Stubborn Silence - Weekly Roundup
Trump, Polarization, Defense Tech, and the Future of Cringing
A few thought-provoking reads and some commentary to close out the week.
Trump back on Facebook
He’s back, baby! Meta announced this week that Donald J. Trump is allowed back onto Facebook and Instagram. Though new guardrails are in place. If Trump violates them, he could be suspended for another two years.
I bet DJT is shaking in his Truth Social-branded boots.
The statement from Nick Clegg, Meta’s President for Global Affairs, laid out the company’s thinking on reinstating Trump. And it feels like Meta wildly misses the mark? At least on messaging. The company points to the 2022 midterms as proof that the security climate is stable enough to reinstate the former President to both Facebook and Instagram.
But…Trump wasn’t on Facebook or Instagram for the midterms. So…Meta’s platforms weren’t an amplifier for DJT’s personal “stop the steal” rhetoric for the November elections. Therefore….Trump should be reinstated? Let’s hop, skip, and jump into that one:
Trump’s actions and rhetoric helped fuel an angry mob that attacked the Capitol on January 6th
Facebook suspended Trump on January 7th for an indefinite amount of time
The Oversight Board said “woah, that’s too open-ended”
Facebook said, “okay, how about two years from January 7th?”
Trump wasn’t on Facebook and Instagram for the 2022 midterms. There was no evidence of “sufficient risk” to the election’s integrity.
The two year mark rolls around, Meta says: “Hey, looks like you didn’t use our platforms to fuel an angry mob last November. AND somehow you didn’t engineer a way to create a social media and advertising juggernaut that could rival our reach and influence that would enable you to fuel that mob without us. You must have reformed! Congratulations, here’s a gold star and welcome back!
I mean, it appears that a lot of time, effort, process, and hand wringing went into Meta creating a process that can be repeatable and justified for suspending public figures. Fair enough. But to then say that the security situation is clear because Trump didn’t have the tools to destabilize the election so it proves he should have those tools again seems…a bit tortured?
And let’s not forget, Facebook didn’t suspend President Trump until after January 6th. So, I guess in the future Meta will look to take action before people start grabbing pitchforks.
It’s interesting to think, what would Meta have done if the mob “succeeded” on January 6th in “stopping the steal”? If Trump remained President of the United States and not Joe Biden. Would Meta have kicked Trump off its platforms then? And would it have mattered at that point?1
I can’t help but think that the lesson here for Trump is that he needs to go bigger. Go bolder. That his rhetoric that encouraged supporters to storm the Capitol as if they were storming the Bastille at the outset of the French revolution wasn’t radical enough. And I think he knows this to be true as well. And I hope he is irrelevant in national politics before the 2023 election, but who knows. I guess I will need to log on to Facebook to find out.
The great mystery of American politics
The Economist
It’s a few weeks old, but in the turmoil of Kevin McCarthy’s Speaker bid, The Economist noted that the calcification of American political polarization divides the country almost evenly in two. The division increases political volatility in both electoral outcomes and in policymaking. All from incremental changes:
…a change of less than 1% of votes would have switched control of the White House in 2016 and 2020, and of the Senate in 2020.
The tight nature of the two-party split endures over time, despite dramatic changes in the makeup, policy positions, and temperament of political parties.
Even profound changes in what it means to be a Democrat or Republican seem to return the parties to their equilibrium, as though obeying some thermostat. Donald Trump is no George W. Bush, but Mr. Trump eked out a comparable electoral-college win.
Increased partisan messaging by political parties since Reagan entrenches citizens onto the red team or the blue team. Their party identities. And for those who are not rampant partisans, they throw their hands up, not seeing much of a difference between red and blue.
The column argues that McCarthy’s ugly Speaker bid could provide an opportunity to break this cycle. If the right-wing of the party co-opts the agenda, the Democrats could benefit. In other words, if the party goes too far outside the Overton window, the fence-sitting voters flock to the Democrats.
I don’t know. Certainly it is possible that continued hijinks from the right wing of the Republican Party will push the “both parties are the same: useless” voters towards Democrats. But the more likely scenario is even more partisan gridlock will continue, not an enduring Democratic majority. The rigid even-split of the American two-party system is not an attractive feature, but it is resilient. Without significant political reform, we are unlikely to see a dissolution of the partisan hardening.
Josh Wolfe’s War: The Lux Capital Founder Blazes a Controversial Path in Defense Tech
Margaux MacColl, The Information
MacColl profiles the venture capitalist Josh Wolfe and his enduring belief in the need to bolster American defense capabilities through deep technological investment. Wolfe, a Democrat, invests in early-stage defense tech firms that many Silicon Valley investors (and certainly Democrats) traditionally steer clear of.
The piece is an engaging read to learn more about Wolfe, but the true takeaway is the overarching message of archaic technology in government and the bureaucratic path to selling to the government. Neither are new or uplifting stories.
Government is not known for mass-adoption of cutting edge technological prowess (or at least the U.S. government isn’t, Estonia is a different story). And the bureaucratic resistance to change shows its flaws most starkly when lives are at stake and nuclear armaments are controlled by floppy disks.
Wolfe happens to be the investor in Silicon Valley that is willing to push for technological adoption and spend the time building relationships with the right connections inside the government to accomplish it. This work is important and hopefully more investors can also recognize the DoD as a strong place to do business.
What the article does not address is why Wolfe needs to play the role of technological evangelist to the DoD and how to fix this from a systemic perspective. There are real roadblocks for the DoD upgrading its technology and some hesitancy from Silicon Valley liberals isn’t the same as a nightmarish procurement process and incredibly slow sales cycles. The real step change would be a change to these processes, not getting more VCs warmed up to government.
Why number of US mass shootings has risen sharply
Nadine Yousef, BBC
In the wake of the shootings in California this week, there were a number of stories on guns, gun ownership and gun safety.
A reminder of a few of the (depressing) stats:
There were 44,290 firearm deaths in the U.S. in 2022 (31% increase from 2019)
Mass shootings make up ~1% of all firearm deaths annually
Gun sales are on the rise (65% increase from 2019 → 2020)
California Governor Gavin Newsom and other politicians echoed the refrain that so many have uttered before, amounting to “enough is enough, when will we learn?”
The problem isn’t that we don’t learn. We have learned. Way too many times. As terrible as mass shootings are for the victims, their families, and the country, ~99% of gun-related deaths are not mass shootings. Gun deaths account for 79% of all homicides in the U.S. That number is 4% in the U.K., 13% in Australia, and 37% in Canada.
We know that more guns equal more death.
The problem is we don’t have the political capital, organization, and political leadership to enact meaningful change. 57% of Americans think gun laws should be stricter. And yet we dither on the margins of maybe taking away the largest guns and making background checks standard. We tinker with incrementalism.
And nothing happens. If it’s this hard to do the small things, shouldn’t that give lawmakers license to think radically different?…Make owning more than 10 rounds of ammunition illegal, require biometric sensors for usage, propose banning all guns. It doesn’t mean anything will change in policy. But at least the conversation will be about dramatic change rather than nibbling around the edges.
On the uplifting and lighter side
Democracy
Our World in Data
The team at Our World in Data released a redesigned page on its work on democracy this week. It’s worth checking out. There are a number of visualizations and charts showing the development of democracy over the past couple hundred years as well as the current state today. Taking the longer view can definitely provide buoyancy to one’s outlook instead of just focusing on the short term sliding into illiberalism. Billions of people now enjoy democratic rights around the globe. We should celebrate this progress more.
The Things We Might Cringe At in the Future
George Gurley, The New York Times
Gurley interviewed dozens of artists, academics, businesspeople, writers, and more to catalog the things that we might find embarrassing and/or abhorrent in the future. The result is this interactive article that is thought-provoking: What will your future self look back on and find cringeworthy? What about your kids or grandkids?
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Have a good weekend.
Taking control of the media is like step 2 in conducting a coup d'état. Though harder to take control of social media than say a TV station.
Very thought provoking on the outcome of Jan 6th on potential impacts of Meta’s policy on reinstatement. Tied nicely together and put me in the right thinking for what we’ll find retroactively-cringeworthy in the future. Well curated thinking materials thanks Russ!!