around the web

• DeJoy Is Hell-Bent on Wrecking the Postal Service — and Maybe Your Life (Lauren Weinstein)

[Postmaster General Louis DeJoy's] 10-year plan for destroying the USPS, by treating it like his former for-profit shipping logistics business rather than the SERVICE is was intended to be — was released today, along with a flurry of self-congratulatory official USPS tweets that immediately attracted massive negative replies, most of them demanding that DeJoy be removed from his position. Now. Right now!

• A Biden Appointee's Troubling Views On The First Amendment (Matt Taibbi)

The Cliff’s Notes version of [a thesis of Columbia prof Timothy Wu, recently appointed to the National Economic Council]:

— The framers wrote the Bill of Rights in an atmosphere where speech was expensive and rare. The Internet made speech cheap, and human attention rare. Speech-hostile societies like Russia and China have already shown how to capitalize on this “cheap speech” era, eschewing censorship and bans in favor of “flooding” the Internet with pro-government propaganda.

— As a result, those who place faith in the First Amendment to solve speech dilemmas should “admit defeat” and imagine new solutions for repelling foreign propaganda, fake news, and other problems. “In some cases,” Wu writes, “this could mean that the First Amendment must broaden its own reach to encompass new techniques of speech control.” What might that look like? He writes, without irony: “I think the elected branches should be allowed, within reasonable limits, to try returning the country to the kind of media environment that prevailed in the 1950s.”

Meaning, enforce a balance of viewpoints, presumably, as government did under the old Fairness Doctrine. Taibbi believes Biden's antitrust people don't want to break up big tech companies so much as harness their broad reach. (For good, of course.) Taibbi quotes another writer, Matt Stoller, comparing social media monopolies to Tolkein's One Ring of Power that of course everyone wants. But will the "difficult" voices who are currently being deplatformed in droves be returned to their pulpits under Biden? Not likely, since Timothy Wu's beloved 1950s were a time of top-down control, "fairness" notwithstanding.

Left-leaning online mag Counterpunch (which was good before it went full-on Russiagater) defends censorship in a recent article about the hot topic du jour:  dated racial stereotypes in old Dr. Seuss kids' books.

It’s a fairly self-righteous screed that employs the familiar tactic of arguing that “if X is allowed, it will lead to death camps!”

It's hard to convey without reading it how un-nuanced this writing is. In fact Ted Geisel (Dr. Seuss) worked as a cartoonist during World War II and helped rally Americans to save people from death camps. This Counterpuncher doesn't want truth to get in the way of a good rant, though.

An emailer calls political comedian Jimmy Dore, who recently campaigned on YouTube to "force" a Congressional vote on universal healthcare, a "showboat" and I don't agree. Disgust at the Democratic Party shilling for moneyed interests drives Dore's ranting more than the desire for more followers -- if he wanted those he could just bash Trump. Dore's flaw is an overuse of superlatives when he starts ranting, calling something the worst when it's just bad. And his #forcethevote initiative during a pandemic was a good idea, even though that particular inflection point (Pelosi's election as Speaker) has passed.

Political theorist Benjamin Studebaker makes a good case for Dore here. Another writer, Yasha Levine, gives more qualified support. Levine believes Dore and like-minded commenters put too much faith in the federal government to solve problems. "They really think they can meaningfully impact change on a federal level," he writes, "despite the fact that beyond their popular podcasts and YouTube channels and their pitiful collection of Congressional seats, there is no organized political movement to back them or their policies up."

Studebaker, in a later post, makes a similar point, expanding it to cover populist movements on both the left and right. Compared to real threats to oligarchic power in the US in the 1930s, he believes, the riots of the past six months have been closer to the peasant revolts of the more distant past. "When the peasants go to war, they never win. They are never well-organized enough, and their weapons and training are always far too inferior to give them any chance at all. Despite this, peasant revolts can go on for a long time and cause a lot of devastation. But there is never really any danger of the rebels taking the state and holding it."

Who defiles the sacred Capitol more, red state tourists allowed by police to roam the halls, yelling uncouthly, or Schumer, Pelosi, McConnell, et al, who sell their offices every day to the highest corporate bidders? (It's a rhetorical question.)

Update: Of course putting riot in scare quotes makes light of what we will be hearing described as an insurrection or coup for the rest of our natural lives.

No, sorry, violent insurrection, according to Wall Street on Parade, a left-leaning finance site, which heats up the rhetoric even further by declaring it "the worst battle in the U.S. Capitol building since the British attempted to burn the place down in 1814 (during the War of 1812)."

C.J. Hopkins has given up trying to cool down the rhetoric and joins his progressive friends in a full-throated 30 Minutes Hate against Trump and all the small town moms and pops who voted for him:

Oh, yes, you really did it this time! You stormed the goddamned US Capitol. You and your racist, Russia-backed army of bison-hat wearing half-naked actors have meddled with the primal forces of GloboCap [Global Capitalism], and now, by God, you will atone! No, do not try to minimize your crimes. You entered a building without permission! The building where America simulates democracy! You walked around in there waving silly flags! You went into the Chamber, into people’s offices! One of you actually put his filthy populist feet up on Pelosi’s desk … ON HER DESK! This aggression will not stand!

Update 2: The Grayzone offers some background on Capitol invader John Sullivan, who videotaped the Ashli Babbit shooting and can be seen on the tape running around the building yelling encouragement to the Trumpists. Was he a Trumpist himself? A BLM activist? (BLM says no.) A police plant? Answering such questions might be helpful, rather than immediately demonizing small town Trump supporters as domestic terrorists (which the DC elite are busy doing).

Update 3: Bernard, Moon of Alabama: "The anti-Trump campaign, from Russiagate to Ukrainegate to this "insurrection" nonsense, has likely done more damage to the U.S. than Trump managed to do during his four years in office. The hostility the Democrats have shown will create a huge backlash. Do they really believe that can suppress 74 million Trump voters?"

Update 4: In 1967 the Black Panther Party entered the State Assembly Chamber in Sacramento, CA, carrying guns. No one was injured but the protest stirred up a similar panic among the haute bourgeois. The difference is, now, the people freaking out and heating up the rhetoric are the wealthy DC elite rather than California Republicans. Hat tip to PR for fact-checking me on which public building got invaded. It wasn't the US Capitol, as I had written, duh.

Yves Smith didn't say if a specific topic caused her to turn off comments on her blog Naked Capitalism (which has a lively and informative comments section).
"I am tired of adjudicating extended off topic discussions (aka 'thread-jacking'), regular Making Shit Up, conspiracy theories, and threats of bodily harm," was all she said.
Possibly it was arguments about political comedian Jimmy Dore's #ForceTheVote initiative. He's been demanding from his YouTube pulpit that so-called progressive House Democrats withhold their vote from the odious Nancy Pelosi in her race for House Speaker. That should be a given; she's one of the most hated politicians in America. Dore wanted AOC and the rest of the squad to use their speakership vote to force a House-wide floor vote on Medicare for All. This would have the effect bringing the issue to the fore in the midst of The Pandemic, to make representatives affirmatively declare yes or no on the issue, rather than offer vague promises and postpone consideration. The idea isn't to actually win, but to start making moves in that direction, as opposed to doing nothing.
Dore was much discussed on Naked Capitalism's last big commentfest before the shutoff. Yves Smith intervened a couple of times to declare Dore a "troll" and a political "latecomer." She's wrong about both; he's a refreshing voice on the left, and has been courageous in critizing Bernie and AOC for their spinelessness in the face of "corporate Democrat" control. Sadly the moment has passed -- the Squad voted for Pelosi this week. Maybe NC comments can come back on now.

Update, Jan 11, 2021: Naked Capitalism is re-enabling comments. Yves Smith mentioned only one issue as a cause for the holiday (there were doubtless others):

An example of the sort of discussion that has degraded the comments section: the bizarre talking point that Sanders was a “sheepdog,” which was repeatedly injected into the comments section despite the lack of news hooks in Links or current articles. Technically, this was a classic example of yet another Policies violation called “thread jacking.” We should have expunged those comments and moderated or blacklisted offenders.

You can legitimately criticize Sanders for how he conducted his campaign, and in particular, his decision to suspend it after the weekend of the long knives. But the notion that Sanders was campaigning to do Team Dem a big favor never had any factual foundation, consistent with the inability of proponents to provide one.

These discussion were not only a rancorous waste of space, they sucked attention and energy away from productive post mortem analysis. Understanding why Sanders failed and assessing what if anything he could have been done to change the outcome would be helpful to future campaigns. But instead we witnessed repetitive, seemingly unending, unsubstantiated accusations. And this argument could never go anywhere because the charge presumed that Sanders had been consciously operating in bad faith from the very outset. Strong claims require strong evidence, yet there was none.