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Feb 13 • 4 tweets • 2 min read
For this week’s blog post, I edited and combined a few of my recent threads.

I started with a reading of the newly unredacted sections of the Mueller report, then talked about some of the responses on Twitter . . .

terikanefield.com/is-social-medi…
. . . and concluded with thoughts about how social media brings out authoritarian instincts in large swaths of people who ordinarily would not be given to authoritarian impulses.



It's too easy for truth to lose, and when truth loses, democracy loses.
Right. And not all "manipulators" are bad actors, but all people need to learn to evaluate sources.

Reflectively saying, "Professor X should know" is not how to do it. It takes more work. Falling in line is always easier than doing the work.

Precisely.
Navigating social media requires a new skill set for evaluating sources and reliability.

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More from @Teri_Kanefield

Teri Kanefield Profile picture
Feb 12
I'm tired of the word "accountable." It's a weasel word. Don't say "accountable." Say what you mean.

Does "accountable" mean
🔹Lose elections?
🔹Go to prison?
🔹Lose a lawsuit?
🔹Be hated?

It would be nice if all the good people were rewarded and the bad people punished.
So you want to start indicting people and gather the evidence after they're indicted?

Or not worry about evidence?

There are rules of evidence, which means that the stuff you've read in newspapers and Tweets probably isn't admissible in court . . .
Indicting people and having juries return "not guilty" verdicts because there isn't evidence to prove each element of a crime beyond a reasonable doubt may not accomplish what people think it will accomplish.
Read 10 tweets
Teri Kanefield Profile picture
Feb 12
One reason I think social media is turning everyone into authoritarians: people don't read or think.

They see a headline and have a strong emotional reaction, which they Tweet and which then gets repeated by others, who are also not thinking . . .

1/
Political psychologists like @karen_stenner describe the authoritarian personality.

Those with an authoritarian disposition are averse to complexity. They reject nuance.

They prefer sameness and uniformity and have “cognitive limitations.”

(link in the next Tweet)

2/
See for example, "Authoritarianism is not a momentary madness,” which originally appeared in this book, an dwhich Stenner has now made available free on her website, here: ……e-4700-aaa9-743a55a9437a.filesusr.com/ugd/02ff25_370…

Timothy Snyder also talks about the danger of what he calls Internet Memes.

3/
Read 7 tweets
Teri Kanefield Profile picture
Feb 11
Shall we talk about what it means that Mueller concluded there was insufficient evidence to bring some of these charges?

I assume people have questions.

Insufficient evidence doesn't mean "no evidence" and it doesn't mean "they didn't do anything wrong."
Let's take J.D. Gordan and the changing of the GOP Party platform.

Mueller concluded that there wasn't enough evidence to prove he was acting at the direction of Russia.

Maybe he wasn't.

Maybe he did it becuase Trump's pals prefer Putin-style autocracy over democracy.
They love Russia and Putin, who Richard Spenser has called the "sole white power in the world." See:
terikanefield.com/no-the-entire-…

I don't know whether Mueller's assessment was correct because I haven't seen all the evidence . . .
Read 15 tweets
Teri Kanefield Profile picture
Feb 10
Interesting tidbit: The obstruction statute being used to prosecute lots of the insurrection cases, U.S.C. 1512(c)(2) was part of an Act passed in 2002 in the wake of the Enron scandal specifically to prosecute destruction of records that might be needed in future proceedings.
Of course, this is the law so it's never as easy as it seems.

If there is a tricky word in this statute, it would be "official proceeding."

Would there need to be a specific proceeding on the horizon?

The Enron executives . . . Image
. . . the Enron (Arthur Anderson) executives started shredding documents after an investigation was opened into their corrupt practices, but before a subpoena was issued.
Read 5 tweets
Teri Kanefield Profile picture
Feb 9
I think the real question is what a post-Trump GOP will look like.

If white power militias, hardcore reactionaries, and zany conspiracy theorists still have a place in the GOP, the problem won't leave with Trump.
morningshots.thebulwark.com/p/a-gop-cracku…
The reactionary Supreme Court justices, for example, have shown that they have no interest in saving Trump, but they're committed to promoting the agenda of the "religious right," for example, by taking the teeth from the Voting Rights Act.
Exactly.

The problem is what political scientist @dziblatt
calls the "Conservative Dilemma," which in a nutshell says that conservative economic policies (when presented truthfully) are unpopular so to win elections, they invite in the right-wing fringe.
Read 4 tweets
Teri Kanefield Profile picture
Feb 7
Timothy Snyder calls them Internet Triggers.

He explains that they're bad for democracy because they prevent us from thinking complex thoughts.

People see these Triggers on social media because they are directed at them. . .
This happens partly because of algorithms and partly because you tend to follow accounts that have built your trust by tweeting things you agree with.

People mindlessly repeat these triggers. They are then transformed into "repeaters of targeted memes" . . .
Snyder finds this terrifying because democracy depends on us having “some sense of time beyond our immediate outrage.”

A good example would be Tweeting this ⤵️after 768 indictments as part of an ongoing investigation during a pandemic. . . .
Read 9 tweets

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