What I'm reading today: the last Sunday before the insanity begins...
Worth your time...
As previously announced, I am leaving Facebook tomorrow. I’ve had a few friends ask me to reconsider. I just can’t — this message, I received today from Common Cause, only validated my decision. I hope you’ll consider following me on Substack.
Today’s email read:
“Facebook just stooped to a new low. Billionaire CEO Mark Zuckerberg just announced he’s ending all professional fact-checking on the site – paving the way for dangerous election lies and hatred to spread unchecked. Believe it or not, instead they’ve decided to follow in Elon Musk’s footsteps – copying the same “community notes” setup that did little to stop Twitter from becoming a hotbed of election disinformation under his watch. Let’s be clear: this is a blatant, profit-driven attempt to pander to Donald Trump. Remember, Trump threatened Zuckerberg with jail time – and now, he’s crowing that his threats worked! After all, not only is Zuckerberg letting him get his way on disinformation – he’s also donating one million dollars to his inauguration and setting off a conservative overhaul of the company’s lobbying shop. Our democracy pays the price when social media oligarchs cave to the far-right… when more than half of Americans rely on social media for news, it’s ground we simply can’t afford to cede to far-right disinformation peddlers.”
Charlie Sykes: Beware the Bubbles
“…it will be 22 degrees on Monday, a temperature that is apparently considered arctic in DC. Actually, it’s the same temperature as JFK’s 1961 inaugural, which went ahead outside despite a wind chill of 7 degrees. Those of us from Wisconsin would like a word. But it does occur to us that if DJT has a problem with the cold, wait until he hears about what it’s like in Greenland, Canada, and other places he wants to annex.”
Public Sphere: What is an Oligarchy?
“I keep on thinking of the Putin example amid the slew of tech CEOs that are planning to attend President-elect Donald Trump's inauguration on January 20. Tech executives like Mark Zuckerberg of Meta, and Jeff Bezos of Amazon are giving money to and choosing to attend his inauguration, which is now being held indoors. (Zuckerberg is even throwing a party.)”
Trump Triggers a Crisis in Denmark—And Europe
In private discussions, the adjective that was most frequently used to describe the Trump phone call was rough. The verb most frequently used was threaten. The reaction most frequently expressed was confusion. Trump made it clear to Frederiksen that he is serious about Greenland: He sees it, apparently, as a real-estate deal. But Greenland is not a beachfront property. The world’s largest island is an autonomous territory of Denmark, inhabited by people who are Danish citizens, vote in Danish elections, and have representatives in the Danish Parliament. Denmark also has politics, and a Danish prime minister cannot sell Greenland any more than an American president can sell Florida.
Heather Cox Richardson - Letters from an American - January 18
Trump has always understood the importance of visuals and has worked hard to project an image of an invincible leader. Moving the inauguration indoors takes away that image, though, and people who have spent thousands of dollars to travel to the capital to see his inauguration are now unhappy to discover they will be limited to watching his motorcade drive by them. On social media, one user posted: “MAGA doesn’t realize the symbolism of [Trump] moving the inauguration inside: The billionaires, millionaires and oligarchs will be at his side, while his loyal followers are left outside in the cold. Welcome to the next 4+ years.”
And if you want to “protest” the inauguration, leave your TV turned all day to the Food Channel. Apparently it helps show the number of people NOT watching CNN, CSPAN, MSNBC, etc.
Trump’s billionaire oligarchs are rewiring America for a new superpower era
When Donald Trump takes the oath at his inauguration on Monday, standing alongside him in an ostentatious display of support will be not just the usual roster of political hangers-on, but a star-studded array of tech oligarchs, business leaders and financiers that includes the three richest men in the world – Tesla’s Elon Musk, Amazon’s Jeff Bezos and Meta’s Mark Zuckerberg. There is, of course, nothing unusual about business attempting to cosy up to an incoming president in the hope of influence, favours and contracts. But normally it’s done in a low-profile, arms-length way behind closed doors, mindful of the perception of corruption if business and political elites get too close. With Trump’s second term, it’s different: it’s open, flamboyant and conspicuous, and there’s a unity of purpose between the main repositories of political and economic power.
Farewell Remarks by Secretary of Defense Lloyd J. Austin III
“Every military defends a country. But the United States military also defends a Constitution. Now, that isn't some side point. It's the oath that I swore when I commissioned: "to support and defend the Constitution of the United States against all enemies, foreign and domestic." That is what we do. And that is who we are.”
‘I broke into the Capitol on Jan 6 – now I’ll be a VIP at Trump’s inauguration’
To date 1,270 people have been convicted, of whom about 1,000 have pleaded guilty. Mr. Trump has in the past accepted “there is never a justification for violence” but nobody really knows what he will do next.
Steve Brodner: Inaugural Balls
The week and years to come will not be especially funny. Historically tragic and deeply absurd. And the stuff of ridicule. It is important to cover all of it.
Zuckerberg’s Macho Posturing Looks a Lot Like Cowardice
Zuckerberg conveniently neglected to mention that Facebook profits off tribalizing, inflammatory, conspiratorial content, which has been shown to keep people scrolling. He is right, however, that fact-checking could never catch more than a tiny portion of those posts… He’s also right that fact-checkers lost a good deal of public trust by overstepping their boundaries. Even if those mistakes were rare, fact-checking is a trust-based mechanism, and that was enough to break it.
Quote of the day:
“Monday, the Clown Car pulls into a siding in Washington D.C., and Donald Trump and his merry band of hammered pranksters, incompetents, sexual abusers, and felons of both the accused and convicted variety will enclown from the car … to coin a word … and take over the most powerful nation on earth. I’m tempted to think of it as the Age of the Planet of the Apes, except these folks aren’t nearly as smart as those apes. America, the world, and any future surviving generations will suffer greatly for the choices made by so many of this generation.” ~Bill Svelmoe
#GodHelpUs