"Democracy is Teetering"

The Dark Elf wrote: lazland wrote: The trouble is that most of these threads descend into nasty behaviour, a kind of obsessive w**kery which does the participants or the site itself no credit whatsoever. In my estimation, not a single soul has ever moved from their original premise or has changed their opinion on the Interwebz regarding politics or religion. It is fruitless, and this thread has long ago devolved into nonsensical and reptitious rambling fraught with misquotes and misinterpretations. Time to end this inanity.  lazland wrote: Okay, back into my hole.... Given your location, hopefully it is a nice and cozy Welsh Hobbit hole, Mr. Baggins.

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Easy Money wrote: There is plenty of dissent on the US internet, to add to the complexity of the situation, a good share of the dissent comes from Russians doing a bad job of posing as US citizens.

The Dark Elf wrote: In my estimation, not a single soul has ever moved from their original premise or has changed their opinion on the Interwebz regarding politics or religion.

Correct. However, some youngsters can shape their views by reading such arguments/debates. It never is our goal while arguing such things, yet it can have such an advantage. Also hearing different perspectivas ain't a bad thing, methinks. I'm, thus, okay with such disputes; howbeit their absence wouldn't hurt, either. 

Also, in the past the situation was a lot worse. And I wouldn't say that I missed that knock-down drag-out era of PA. 

Edited by Archisorcerus - April 08 2024 at 03:06

^ I've also been affected by seeing such quarrels and/or exchange of ideas. They can be fruitful in one way or another. Yet, I wouldn't say that my perception is/was altered or changed.

The most wonderful thing about living in a democracy is the right to state your opinions without being censored. You can't yell fire in a movie theater but you can say almost anything else. There are also civil law procedures for those engaging in public misinformation. See Rudy Giuliani. A wonderful check against these koo-koos.

Of course, everything changes, including opinions on religion and politics.  It may be gradual or rapid, slight or considerable, but it does change over time. I bet everyone here knows of someone that changed their perspective on a religious or political matter.

Wasn’t there a chap here called Dean that went from being very religious to total atheist?

In many respects it is extremely hard to know the truth, and what is true is controversial even among experts, for example scientists in the same field. There is no instance that has absolute authority to distinguish information from misinformation. One implication of this is that it is also covered by the freedom of speech that somebody can call "misinformation" what is "information" to somebody else.

Lewian wrote: In many respects it is extremely hard to know the truth, and what is true is controversial even among experts, for example scientists in the same field. There is no instance that has absolute authority to distinguish information from misinformation. One implication of this is that it is also covered by the freedom of speech that somebody can call "misinformation" what is "information" to somebody else.

That is true some cases, but not in others as a lack of concrete validation for this misinformation is easily confirmed. The problem is people still believing the misinformation once they are concretely disproved. Again, See Rudy Giuliani.

CosmicVibration wrote: I think most agree that censorship of truth is a serious threat to democracy.  We are treading in very dangerous waters. https://reclaimthenet.org/supreme-court-biden-admin-big-tech-censorship   The respondents in the case, the States of Missouri and Louisiana, and several other individuals who were subject to social media censorship, allege that the federal government had pressured platforms to block or downgrade posts on various topics, including some related to Covid and the Hunter Biden laptop story. Several lower courts agreed with the respondents, with a district judge describing the Biden administration’s Big Tech-censorship collusion as “Orwellian” and the Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals finding that the Biden admin likely violated the First Amendment when pushing for social media censorship.

And that's a great example! Biden had no right to censor free speech on any social media platform. The same holds true for Trump being banned from Twitter. The 1st Amendment protecting free speech is, in my opinion, the most important guarantee of a democratic system. Once that right is lost or restricted, then democracy is over.

Edited by SteveG - April 08 2024 at 09:07

Let’s see how the Supreme Court rules on the issue.  What if Trump gets into office and has the power to influence censorship?

https://reclaimthenet.org/biden-administration-urges-supreme-court-to-overturn-injunction-on-federal-agencies-influencing-tech-censorship