Ministry of Truth?

[Dill]

(05-09-2022, 07:33 AM)StrictlyBiz Wrote: The purpose of The Board is to give guidance to the DHS on how to handle disinformation regarding to national security. Although The Board and the DHS lack the power to directly make and implement laws that would "ban untruth," all too often governmental departments make recommendations that do in fact become 'law.' Look no further than the CDC's guidance and recommendations over the past two years as evidence. 

While you may trust that the creation of The Board doesn't give the DHS too much power to potentially curtail your first amendment right, I don't. While you may be comfortable giving the DHS the power to potentially do so, I am not. If you don't see or think that this is a possibility, then you're naive.

If Donald Trump runs and wins in 2024 and hand picks his head of the DHS who then hand picks his head of The Board, would you be comfortable with that? Would you be comfortable with their ability to silence and squash the ability to expose any of his illicit dealings?  Again, I wouldn't. Imagine them being able to quash the Ukrainian and Russia-gate stories in their infancies? 

Look at the sudden jump in your post from "guidance...on how to handle disinformation regarding national security" to the power to "silence . . . the ability to expose any of his illicit dealings" and "to quash Ukrainian and Russia-gate stories in their infancies." 

I can easily imagine Trump or whatever Repub wins in 2024 canceling Biden's DoDis as easy as he pulled us out of the Iran Deal, the Paris Agreement, and the TPP.

What I cannot imagine is such a dept. being able to "quash Ukrainian and /Russia-gate stories." That would require very tight control of Congress and the Judiciary too, not to mention the DOJ--all enlisted in directly muzzling the press. 

We the people have ALREADY given those three institutions that worrisome power to "potentially" silence and "quash," but you think a little DHS department would somehow overwhelm them? That's possible only if you have a regime party in control of all three branches of government, which we have never had yet, but certainly could if people don't start recognizing disinformation as itself a threat to speech and many other freedoms. THAT is the worry; not some toothless dept.

(05-09-2022, 07:33 AM)StrictlyBiz Wrote:  In matters such as these, it is best to ask yourself how you'd react if it wasn't your guy, your side, or you ideology in charge. 

No. I don't think it best to ask myself how I'd react if “my guy” wasn't in charge. By which I mean that at the current juncture, the question offers at best no analytic guidance/value, and at worst it invites diversion from a really existing as opposed to fictional threat.  A DoDis is not like a law or Senate rule, which requires majorities of elected representatives to put in place or undo, and which both sides must live with beyond momentary advantage for one.  Trump or whoever the “other guy” is in 2024, can scrap Biden’s DoDis the moment he gets in office, or swap it out for his own. But the “other side” cannot scrap the DOJ, Congress, or the Supreme Court, or conjure something equally powerful into existence by fiat.

Yet y’all imagine one little DoDis “quashing” all that representative government, checks and balances, and an adversarial press because someone said “Ministry of Truth.”

 All my life I have been fine with, or at least tolerated, that in democracies the "other side" gets its turn in office, from local mayor and sheriff all the way up to Congress and president--so long as they obey the same laws and democratic norms my side does. But is that the case right now?

On this thread, #35, I have already answered the question of how I'd react if the other side were in charge of posts with real power. Trump regaining control of the DOJ and DOD*, which he already had for four years, concerns me much more than any DoDis. And his power to "silence" and "quash" has been a function of party refusal to hold him accountable, a party whose power is linked to the maintenance and amplification of disinformation—unless you suppose Biden really did steal the election.

So really, seriously, I cannot get all spun up because Biden is making efforts to address the security threat posed by that disinformation, the far greater threat to free speech if left unchallenged.

*Esper was on MSBC today discussion how Trump wanted to shoot BLM protestors. The DOD staff who pushed back on that, contained him, won't be appointed the next time around, should Trump be re-elected. There's your threat to free speech.