Think Trump's Gone? Think Again! Facebook Troll Farms, and Accidental Deaths: Dinner Table Digest № 19
The Dinner Table Digest is an intermittent collection of interesting material from around the internet, curated by Peter Thurley at Dinner Table Don'ts. Subscribe today!
Before I jump into today’s Digest, I just want to tell you about a few things. First up I want to highlight my “Right to Sex” series, where I am looking at philosopher Amia Srinivasan’s new book, by the same name, chapter by chapter.
In Chapter One, we look at the so-called “Conspiracy against Men.” In Chapter Two, we look at “The Trouble with Pornography,” with the next chapter dealing with incels and the like.
Additionally, I have decided that for Dinner Table Digest 20, the next one to go out, I will be choosing a few of my favourite articles from my previous Digests. If you’ve missed some, this might be a great way to dip your toes in again. If you have any favourites, send them to me at peter@peterthurley.ca
Opinion: Our constitutional crisis is already here - Robert Kagan - Washington Post
Robert Kagan, Senior Fellow at the Brookings Institute has some sobering news for those of us who think that just because Trump was defeated in 2020, that he won’t be back for 2024, this time with compliant Republican officials in key states and overhauled voting laws that make it more difficult for people who vote Democrat to vote.
It would be foolish to imagine that the violence of Jan. 6 was an aberration that will not be repeated. Because Trump supporters see those events as a patriotic defense of the nation, there is every reason to expect more such episodes. Trump has returned to the explosive rhetoric of that day, insisting that he won in a “landslide,” that the “radical left Democrat communist party” stole the presidency in the “most corrupt, dishonest, and unfair election in the history of our country” and that they have to give it back. He has targeted for defeat those Republicans who voted for his impeachment — or criticized him for his role in the riot. Already, there have been threats to bomb polling sites, kidnap officials and attack state capitols. “You and your family will be killed very slowly,” the wife of Georgia’s top election official was texted earlier this year. Nor can one assume that the Three Percenters and Oath Keepers would again play a subordinate role when the next riot unfolds. Veterans who assaulted the Capitol told police officers that they had fought for their country before and were fighting for it again. Looking ahead to 2022 and 2024, Trump insists “there is no way they win elections without cheating. There’s no way.” So, if the results come in showing another Democratic victory, Trump’s supporters will know what to do. Just as “generations of patriots” gave “their sweat, their blood and even their very lives” to build America, Trump tells them, so today “we have no choice. We have to fight” to restore “our American birthright.” …
The world will look very different in 14 months if, as seems likely, the Republican zombie party wins control of the House. At that point, with the political winds clearly blowing in his favor, Trump is all but certain to announce his candidacy, and social media constraints on his speech are likely to be lifted, since Facebook and Twitter would have a hard time justifying censoring his campaign. With his megaphone back, Trump would once again dominate news coverage, as outlets prove unable to resist covering him around the clock if only for financial reasons.
But this time, Trump would have advantages that he lacked in 2016 and 2020, including more loyal officials in state and local governments; the Republicans in Congress; and the backing of GOP donors, think tanks and journals of opinion. And he will have the Trump movement, including many who are armed and ready to be activated, again. Who is going to stop him then? On its current trajectory, the 2024 Republican Party will make the 2020 Republican Party seem positively defiant.
I know this isn’t everyone’s cup of tea, but this song from Norwegian metalers Enslaved makes me irrationally happy.
In 2019, Almost All of Facebook’s Top Christian Pages Were Run By Foreign Troll Farms - Relevant Magazine
North American Christians, by and large, have no idea how they’re being played by bad actors across the world.
In 2019, 19 of Facebook’s top 20 pages for American Christians were run by Eastern European troll farms overseas, internal documents leaked to MIT Technology Review reveal. The data shows the vast spread of Facebook misinformation is largely powered by coordinated efforts among foreign professionals working together to spread provocative content in the U.S.
These groups, based largely in Kosovo and Macedonia, have been particularly successful when it comes to targeting American Christians. Though they split their efforts among multiple pages, they were mostly operated by the same groups. Collectively, their Christian Facebook pages reach about 75 million users a month — an audience 20 times the size of the next largest Christian Facebook page.
The Sorrow and the Shame of the Accidental Killer - Alice Gregory - The New Yorker
What happens if to you if you accidentally kill someone? This situation arose in my family when my Uncle John, who was a ‘little person,’ crossed the road late at night after working his job at McDonalds and was struck and killed by a driver who simply never saw him. While there is culpability, the fact that the death was completely accidental makes for a difficult way back for the person who killed my Uncle. In this piece, we see that there are no academic studies or researchers working on the mental health and well-being of accidental killers. There are no specific counselling options for them; the closest are folks who deal with veterans, but there too, it’s different.
There are self-help books written for seemingly every aberration of human experience: for alcoholics and opiate abusers; for widows, rape victims, gambling addicts, and anorexics; for the parents of children with disabilities; for sufferers of acne and shopping compulsions; for cancer survivors, asexuals, and people who just aren’t that happy and don’t know why. But there are no self-help books for anyone who has accidentally killed another person. An exhaustive search yielded no research on such people, and nothing in the way of therapeutic protocols, publicly listed support groups, or therapists who specialize in their treatment…
I spoke to six people who had caused accidental deaths, on the phone and in person, and the tone and the structure of their accounts were eerily uniform. They spoke quickly and compulsively, assuming the role of the sincere and reliable narrator of a realist novel. No detail seemed too small to share: the color of the sky that day, what song was playing on the radio. They spoke of losing time after the accident, and they apologized, often repeatedly, for the minutes for which they couldn’t account. Near the end of their stories, they would take a moment to catch their breath and offer a statement that got at the incomprehensible enormity of it all. Then they would apologize again, this time for having spoken for so long.
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