Month: March 2018

Pro-Gun Parents Triggered by Walkout, Sue For Equal Time

by Spocko

From the unprofitable Breitbart site, Big Government.

“A group of parents from New Milford, Connecticut has hired an attorney to articulate their concerns about the decision by their school district to allow students to participate in the national student walkout held Wednesday to advocate for gun control.”

I spent years learning how the right-wing mind works, so I knew this was coming. This is what they are saying:

“It’s not fair that the kids get to have an anti-gun walkout! What about pro-gun kids? If you don’t provide equal time we will sue.”

Since I’m from the future, I can tell you that there will be more of this.

Gun loving parents have already been contacting schools complaining about the walkout on the 14th.  Sadly, it’s working.  For example, students who don’t want to participate in a rescheduled walkout at Romeoville High School will be given 30 minutes free time. (Why did it have to be rescheduled? A student sent out a photo of himself holding a gun saying, “yo it ain’t safe to go to school tmrrw” Also, armed protesters.)

In the letter, made available as well to Breitbart News, Smith and Shugrue wrote that the district’s middle school students “also expressed an interest in participating in the broader conversation,” and would have a “grade appropriate, optional opportunity that focuses on civic participation.”

This issue of “civic participation” is a request for an equal time for the pro-gun message. If they don’t get it? Lawsuits.

Breitbart News asked whether school districts could be faced with further litigation if they do not allow students who wish to hold walkouts for other causes to do so.

 “That’s absolutely a valid concern,” she said. “There are equal protection laws as well, and if you are allowing one group to have free speech on your campus for a partisan purpose, then, obviously, it’s discriminatory not to allow an opposing point of view. So, it absolutely does open up the school districts to litigation and all sorts of other problems.”

The school in question did a good job responding to the threats, pointing out what the walkout was, a student initiated remembrance, vs how the group wanted to position it, a political event pushing for gun control.  But that explanation will be disregarded as ‘legal mumbo jumbo’  by the aggrieved parents and they will keep pushing.

The pro-gun parents will suggest the school districts hold some kind of “educational” event in exchange for dropping the threat of litigation.  Be on the lookout for these gun-friendly programs coming to your schools. Don’t let them go unchallenged!

Yesterday I listened to The UnPresidented Podcast hosted by my friends Cliff Schecter and John Aravosis. They were talking to Shannon Watts, the head of Moms Demand Action, about the progress they have made. At 7:25 she talks about their successes   One type of success that people don’t see involves constantly knocking down hundreds of BS bills from the gun lobby.

I know how much energy it takes to keep blocking the NRA’s legislative work.  Now school districts will be getting pressure from the pro-gun people to implement their solution–more guns in schools.  The people on the school boards and in school districts need to hear from parents who don’t want more guns in schools.

I talk to people who see the whole concept of armed teachers as so absurd and dangerous they think it should go without saying. I tell them. “It needs to be said.” Say it forcefully, repeatedly and with a preponderance of evidence.

I also don’t want more armed police in schools. Not everyone thinks that, but I do and I have multiple reasons why.  I hear people pushing them as an option that, “everyone agrees on.” No. There are other options.

I talked to Michael Brooks on the Majority Report about some of the ways to fight this. All methods will be needed because the people who want to arm teachers have already convinced the legislators to start the money train rolling.

Personally I’m tired of the slaughter lobby and their supporters pushing us around legislatively, economically and personally.

We can stop them. It’s a fight for our lives.

Thank Guccifer 2.0 it’s Friday
by Tom Sullivan

Washington was abuzz Thursday with news that:

a) the Dow Jones industrial average dropped 700 points on fears of a Donald Trump-driven trade war
b) Trump’s national security advisor H.R. McMaster was out
c) Ambassador John Bolton was in as Trump’s third national security adviser

After the Dow plunged yesterday on fears of a trade war, there is no telling what chaos the appointment of noted shooting-war hawk Bolton as national security adviser might produce today. Bolton is known for wanting regime change in Iran and for advocating a first strike on North Korea.

In repsonse to the Bolton announcement, Watergate whistleblower John Dean cheerfully tweeted, “We’re all going to die…”

Trump appointed Michael Flynn as his first national security adviser after warnings Flynn was compromised by Russia. Flynn resigned after only 24 days and pleaded guilty to lying to the FBI about his Russian contacts.

The departure of McMaster as national security adviser was another in a breathtaking list of staff turnovers in the Trump White House. MSNBC’s Rachel Maddow has been keeping a growing list displayed on her set. If nothing else, it is another Trump campaign promise fulfilled. He said he would build a wall.

Virtually lost in the Beltway churn was news that special counsel Robert Mueller’s team has taken over investigation of Guccifer 2.0, the hacker who took credit for providing Wikileaks with emails stolen from the Democratic National Committee. The Daily Beast reported last night that the “lone hacker” has been identified as a Russian military intelligence officer:

While it’s unclear what Mueller plans to do with Guccifer, his last round of indictments charged 13 Russians tied to the Internet Research Agency troll farm with a conspiracy “for the purpose of interfering with the U.S. political and electoral processes, including the presidential election of 2016.” It was Mueller’s first move establishing Russian interference in the election within a criminal context, but it stopped short of directly implicating the Putin regime.

Mueller’s office declined to comment for this story. But the attribution of Guccifer 2.0 as an officer of Russia’s largest foreign intelligence agency would cross the Kremlin threshold—and move the investigation closer to Trump himself.

Through an IP address masking slip-up, investigators tracked Guccifer 2.0 to “a particular GRU officer working out of the agency’s headquarters on Grizodubovoy Street in Moscow.” As opposed to “somebody sitting on their bed that weighs 400 pounds,” as Trump alleged during a presidential debate.

It is likely, however, that the DNC hack was carried out by other individuals. The Washington Post reports, “FBI agents had zeroed in last year on five or six individuals they believed worked for Russia’s military spy agency, the GRU, and hacked the DNC, according to one individual familiar with the case.”

While The Daily Beast’s report does not name specific individuals behind Guccifer 2.0, blogger Marcy Wheeler suggests two added last week to the list of GRU officers sanctioned for the DNC hack: Sergei Afanasyev and Grigoriy Viktorovich Molchanov. Wheeler writes:

Both would actually be (very) experienced officers — they are 55 and 62. And both include very interesting “as of” dates identifying the last point when our intelligence officials identified their positions: February 2017 and April 2016, respectively.

The latter is of particular interest, as it came during the period when Guccifer 2.0 was setting up his infrastructure. But the government doesn’t know a ton about this guy — they know his birth year, but not his birth date, and possibly not even his passport information.

Trump’s firing of former secretary of state Rex Tillerson came one day after his public condemnation of Russia for the chemical attack against former Russian spy living in England. McMaster’s ouster follows his call last week for further punishment of Russia for its complicity in “Assad’s atrocities” in Syria.

No pattern. No pattern.

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by digby

I’m going to go out on a limb here and say that there isn’t much difference:

CNN’s top executive on Thursday tore into Fox News, accusing the network of harming America and comparing it to Russian propaganda. 

Asked at Financial Times’ “Future of News” conference about how CNN’s ratings stack up against Fox’s, CNN president Jeff Zucker offered some of his sharpest criticism of the rival cable-news network to date. 

The CNN chief specifically cited former Fox News analyst Ret. Lt. Col. Ralph Peters, who quit the network this week and sent a note to colleagues lamenting Fox’s transformation into a “propaganda machine.” 

Zucker concurred, adding that Fox’s pro-Trump turn has “shocked” him. Russia’s state-run television outlets, he remarked, “has nothing” on Fox News. 

“It is really state-run TV, it is a pure propaganda machine, and does an incredible disservice to this country,” Zucker said of Fox News. 

He added: “There are a handful of good journalists there, but I think they are lost in a complete propaganda machine, and the idea that they’re a news channel is not the case at all.”

He is obviously being self-serving but he isn’t wrong. Fox has gone completely nuts and that’s saying a lot considering where they started. But really, if you don’t watch the channel regularly as I am forced to do, you probably don’t fully understand just how batshit crazy they are.

They reflect the general lunacy of their audience and shine it back on them. They’ve always done that. But they no longer see the utility in maintaining a pretense of being a legitimate news They’ve decided that they are just going to be Trump TV and entertain the king with flattery and praise. And it’s having a real world impact with Trump hiring the sycophantic, brown-nosers he sees on the “shows” to come into the White House. (Both his hires this week, DiGenova and Bolton are regulars.)

The network has changed a lot since Roger Ailes passed on. And by that I mean it’s gotten even worse. It’s destroying our country at a faster rate than ever.

Stormy, Summer and Karen are the GOP’s worst nightmares

by digby

Greg Sargent had a good piece this morning about how the Stormy Daniels hurricane might trip Trump up more than he realizes. It’s a thought I’ve had as well:

In addition to legal efforts from McDougal and Daniels that might enable them to speak out about their relations with Trump, he is being sued for defamation by Summer Zervos, a former contestant on “The Apprentice” who claims Trump kissed and groped her without her consent, and a judge ruled this week that this suit can proceed. As CNN’s Collinson points out, this means Trump may be facing a period of pretrial discovery and possibly a deposition, which “could put Trump in a perilous position.”

That, plus the prospect of Daniels and McDougal speaking out about Trump, means more public attention to Trump’s treatment of women. Noted Collinson: “Judging by vigorous attempts his lawyers have made to squelch the cases against him, there is considerable concern in Trump’s camp that the thickening legal jungle ensnaring him could come with a high political or legal cost.”

The evidence is mounting on many fronts that the energy, organizing and engagement among female voters — manifested in everything from the initial Women’s March through the #MeToo movement through recent Democratic electoral wins — constitute the cardinal factor in our politics right now. And it seems clear that female alienation from Trump is at the center of it.

Just consider this week’s Quinnipiac University poll, which had relatively good news for Trump. It also found that a staggering 62 percent of women disapprove of his performance, 55 percent strongly. And 55 percent of white women (a majority of whom backed Trump) disapprove, 48 percent strongly. Women want a Democratic House by 56-36. Even white women — a GOP-leaning constituency — favor a Democratic House by 48-44. Separately, new Pew Research Center data shows that among women, identification with the Democratic Party is rising.

Anecdotal evidence and fieldwork have shown that the anti-Trump backlash is heavily driven by mothers and grandmothers who are channeling their anger at Trump into organizing designed to reinvigorate our politics from the grass roots up in communities across the country. And a great deal has been written about how the Democratic victories in places such as Virginia, Alabama and Pennsylvania are being fueled by suburban and college-educated white voters, mostly women.

But Trump’s struggles among female voters may also be chipping away at the foundations of his blue-collar white coalition. As Ron Brownstein recently showed, Trump may even be losing substantial ground among non-college-educated white women, who originally backed Trump in big numbers. This is even happening in the Rust Belt, which could help put some House seats in play outside of the more educated and suburban districts that constitute the low-hanging fruit for Democrats.

In short, Trump’s travails among women may be deepening the gender divide in our politics while eroding the ways in which the class divide — among white voters, at least — had been providing the bedrock of his support.

It’s impossible to know for sure whether women as a group will rise to the occasion. The special elections around the country last year and so far this year indicate that there is a lot of energy among African American women as always (they form the backbone of the party) but as Greg points out, among those suburban college educated white women as well. Polling is showing significant slippage among the white working class women and especially among millennial women who are flocking to the Democratic party and 70% (while millennial men, unfortunately, are lagging behind.)

Let’s just say that a lot of women find Donald Trump and his behavior to be deplorable and leave it at that. Every day that we hear about his treatment of women whether assaulting them or paying them off to keep them silent, is a bad day for Trump’s relationship with half the population. And that’s going to spell trouble for all his enablers and sycophants running for re-election in the fall.

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Targeted retaliation for dummies

by digby

They weren’t born yesterday

Trump went on and on today about using the word “reciprocity” by which he means that if one country is selling America cars, that country has to take an equal number of American cars. It’s a typically childlike approach, in keeping with his puerile understanding of how the world works.  The word he should have been emphasizing was “retaliation” which is what’s going to happen.

The DOW closed down 724 points today after Trump announced that he was slapping tariffs on China. He and his apologists on television (even Club for Growth’s hypocrite of the year, Stephen Moore) all say they believe China will have to capitulate to Trump’s macho provocation.  Yeah, I’m going to guess it may not go the way they think:

China is preparing to hit back at trade offensives from Washington with tariffs aimed at President Donald Trump’s support base, including levies targeting U.S. agricultural exports from Farm Belt states, according to people familiar with the matter.

Europe is also targeting GOP states like Wisconsin cheese and Kentucky bourbon.  They weren’t born yesterday either.

But sure, a crude trade war is just what the doctor ordered. All those Trump voters will be millionaire steel workers and everyone will be happy.

*this is not to say that there are no problems with America’s trade policy. But Trump is a fool and an asshole and will make things worse. Let’s not kid ourselves.

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QOTD: Trumpie

by digby

Remember when they were saying, during the campaign, that Donald Trump is giving great speeches and drawing big crowds, but he is spending much less money and not using social media as well as Crooked Hillary’s large and highly sophisticated staff. Well, not saying that anymore!

— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) March 22, 2018

When he’s right, he’s right. They’re saying he employed a criminal political consulting firm that stole millions of people’s personal data to lie and cheat his way into the presidency using dirty tricks and underhanded tactics.

And he’s bragging about it. Of course.

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For nearly a half century, IBM came as close as any company to bearing the torch for the American Dream.
As the world’s dominant technology firm, payrolls at International Business Machines Corp. swelled to nearly a quarter-million US white-collar workers in the 1980s. Its profits helped underwrite a broad agenda of racial equality, equal pay for women and an unbeatable offer of great wages and something close to lifetime employment, all in return for unswerving loyalty. 

But when high tech suddenly started shifting and companies went global, IBM faced the changing landscape with a distinction most of its fiercest competitors didn’t have: a large number of experienced and aging US employees. 

The company reacted with a strategy that, in the words of one confidential planning document, would “correct seniority mix.” It slashed IBM’s US workforce by as much as three-quarters from its 1980s peak, replacing a substantial share with younger, less-experienced and lower-paid workers and sending many positions overseas. ProPublica estimates that in the past five years alone, IBM has eliminated more than 20,000 American employees ages 40 and over, about 60 percent of its total US job cuts during those years. (Read more about how ProPublica got the story here.) 

In making these cuts, IBM has flouted or outflanked US laws and regulations intended to protect later-career workers from age discrimination, according to a ProPublica review of internal company documents, legal filings and public records, as well as information provided via interviews and questionnaires filled out by more than 1,000 former IBM employees. 

Among ProPublica‘s findings, IBM:

• Denied older workers information the law says they need in order to decide whether they’ve been victims of age bias, and required them to sign away the right to go to court or join with others to seek redress.

• Targeted people for layoffs and firings with techniques that tilted against older workers, even when the company rated them high performers. In some instances, the money saved from the departures went toward hiring young replacements.

• Converted job cuts into retirements and took steps to boost resignations and firings. The moves reduced the number of employees counted as layoffs, where high numbers can trigger public disclosure requirements.

• Encouraged employees targeted for layoff to apply for other IBM positions, while quietly advising managers not to hire them and requiring many of the workers to train their replacements.

• Told some older employees being laid off that their skills were out of date, but then brought them back as contract workers, often for the same work at lower pay and fewer benefits.

I worked in an industry where except for the top executives, you rarely ever see anyone over 50. And women over 40 had better look a lot younger. So I know this phenomenon well. It’s scary to lose your career at that age but it happens all the time and nobody gives a shit. For a lot of people it’s devastating because they are still carrying debt and putting their kids through college.

Of course, eventually the victims just retire or die so their voices disappear. But then another generation comes along. If they’re lucky.

#MeTootimestwo

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The character assassination of Robert Mueller begins in earnest

by digby

I wrote about the next phase for Salon this morning:

After Attorney General Jeff Sessions recused himself from the Russia investigation last spring and Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein named Robert Mueller as special counsel, the most common reaction across the political establishment was relief. This tweet from former House speaker and staunch Trump ally Newt Gingrich perfectly represents the bipartisan consensus at the time:

Robert Mueller is superb choice to be special counsel. His reputation is impeccable for honesty and integrity. Media should now calm down— Newt Gingrich (@newtgingrich) May 18, 2017

It wasn’t long however, before Republicans changed their tune. When it was reported that Mueller and his team were looking into obstruction of justice, the right wing did a U-turn and Gingrich was on the radio agitating for the special counsel’s office to be shut down because James Comey “makes so clear that it’s the poison fruit of a deliberate manipulation by the FBI director leaking to The New York Times, deliberately set up this particular situation. It’s very sick.”

Muelleris now clearly the ti[p of the deep state spear aimed at destroying or at a minimum undermining and crippling the Trump presidency.— Newt Gingrich (@newtgingrich) June 15, 2017

Conservative talk show host Laura Ingraham suggested that Trump’s legal team should question the constitutionality of Mueller’s probe, calling it “an abomination.” The White House even issued talking points instructing its surrogates to insist that if Mueller’s office was looking at obstruction it meant he had “struck out on collusion,” and then to whine about how long the investigation was taking:

A source sent me RNC/Trump talking points for Repubs seeking to discredit tonight’s WaPo scoop on Mueller investigating Trump obstruction —> pic.twitter.com/ctwy2si9A7— Philip Rucker (@PhilipRucker) June 15, 2017

We know now that the president actually tried to fire Mueller during this period, but withdrew the order when White House Counsel Don McGahn threatened to quit.

I wrote a Salon column at the time suggesting that the right was using a well-worn playbook to discredit the prosecutor, and I assumed that was the beginning of an energetic strategy to degrade Mueller’s reputation and provide an argument for Trump to fire him. But it didn’t happen, at least not then.

When Trump hired new attorneys John Dowd and Ty Cobb last June and July, the White House attacks on Mueller stopped and the president’s defenders redirected their ire toward the FBI and Department of Justice. You may recall a report from Foreign Policy magazine last January revealing that after Dowd told Trump that “the potential corroborative testimony of the senior FBI officials in Comey’s account would likely play a central role in the special counsel’s final conclusion,” the president instructed his senior aides to devise a campaign to discredit those officials.

Those officials included former FBI Deputy Director Andrew McCabe, Comey’s former Chief of Staff Jim Rybicki and former FBI General Counsel James Baker. As we all know, McCabe was recently fired, just before he would have qualified for full retirement. Rybicki has left the bureau for a job in the private sector. Baker has been moved to another department by new FBI Director Christopher Wray.

Trump himself famously led the charge against McCabe, repeatedly taunting him on Twitter and making it clear that he wanted him fired before he could retire. He was backed up by all the shouters in the right-wing fever swamps, to the point where it became an article of faith among the Trump true believers that McCabe was an enemy of the state. Trump himself delivered the official talking points after McCabe was fired:

Spent very little time with Andrew McCabe, but he never took notes when he was with me. I don’t believe he made memos except to help his own agenda, probably at a later date. Same with lying James Comey. Can we call them Fake Memos?— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) March 18, 2018

Trump hadn’t tweeted anything about Mueller by name since last June, but he let fly this past weekend. He wrote that the “Mueller probe should never have been started” and wondered “why does the Mueller team have 13 hardened Democrats, some big Crooked Hillary supporters, and Zero Republicans?” (Mueller himself is a Republican, as is his boss Rod Rosenstein.)

It was also announced that Trump had hired a longtime right-wing legal hitman, Joe diGenova, which was widely assumed to be for the purpose of taking the fight to television. As I wrote on Monday, diGenova has been flogging a kooky conspiracy theory that the FBI covered up Hillary Clinton’s crimes and then framed Trump when she failed to win the presidency. So it’s unlikely he will be restrained when it comes to criticizing the Mueller investigation in the media.

Now the anti-Mueller crusade has officially begun. On Tuesday night, Fox News host and Trump confidant Sean Hannity threw down the gauntlet with a scorching rant:

Everybody says, ‘He’s the greatest guy in the whole wide world. Just trust us!’ Well, members of Congress, the mainstream media, they’ve been trying to convince you the special counsel — he is beyond reproach. Sort of like climate change. “Oh, nobody disagrees with us. No scientist does.” That’s not true either! Well, we’ve been doing some digging and we found some things you need to know about.

Hannity went on to mention the Whitey Bulger case in Boston, in which the FBI was found to have covered up for the organized-crime leader who was also serving as an informant. Four men were wrongfully convicted of murder in the 1960s as part of this conspiracy. From 1982 to 1988, Mueller was an assistant U.S. attorney in Massachusetts, under fellow Republican and future Massachusetts governor Bill Weld, and served as acting U.S. attorney for about a year after Weld departed. Hannity and other Trump allies are claiming that means Mueller must have been in on the Bulger cover-up, which extended into that period. “They’ve never investigated him! They’re actually just lying! It’s their talking point!” he shrieked.

None of this is news. Mueller has served as acting deputy attorney general, assistant attorney general for the criminal division of the Department of Justice and FBI director, all of which require Senate confirmation. The fact that the Trump defenders are just now throwing this out there indicates they’ve been saving it for the right moment.

On the heels of Hannity’s broadside, Trump’s favorite O.J. Simpson lawyer, Alan Dershowitz, wrote an op-ed saying that the special counsel should never have been appointed in the first place. Trump eagerly paraphrased it and tweeted out his own version on Wednesday morning.

Then Rep. Louie Gohmert, R-Texas, a noted right-wing gadfly, went on a wild tirade about how “people have not done their homework on who Robert Mueller really is.” He claimed that Mueller “is covering his own rear and his own problems that he created in allowing U.S. uranium to be sold” and had damaged the FBI with “the thousands of years of experience he ran off that might could have helped guide some of these wayward FBI agents away from the path they took.” No, I’m not sure what that means either. Gohmert is a fringe character, but the fact that he too is spouting the line that Mueller hasn’t been adequately vetted suggests that it’s been rehearsed and tested.

Republicans have demonstrated in living color that they have lost the ability to choose competent leaders and govern effectively, but let’s give them credit: They’ve always had a talent for dirty tricks and character assassination. Robert Mueller was undoubtedly aware that he would eventually find himself in their crosshairs and, if anything, is probably surprised it took so long. It looks as though his time in the barrel has arrived and he’s about to find out if that old GOP black magic still works.

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Family values

by digby

Clinton may have been a bad role model but he didn’t go on TV and call athletes and TV broadcasters sons-a-bitches —  among a thousand other crude, cretinous comments. He didn’t write the sort of disgusting, ignorant stuff Trump writes on twitter. He didn’t brag endlessly about how great he is and degrade everyone else in the world (except Vladimir Putin.)  He never boasted about assaulting women.

Nonetheless, more people think Clinton was a bad role model than Trump.

If you are wondering why, it’s largely because Republicans are lying hypocrites. Of course.

The polls point to another factor — Republicans are far more loyal to Trump on this question than Democrats were to Clinton two decades ago. In 1998, Democrats were about half as likely to say their party’s president was a good role model (31 percent) than Republicans are to say the same about Trump today (61 percent). Roughly similar shares of independents both then (22 percent) and now (28 percent) said Clinton and Trump are a good role model, respectively. Among the opposite party of the president, fewer than 10 percent said each was a positive role model in either year.

And keep in mind that this is the “family values” crowd, the people who insist that the world is going to hell in a handbasket because of liberals’ libertine ways.

Sadly, there’s also this:

And there are notable differences when it comes to gender, too. When Clinton was president, 17 percent of men said he was a positive role model. About twice as many say the same about Trump today, 35 percent. Women’s opinions of both presidents are very similar — 24 percent of women said Clinton was a positive role model; 23 percent say Trump is a good role model today.

A whole lot of men think this grotesque phony who brags about grabbing women by the pussy is a role model. It’s sickening.

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Smile and grin at the change all around
by Tom Sullivan

It’s dizzying. Maybe more so than than when Pete Townsend wrote “Won’t Get Fooled Again.” The struggle to come to grips with change drove millions to embrace a cult of personality and the economic populism of Donald Trump.

Damon Linker writes at The Week that technological change brought about the death Sunday of 49-year-old Elaine Herzberg in Tempe, Arizona. Herzberg is the first known pedestrian fatality caused by driverless car technology. Even so, the idea that this genie (or any other) can be put back in the bottle cuts against our reflexive sense that technological change is inevitable and ultimately beneficial.

The rush to embrace drones as hobbyist toys, tools of war, or for government surveillance won’t be seriously questioned, I’ve argued, until a small one takes down an airliner (first drone-linked crash here) or a large, military drone crashes into an American school.

Shrugging at the inevitability of technological advance, Linker argues, leaves us rudderless and adrift as the currents of change carry us we know not where:

Technological innovation benefits us in innumerable ways, but its downsides receive too little attention. Twitter facilitates the communication of information, but it also provided Trump with a megaphone to help build political support for his presidential campaign, just as it powerfully amplifies the voices of extremists of all political stripes. Facebook allows us to easily share personal and political news, but it also sells information about our habits and opinions to the highest bidder, spreads populist poison around the globe, and may have played a significant role in helping the Trump campaign across the finish line in 2016.

In a subtler but no less significant way, the advent of advanced automation (including driverless cars) may benefit many of us while also destabilizing the lives of millions and contributing to the further radicalization of our politics.

The proper response to this threat is not to dismiss the danger or deny anything can be done about it. It’s to recognize the hazard and act to minimize it.

That is, to be agents of change, not its victims.

But minimizing hazard is easier said than done. Facebook and Cambridge Analytica may have been the hidden midwives of the Trump administration. Twitter enables an emotionally and ethically stunted president to proselytize for a culture of systemic deceit and grift. Together with his political party, he is dismantling what once was a beacon of hope in the world.

Brian Beutler writes of the party that once claimed exclusive rights to family values, “They are teaching millions of Americans just how far you can get in life on the strength of what should be the most disreputable kind of behavior, perhaps dooming us to a crisis of public ethics that will plague American society for a generation.”

And the grossest of data-driven psychological manipulation put them in the position to do it. Technology used for amping up fear and a hunger for revanchism rather than engendering hope further divided the nation rather than creating community.

Elections have consequences. So do technological “advancements.” Unintended ones made worse by taking our hand from the tiller.

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Request a copy of For The Win, my county-level election mechanics primer at tom.bluecentury at gmail.