinine? What do you think democracy is? Republicans lost because they have bad policy. Complaining that the winning side acted in bad faith for listening to their citizenry is anti-democratic. If you think citizens shouldn't be listened to, then why not just skip to authoritarianism?
>Why is easier to believe that Democrats have somehow coerced millions of immigrant (children) into voting democrat, and not the much simpler reasoning that immigrants vote democrat because republicans are quite openly anti-immigrant?
I'm not sure who or what you are arguing against. I haven't seen anyone suggest immigrants were coerced in any way, or that they vote democrat for any reason other than preferring their policies.
>The idea that democrats are somehow acting nefariously for adjusting their policy to meet the demands of the citizenry is sounds completely asinine?
The "nefarious" behavior alleged in this comment thread is bringing in immigrants because they know they'll vote overwhelmingly democrat once they can vote (and same goes for their children, who would not have been born in the US if their parents had not been allowed in).
I didn’t say it removed agency from Democrats. It removes agency from immigrants because it treats them as reactionary pawns that don’t have any power in making decisions about their own lives and simply follow the whims of the Democratic Party.
That doesn't make any sense to me. Does it remove agency from people to note how demographics vote? Those people can be making their own decisions about which party is better for them, but still overwhelmingly pick one party, and it seems fine to me to point that out.
Indeed, but great-grandparent's assertions that said votes are reliably democratic are nonsense. Cuban-Americans tend to vote Republican (ask Marco Rubio), there are plenty of other Hispanics who vote Republican (ask Rafael "Ted" Cruz), and in fact, in the 2020 elections, Republicans have picked up votes in all sorts of immigrant communities (all the more remarkable, in my opinion, because it's hard to think how much less welcoming the party could be to immigrants).
And some of the most rabid Trump supporters are recent immigrants (cf the Epoch Times' role in the last years, or the fact that one of the arrested Capitol rioters, Yevgenya Malimon, mother of an Oregon Republican party official, needed a Russian interpreter at her arraignment).
Think of other right wing voices in the US: Peter Thiel (first generation immigrant), Ron Unz (second generation), Roosh V (second generation).
Meanwhile, one of the key demographics for Biden's win in Arizona was high turnout among — Native Americans, the Final Boss of non-immigrants.
>Indeed, but great-grandparent's assertions that said votes are reliably democratic are nonsense.
They seem pretty reasonable to me, having looked at the numbers.
The Cuban community is the only community of fairly recent immigrants of which I'm aware that doesn't reliably vote for democrats, on the whole. Outside of Florida, their votes do not make Hispanic votes in general swing toward republicans.
Hispanic votes for republicans may have increased this year, but they are still absolutely nowhere near 50/50.
My understanding of the Epoch Times is that it's run by anti-CCP Chinese, and not very representative of Asians in general.
Listing single individuals is not relevant when the topic is how a community votes.
> Hispanic votes for republicans may have increased this year, but they are still absolutely nowhere near 50/50.
Sure, but I find it remarkable that they increased vote share AT ALL while running on a fairly explicitly anti-Hispanic immigration platform.
> My understanding of the Epoch Times is that it's [...] not very representative of Asians in general.
But apparently quite influential in some language communities.
I'm not arguing that recent immigrants do not, overall, predominantly vote Democratic. But I think that behavior is not nearly as immutable as this discussion suggests. Many immigrants (a) come to the US in search of economic opportunities and (b) have somewhat more conservative personal values than their US-born peers. So they should be quite amenable to some flavors of Republicanism.
Is that necessarily a cynical take on things? Seems actually pretty rational on their part to do that to avoid a potential backlash by the Trump-led government. It was probably a good play that led to a better long-term outcome.
