Despite DC Sound And Fury, Public Support For Regulating ‘Big Tech’ Is Actually Down
from the sound-and-fury dept
For several years now there’s been an endless amount of clamor in DC about how we “need to regulate big tech.” Unfortunately, many of the solutions on this front have ranged from incoherent to performative, failing utterly to actually shore up genuine problems in the sector (catch and kill tactics, mindless consolidation, vast privacy and surveillance issues).
Leading the charge for reform that isn’t actually reform has been the GOP, a party very angry because some social media companies began belatedly and sloppily moderating race-baiting political propaganda and hate speech, cornerstones of GOP power in the face of a shifting and aging electorate.
Despite three years of press coverage of the “need to regulate big tech” (which again can have inconsistent and incoherent definitions), a new Pew study makes it clear that support for “regulating big tech” across both sides of the aisle has actually… decreased, with 44 percent of Americans believing major technology companies should be regulated more than they are now, down from 56 percent in April 2021.
Despite all the endless noise from the likes of Ken Buck and Josh Hawley about how big tech is a giant, dangerous, devil machine and must be “regulated” to save the world from alien pedo grifters (or whatever the argument is this week), even support for it among Republicans is way down:
So the public, including Republicans, don’t actually support “regulating big tech” (whatever that even means to them). And they might support it less if the press did a better job explaining how many of the solutions being bandied about are performative, and often involve trying to mandate the forced carriage of authoritarian propaganda (see the assault on Section 230).
For years, experts pointed out that U.S. antitrust reform had grown toothless and frail, our competition laws needed updating in the Amazon era, and “are consumers happy?” (the traditional consumer welfare standard) doesn’t actually measure all aspects of potential harm in complex markets.
So the need for reform is genuine, but even the best solutions DC has tabled are weirdly narrow and not particularly well written. Several mask other agendas.
For example, the GOP attack on “big tech” specifically is really about the mandated carriage of right-wing political propaganda. This gets dressed up as “antitrust reform,” and a fight for “free speech” against “censorship,” which itself has proven to be effective propaganda for those that don’t actually understand the real threat of authoritarianism and content moderation at scale (see Elon Musk).
The Pew survey makes it pretty clear that this effort — to reframe sloppy, belated content moderation of largely right-wing hate speech and political propaganda as “broad censorship of political opinions across all of social media and all political ideologies” — has been rather effective:
Data keeps showing that most content moderation is “biased” against misinformation and hate speech, not conservatives specifically. It’s just that as the GOP has shifted harder toward bigotry, authoritarianism, and bullshit in the Trump era, they’re engaging in more misinformation and hate speech online. The cognitive dissonance to process this reality is too difficult, so they instead embrace victimization.
The GOP largely wants the public to believe that any effort to regulate hate speech and political propaganda is an act of vile censorship. Because propaganda is all the party has. It’s facing unfavorable shifting demographics and its actual policies are broadly unpopular (see: abortion, book bans, firing teachers for acknowledging that slavery is real).
The sad irony to all of this is that this GOP quest to use “antitrust reform” as leverage in a bad faith quest to perpetuate propaganda will likely result in none of the actual problems with big tech getting fixed. This distorted, politicized version of the “need to regulate big tech” has also distracted policymakers from countless other segments rife with monopoly harms (telecom, banking, travel, insurance).
In the end the GOP’s attack on “big tech” isn’t based on reality, doesn’t propose any real solutions for the broader markets or public, and isn’t supported by huge swaths of voters anyway. Just a big, dumb noise machine whose output is anger and confusion.
Filed Under: antitrust reform, big tech, censorship, dnc, gop, regulating, social media
Comments on “Despite DC Sound And Fury, Public Support For Regulating ‘Big Tech’ Is Actually Down”
Representative democracy
If only when a majority of us wanted something we’d get it, and if only when that majority is sick, crazy, racist, and republican we wouldn’t… now that would be awesome.
When I read the article and the editorial and see that the 56% support has dropped to 44%… the rational part of me says “See! The majority of USicans are against regulating Big Tech (WTFTI).”
But then I remember that nobody cares what USicans want.
50% of USicans are in favor of allowing women to do whatever they want with their bodies. The elected “representatives” vote THEIR way, not the way of the people who elected them.
A majority of USicans are in favor of not only helping Ukraine with 30-40 BILLION dollars, but also infrastructure here in the US and getting poor people and homeless people better support. The elected “representatives” don’t see the need to pay attention to that, and dole out the money to their friends at United Launch Alliance, Boeing, Raytheon, Northrup, etc.
Look, I like a hot little F-16 just as much as the next guy. It hurts my neck to have to turn away and not look at the homeless guy with a carboard sign at the traffic light. Can’t WE SOMEHOW FIND THE GD $$$ so maybe we’re one F-16 short, but ALL THE HOMELESS ARE PROVIDED SHELTER???
Just asking for a friend.
Re:
Homeless – States have no interest in solving that problem. The solution was mandatory hospitalization, mental institutions for some and warehouse style for others.
Who does the collecting? Who does medical workup?
Then there are those who don’t want state services up their ass.
COST lots of money states won’t allocate. Federal money = zero I would bet. Drug users face prison not medical care.
Thank the war-on-drugs.
Re:
Only if you can convince the Citizens that not all socialism is bad.
Re: Re: Socialism is like a thing where the word is supposed to be bad, but the actions are not.
Free WiFi at McDonald’s or Starbuck. Socialism? Yes.
(It’s free to users because the companies pay for it.)
Free parking at the grocery store where a shopping trip can cost a family between $100-$200 easy. $35/day on-airport parking all over the country. The free ones are at the stores who bought or leased that land and still allow us parking. The expensive ones are airports that our taxes directly fund and yet parking is a disaster.
So apparently all of us USexicans are happy with “socialism” when it benefits us. The other times we say that word like it’s a bad thing. Kids sharing crayons in kindergarten is socialism. Or is it.
I’m absolutely OK with defunding stuff that isn’t needed, like aircraft rotting in the desert (I live within 10 miles of KDMA and KMZJ) or other programs that deliver THOUSANDS of tanks to Iraq and then leave them there.
How about we ship one less F-16 and one less tank, abandon neither, and get homeless people a shelter… and some food.
I am no ‘commie’ but I did share my crayons (and Elmer’s glue) with the other kids.
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Re:
“…are in favor of allowing women to do whatever they want with their bodies.”
Again, how is a being with a unique DNA sequence completely distinct from the mother’s supposedly “part of her body” when it’s a totally distinct life? The heartbeat can be detected as early as 6 weeks after conception.
You want to be taken seriously, phrase the debate in a way that acknowledges the unborn child’s existence as a different being from the mother. Anything else is dishonest, just as much as saying this is about the mother’s body. It’s not.
Because the child isn’t part of it. He or she is just living and growing there for a time. And abortion is the act of destroying that unique life, not merely cleaning out part of the woman’s body.
Re: Re: Just follow the Constitution.
Absolutely, and not just women. All people. That includes abortions, tats, any other body art, bikinis on SI covers, etc.
First, that’s not how it works. Not at all. You get an F for science on this one.
Second, DNA isn’t mentioned in the Constitution. My buddy Sam says if it isn’t in the Constitution it doesn’t count.
“supposedly” something there could be a sentence when it’s not question-mark-goes-here-for-no-reason.
It is a part of a woman’s body when it is inside her. Your inability to accept that is why you’re a troll.
Is there a point here? No? Let me add one.
A heartbeat can be detected in 100% of kids put on cold cement floors and shipped to south American countries.
A heartbeat can be detected in 100% of drug cartel heads who supply lots of unlawful-to-possess drugs to this country.
A heartbeat can be detected in EVERY SINGLE STUPID TROLL on the WHOLE INTERNET.
So. You have a heartbeat. In my mind a fetus is worth more than you.
Thanks, but I write my own copy. One day when I ask you for editing hints feel free to let me know how you want that copy phrased.
Yes, everything you said is dishonest. Adding “It’s not” to the end of your random spray doesn’t make it so.
I should have stuck with “troll”, but I think we can only educate by explaining.
Pretty much everything you said is untrue, evaluative, judgmental, and lacking in any basis in fact or science. Step off.
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Re: Re: Re:
“First, that’s not how it works. Not at all. You get an F for science on this one.
Second, DNA isn’t mentioned in the Constitution. My buddy Sam says if it isn’t in the Constitution it doesn’t count.”
Wrong. An unborn child’s DNA is neither the mother’s nor the father’s, but a unique hybrid. And nowhere in the Constitution does it say birth is required for personhood.
““supposedly” something there could be a sentence when it’s not question-mark-goes-here-for-no-reason.”
That doesn’t make any sense, and I’m not sure what you think you’re getting at. It reads as gibberish.
“It is a part of a woman’s body when it is inside her. Your inability to accept that is why you’re a troll.”
No, he or she (you refuse to even refer to an unborn child AS a child and use the appropriate pronouns) is merely dependent on the mother to survive until he or she is born. They’re connected but distinct. That doesn’t make him or her just another part of the mother’s body. As I said, his or her DNA is unique and is NOT the same as the mother’s. So you’re dehumanizing, something you claim to be against, in order to justify supporting what you do.
Calling an unborn baby just another part of a woman’s body is, as I said, dishonest. It’s not just parts of the right that like to redefine terms and rephrase things to say something other than what they really are.
“Are we just trading numbers? NOBODY CARES when a hearbeat can be detected. That’s just a red-herring for abortion foes to create an arbitrary bright line to claim crossing it is murder.
Is there a point here? No? Let me add one.
A heartbeat can be detected in 100% of kids put on cold cement floors and shipped to south American countries.
A heartbeat can be detected in 100% of drug cartel heads who supply lots of unlawful-to-possess drugs to this country.
A heartbeat can be detected in EVERY SINGLE STUPID TROLL on the WHOLE INTERNET.
So. You have a heartbeat. In my mind a fetus is worth more than you.”
The point of bringing up the heartbeat, which you and others clearly missed, is to show that the unborn baby is distinct from the mother, as in not the same being or just another part of her body, but unique in his or her own right. Clearly, such simple logic is beyond your comprehension. Let me make it simple for you – two heartbeats (the mother’s and the unborn child’s) means two different human beings.
“In my mind a fetus is worth more than you.”
Prove it. Advocate for the unborn child’s right to live. And you can start by calling him or her what he or she is, not the dehumanizing terms people like you have come up with to distort the issue.
“Thanks, but I write my own copy. One day when I ask you for editing hints feel free to let me know how you want that copy phrased.”
You just acknowledged you don’t see any child as human or as having any worth until they’re born. Otherwise you’d have admitted his or her humanity.
“Yes, everything you said is dishonest. Adding “It’s not” to the end of your random spray doesn’t make it so.”
Saying what I said was dishonest doesn’t make it so. Is that really the best you can do? Trying to say “Nah-uh, you are!” doesn’t help your credibility. Your line here doesn’t add anything or provide anything and thus, fails.
“Pretty much everything you said is untrue, evaluative, judgmental, and lacking in any basis in fact or science. Step off.”
Convenient that you make those claims, yet fail to do anything to back them up. As a result, they are mere accusations without substance or support. It’s just sad that you let your biases push you to deny an unborn child even exists (which is what saying he or she is just part of the mother’s body does), let alone acknowledge that he or she has rights.
You claim anyone who disagrees with you or believes differently than you do is a troll, but while I don’t agree with you, I won’t sink to your level and call you the same. Because I understand there’s only a limited amount of knowledge about a person that can be gained from a post, and judging someone from that is foolish and premature.
The mother has rights, but so does her unborn child. BOTH should be respected, not just those of one. Going too far in either direction isn’t good. There needs to be balance. And there are alternatives to abortion for unwanted pregnancies. Better to support those instead.
All life is sacred—black, white, red, yellow, male, female, born, unborn, all of it. Doesn’t matter who you are or what you look like or believe, life is precious. Support life instead of death. Because like or not not, admit it or not, abortion is the ending of a unique human life.
Re: Re: Re:2
For what reason should bodily autonomy be stripped entirely from a pregnant person the moment they find out they’re pregnant, such that they should be forced by law to carry a fetus to term even if doing so could kill them?
Because the funny thing about that question is…
…we already have a huge legal deference to bodily autonomy: No one can be required by law—when they’re living or dead!—to give up any part of their body to save the life of another. Doctors can’t legally force you to give blood or donate an organ when you’re alive; they sure as hell can’t legally harvest your organs from your body when you’re dead unless you gave that go-ahead before you died. Again: For what reason should bodily autonomy be stripped entirely from a pregnant person the moment they find out they’re pregnant, such that they should be forced by law to carry a fetus to term even if doing so could kill them?
The law would need to prosecute miscarriages as murders if fetuses were to have an absolute guaranteed right to be born. How many people do you want to see jailed for something that, in the overwhelming majority of cases, they couldn’t control?
A significant number of your anti-choice brethren don’t see any child as human/having any worth after a child is born.
How do you balance the rights of a pregnant person with the rights of a fetus in a way that gives the pregnant person full autonomy over their body? Remember that you’ll be stripping at least some form of autonomy away from the pregnant person if you give the fetus even a single legal right.
Yes or no: Should the law force a 13-year-old girl who was impregnated via rape—a girl too young to legally drive, drink, smoke, vote, and consent to sex—to carry that pregnancy to term, even if doing so heavily endangers the life of that 13-year-old?
Remember: You believe there are alternatives to abortion for unwanted pregnancies. You believe a fetus should be given legal rights that supercede the bodily autonomy of the person carrying said fetus. You can’t logically argue for the sanctity of unborn lives and still support abortions happening under certain conditions—such as, say, after the rape of a young girl.
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Re: Re: Re:3
Yes or no: Should the law force a 13-year-old girl who was impregnated via rape— a girl too young to legally drive, drink, smoke, vote, and consent to sex— to carry that pregnancy to term, even if doing so heavily endangers the life of that 13-year-old?
Yes, absolutely. It would make for one hell of an erotic snuff RPF if the 13-year-old dies in childbirth. /s
Re: Re: Re:4
what in the actual godforsaken fuck is wrong with you
Re: Re: Re:5
Rule 34. Anal vore animation is the highest form of the expression of love. We’re coming, and you can’t stop us. Accept that heteronormativity is coming to an end.
Re: Re: Re:2
Simple logic then dictates that if genetic distinction is the criteria then cancer counts as being distinct from the body it grows in.
A fetus isn’t a child, a blob of cells just after fertilization isn’t a child either. The problem you have is that you use an absurd definition of “child” and how it is distinct from it’s mother.
Life is cheap. Saying that life is sacred is just a mental construct to deal with a harsh reality. Some religions consider animals to be sacred, what if they came along and said that people no longer can eat meat because of it.
The moment you used the word “sacred” you signaled that your whole reason for being against abortions is due to some arbitrary and absolutist religious belief. I’m sure you would be incensed if we forbade religions because it can be considered to be a mental illness, you know the whole thing about talking to an invisible entity who tells you what is right or wrong.
How things change, in 1968 the Christian Medical Society said that abortion must be considered in the light of individual health, family welfare, and social responsibility. In 1971 the Southern Baptist Convention passed a resolution saying “*. . .to work for legislation that will allow the possibility of abortion under such conditions as rape, incest, clear evidence of severe fetal deformity, and carefully ascertained evidence of the likelihood of damage to the emotional, mental, and physical health of the mother*”. Seems to me that they actually understood the issue and came up with a reasonable approach.
In due time people like you will become irrelevant, the question is how much damage you’ll wreak on society until then.
Re: Re: Re:2
Support life instead of death. Because like or not not, admit it or not, abortion is the ending of a unique human life.
So is the death penalty, but I don’t see any activity about abolishing that. That’s really fucking hypocritical isn’t it?
If life is so sacred, why is killing one that’s out of the woman’s uterus legal in the states that are pushing for making abortion illegal?
It’s not about life. It’s about control. And that’s what makes you people such pieces of shit.
Re: Re: Re:2
Forced-birth is fascist eugenics. Nothing more, nothing less.
Re: Re: Re:2
I’ve heard that argument from Catholic priests, and while I don’t agree with them, they make a far better argument about the sanctity of life than your barely-disguised contempt for females and minorities.
If you respect life that much, then maybe, maybe you should stop harassing people for offending you. It’d make your barely-disguised hate for anyone not white, male and NeoNazi just that mildly less shitty.
Re: Re:
You’ve responded to a strawman of the argument, not the arguement.
If I purged a parasite from my body, it would be by allowing me to do what I want with my body. I don’t consider that parasite part of my body. But the parasite is undeniably using my body for its purposes. Same would go for a symbiotic being using me as a host.
Applying this logic, a fetus is not the mother. But the womb does not leave with the birth. nor do any of the other organs a fetus relies on their parent for. That is undeniably part of “the mothers body” that they can do with as they please. Otherwise, a corpse would have more right to deny the use of their organs than someone who is pregnant.
But I know a fetus is ‘less’ than a baby. And so do you. I have a rope in each hand. If I let go of one, a six month old child dies. If i release the other, a pregnancy ends in miscarriage. I can’t hold onto both. The question I have? What flavor of ice cream is the 6-month old going to prefer when he grows up?
Re: Re:
Again, how is a being with a unique DNA sequence completely distinct from the mother’s supposed “part of her body” when it’s a totally distinct life?
Where does it sit there being unique and all for 9 months? You’re hyperfocused on DNA seeming to mean something. It’s irrelevant. It would be totally distinct if it could survive on its own.
Is it not part of her body during that time?
You want to be taken seriously, phrase the debate in a way that acknowledges the unborn child’s existence as a different being from the mother.
If the mother smokes, is the thing affected? If the mother drinks alcohol, is the thing affected? If the mother punches herself in the stomach, is the thing affected?
When the answer to any of those 3 questions is ‘NO’ then we can talk about its existence being different, and not being about the mother’s body.
You’re like a broken record with these same two things that bounce around your head. The first doesn’t fucking matter, and the second is just fucking ridiculous.
What’s the plan to hold the fathers responsible?
What’s the plan for providing health care for the mother?
What’s the plan for providing neonatal care once the thing is born?
What’s the plan for providing daycare for the thing so the mother can work?
Who will support the mother with all of the other things that aren’t part of the previous 4?
That you’re unable to answer is why you’re not taken seriously.
Re: Re:
You want to be taken seriously, phrase the debate in a way that acknowledges the unborn child’s existence as a different being from the mother.
Everyone I’ve seen respond to that idiotic argument has done just that, those responses have just been ignored in favor of repeating the same stupid assertion repeatedly like you just did because apparently beating up a strawman is easier.
Anything else is dishonest, just as much as saying this is about the mother’s body. It’s not.
Yes, however could people come to the mistaken impression that an argument about a women’s right to control her own body is about her, truly people are just so silly to think that women are people.
Re: Re:
Because the child isn’t part of [the pregnant person’s body].
ORLY? So where did the egg come from, then? A dodo?
Re: Re:
First off, it is not settled that it is “a totally distinct life”, not to mention that that doesn’t make it a totally distinct person. That’s kinda what the argument is getting at.
Second, having unique DNA distinct from the mother’s is neither necessary nor sufficient evidence that something is separate from the mother. Chimerism—where a multicellular organism has different DNA in different cells from birth—is a thing in some humans. An organ that was transplanted from an organ donor to a person is still part of that person’s body even though its DNA is distinct from its new owner’s. Egg cells (unfertilized or not) and sperm cells also have unique DNA distinct from the rest of the body. Cancer cells have DNA distinct from the rest of the body. We have entire ecosystems of bacteria, viruses, and other microorganism that live inside of us. On top of that, some people have identical DNA but are still considered separate persons from each other. This simply isn’t a slam-dunk for you.
Basically, the fetus/embryo/zygote cannot survive outside the mother’s womb at all, and—at least until the third trimester—lacks any distinct cognitive abilities or even a functional nervous system separate from the mother’s, so saying that it’s still a part of the mother is arguably true.
That’s just the heart reacting to the blood flow coming from the mother, not something being driven by the nervous system of the embryo.
Given that that’s still quite debatable, there is no need to do so. No one needs to tackle the debate on your terms. This is especially the case where terms like “being” and “person” are not scientifically determined and so there cannot be a scientific test for such, and the same goes for what is considered “separate”.
Worth noting is that the notion that anyone is a person prior to birth is relatively recent and not universal even today, so you can’t go off of tradition or universal consensus, either.
As such, when an embryo/fetus/whatever becomes a separate living person distinct from the mother is an open question with reasonable arguments for just about any position on the issue, anywhere from the moment the egg gets fertilized to when the zygote gets implanted in the uterine wall to when the embryo develops some form of all its internal organs to when the fetus becomes viable and has a functional nervous system to the moment the baby takes its first breath after birth. To say the discussion is or should be firmly settled beyond any reasonable disagreement is nonsense.
To say it’s not about the mother’s body is false, so…
Also, it’s not dishonesty if someone genuinely and reasonably believes they are telling the truth even if they are mistaken.
Debatable.
Or not living at all, but even ignoring that, this is also debatable.
Again, that a living fetus is necessarily a “unique life” at all points during the pregnancy is debatable. Furthermore, some abortions (including most late-term abortions) are of a dead or nonviable fetus, in which case it’s not even alive to begin with. As such, that statement is not definitively true. Indeed, that is a significant issue still being hotly and reasonably debated today and plays a major role in discussions about abortion.
Re: most people without housing is a choice
The majority of people without a place to sleep is because of their choice, There are plenty of shelters with availability in every city for people to stay at. If they choice to live the way they do then let them be. Respect people’s choices in life.
Now if you are suggesting we buy a home for each person then you haven’t done the math. That would be in the multi trillions of dollars. Just 10,000 people @ $100,000 (low) is $1 billion. There are an estimated 1 million living on the streets in US. Plus, those in shelters will want a home too. Then giving away free housing will lead to an even bigger influx of migrants/illegals. Then ongoing maintenance, etc. Impossible.
Re: Re: impossible
Impossible does not mean “incredibly expensive”.
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Re: Re:
I’d be more willing to “let the homeless be” if they weren’t burning down empty buildings in my city on a regular basis (including the 2 houses within a block of me in the past year) and running bicycle/catalytic converter theft rings and committing burglaries daily. Yes, this isn’t all homeless people. But yes, this affects ALL OF US as well as all of them.
The homeless problem isn’t about people sleeping (and shitting) on the sidewalk; it’s about the host of crime issues that come with drug addiction mixed with mental illness.
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Re: Re: Re: drug addiction
sorry but drug addiction is a right; at least in liberal cities/states. that is why they are given free needles and allowed to sleep/pee/shit anywhere they want. people voted for this.
don’t like it, move. that is the situation we are all in now.
Re: Re: Re:2
And while we’re at it, let’s rob the VA’s coffers as well, because how dare they help homeless veterans get basic, if garbage, healthcare!
That was a thing Trump tried to do!
Re: Re: Re:3
And while we’re at it, let’s rob the VA’s coffers as well, because how dare they help homeless veterans get basic, if garbage, healthcare!
That was a thing Trump tried to do!
ORLY? Fuck off, Trump apologist.
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democrats want regulation now
With Musk buying Twitter, democrats are shitting their pants. Now democrats want to regulate big tech. Ministry of Information. Sucks when you don’t get your way. Democrats crying over Musk. Why? Because democrats know how the game is rigged in their favor. If tables are turned, they are totally screwed. When truth/reality is exposed, democrats with have their lies & human manipulation exposed for all to see. No one should be opposed to free speech & Musk unless your part of the democrat elite that want nothing but power & money—at any cost.
Re:
There are places you can go to help you stop seeing such deranged hallucinations as those.
Re:
You NeoNazis could start by not harassing the Democrats because they are Democrats, doctors for advising sensible health measures instead of swallowing quack cures and poison, and anyone who holds a slightly different opinion from you.
This is fucking routine in Singapore and I’m legit sick of it.
Re: Re:
TBH, any individual swallowing a quack ‘remedy’ provides an excellent cautionary tale against doing so, and if the damage is severe enough, they might get a Darwin Award. 😉
Re:
Looks like someone missed the latest talking points.
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author needs help
To whomever wrote this blog…republicans are dancing in your end!
with thoughts like this:
Just a big, dumb noise machine whose output is anger and confusion.
get some help. go have some fun. life is short.
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sure just BK county
US Debt : $30 trillion / $243,000 per tax payer
US Unfunded Liabilities : $169 trillion / $508,000 per citizen
Yes you can keep spending money and forcing your will on people but why on an unsolvable issue. And their are consequences for spending money we don’t have…
Inflation already out of control. Now, Fed/Biden trying to kill economy because businesses don’t want to keep paying higher wages. Screw the bottom 80%.
Hopefully you are learning Chinese. They own this country.
Re:
Looks like somebody has been reading Kim Dotcom’s Twitter feed:
https://twitter.com/KimDotcom/status/1525294008817577984?t=amK52AjgiuclGXu_bOse3Q&s=19
Re: Re:
Of all the people to go full crazy, Kim Dotcom was one of the least likely. Or at least less likely than most.
Guess even alleged criminal masterminds are not immune to the herd mentality.
Re:
China owns about 10% of all American liabilities. That number, at best, is about a trillion and is more likely billions. Tens of billion when I last checked.
The US has at least 2 levers they can use. One of them is the SWIFT network. I hear China is trying to push for Centralized digital currencies to counter the pervasiveness of SWIFT. The other is defaulting on those liabilities. This would also destroy the USD as a stable fiat currency. And would inevitably lead to nukes flying.
Until Xi can render these 2 levers irrelevant, he’s kinda shit out of luck in the short run. I mean, how would their stock exchanges work without access to SWIFT?
Xenophobia
I once hired a forensic accountant. He was amazing. You’re not him.
To “own a country” would take hours to explain, and your simplistic numbers-thing above isn’t a part of that. Let’s just go with:
Sorry your xenophobia is acting up. Try some paraquat dichloride. One spoonful will avoid further inflammations of the condition.
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Re: lifeless lefty
sorry you have no sense of humor.
and complementing the Chinese for owning trillions of USA debt is not xenophobic.
when far left have no argument or facts they throw out the race card. good luck with that, maybe CNN+ will hire you.
Re: Re:
I’m sorry that your sense of humor relies on racism.
Re: Re:
I’m from a region where the CCP has effective control over the region.
How did they do it? By doing everything the US did during the Cold War. Propping up dictators and straight up buying politicians. Shooting at fishing ships and actual WW2 relics. Actual fucking spies in governments they thoroughly bullied. Stealing military material over tame and lukeqarm criticism. And then added a few new twists, like debt entrapment.
America still has levers against China. Like the SWIFT Network and the economic nuclear option, defaulting on the rather minor loans China has bought. We’ve seen how insanely crippling being cut off from SWIFT is.
Beaides, how can American citizens own the majority of US debt and China own all of it?
Re: Re:
I don’t see any Trotskyists, Cuban agents, Soviet provocateurs or any sort of practicing Communist in America. Or any in power.
Russian agents, oh yes. The CCP? So hard right I almost mistook them for fascists.
Please tell me where the actual commies influencing American politics are.
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It’s actually it’s own module in International Relations, and it’d still be not doing the topic justice.
And I live in a region where I can safely say China owns the fucking region without sounding racist.
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Well, China is good at long term planning – virtually owning a country isn’t hard if you make sure the country in the end is totally dependent on your good graces.
It’s essentially a gradual takeover by increasing their control of financial and governmental functions.
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Please don’t recommend quack remedies. We had enough of that when Trump was in the Oval Office. Q-/
In other news people learn that if you keep screaming wolf, people start to care less about wolves when its clear there was no wolf anywhere near the crime.
Basic ideals, LOVE THEM
There are reasons this nation was built with an understanding that Leaning on RELIGION to Rule the nation was asking for PROBLEMS.
There are over 40 Christian sects. And they have been fighting back and forth for along time. Esp. the pope.
The IDEALS of 1 groups are NOT those of another. Even with allot of overlap, There are differences. There is also a difference in HOW a group lives their religion.
You may be your brothers Keeper, He still has rights to be WHAT he wants. Its what God created? Correct?
The REAL problem tends to be those that SEEM to be religious. But their hands are in another groups POCKETS.
I really dont think God, wants us to be Blind or led around like SHEEP. But also like SHEEP, as a group, we are a real Monster to deal with.
Re: 40 Christian sects? Fighting for along[sic] time? Jesus!
I would never have imagined that the discussion of Big Tech would devolve to an abortion discussion here. However, my lack of imagination is not the problem here.
Yes, that’s right. Good job. A number bigger than 40 is correct. It’s more like 45,000 worldwide, and 200+ in the United States alone. Since either 45 thousand or 200+ are both “over 40” you’re technically correct, although woefully uninformed.
HOWEVER, the number of Christian denominations, sects, or even non-Christians is entirely IRRELEVANT.
What appears to be the criteria for interposing one’s illiterate misunderstanding of medical science on another person appears to be some factor of mob mentality, blaming Jesus Christ, and a heartbeat.
This guy has no heartbeat:
https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2096314/Meet-HEARTLESS-man-able-live-heartbeat-PULSE.html
Can we just kill him? Is that “murder” or “abortion?” If he votes Democrat or speaks with an accent or is of color… does it still count.
I can’t run the 4-minute mile.
I can’t fly to 60,000 feet.
My heartbeat is indistinguishable from background noise as I go through the day dealing with a-holes on forums who aren’t “merely trolls” but part of an organized group of misinformation-dwarves, leaving their turd-piles everywhere so that one day all that will be discovered by those looking for runes will be those turds.
Turd-lovers — go away.
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Dick Cheney doesn’t have a heartbeat either – and he’s a Republican!
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I feel very insulted being compared to a NeoNazi.
Old school trolls, at least, have the decency to troll ourselves for a quick laugh.
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"Support for Regulation"
Woke ideologues are happy with the current state of affairs because the censorship they want has been outsourced to companies who have no obligation under the 1st Amendment to provide their users with freedom of speech. You can see their panic at the thought of Musk buying Twitter, because if he decides to stop Twitter from using viewpoint-based censorship, all the arguments they have made about companies having the freedom to censor as they like will be turned back against them.
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And if Twitter is forced to host speech by people like you, many conversation will be stopped due to your dead naming and mockery of ideas you decide are not worth discussion. On some topics you have no intention of being part of the discussion, but rather be an active force to stop them bing discussed.
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Things that are ridiculous should be mocked. If the mockery makes the believers so ashamed that they stop pushing their nonsense, so much the better. That is not forcing a stop to discussion. Rather, it is winning the argument decisively.
For example, Tucker Carlson showed example after example of progressives saying how demographic change was going to win the day for them. If they’re going to decry the Great Replacement, they ought not to be bragging about it at the same time.
As for the “deadnaming”, woke gender ideologues are, as usual, treating Orwell as a manual rather than a warning. “Oceania had always been at war with Eastasia.” Here is the description of Juno on Netflix, “Starring Elliot Page”: https://www.netflix.com/sg/title/70077553
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As evidenced so far, it doesn’t work because you have no shame.
I’m all for The Great Replacement of Assholes. If your perceived self-worth is dependent on being “white” you are at a minimum just stupid and a bit racist, and at the other end you are a fucking nazi/white supremacist who’ll happily murder other “races”.
You haven’t read Orwell, have you? All his works are about social injustice and totalitarism – he was what you would call “woke”.
What’s Orwellian is that there are people who loudly screams about how unfair it is that they aren’t allowed to spew hate, vitriol and in general behave like assholes while framing it as a free speech issue.
You are an excellent example, your grievance is that you aren’t allowed to be an asshole online and because of that you are demanding that other people must allow you to say whatever you want at their cost.
It’s fascinating to see just how stuck you are one thing, my guess is that you said some stupid shit on Twitter about transpeople while deadnaming them and Twitter told you to GTFO – so instead of taking that as a learning experience you doubled down and went full stupid because it’s easier rationalizing that you are a victim instead of realizing that you are an asshole.
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It is woke ideologues who talk about “people of color” as if not being white means that one will perforce agree with their nonsense. The woke have a blind spot so large that it reduces their vision to nothing; they cannot see reality, only the falsehoods in their own heads.
Focusing on woke gender ideology is useful because it is so obviously false and yet so dear to the hearts of the woke. It is an accurate wedge issue because it makes people see that if the woke insist that such an obvious lie is true, it is likely that other things the woke claim are also lies.
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That not winning, it is forcing others to find a place to talk where they can avoid your like. When that happens you have not won the discussion, just got it hidden from your view.
Stormfront is over there, or would they mock you for your views because you are not in total agreement with them?
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Right there along with the ivermectin takers.
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If he took over twitter I’d start a political campaign to post the Communist Manifesto in response to his every tweet to make him aware that being a billionaire who shits on his employees that try to speak their mind is bad. If he stops that, he’s against free speech and promotes viewpoint discrimination
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[Hallucinates facts not in reality]
… says nobody who understands those pro-free-speech arguments, ever.
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[citation needed]