Opinion

There's been a steady drip of revelations for some time now about how much damage Facebook has known its various social media platforms are doing and how little they have done in response. On Sunday, the source of much of this information finally revealed herself on "60 Minutes." Frances Haugen worked for Facebook's "civic integrity" division, a job she says she took because fighting dangerous conspiracy theories was important to her. But she says Facebook wasn't interested in shutting down disinformation at all. Instead, the company sought the appearance of taking the problem seriously while doing as little as possible to interrupt the flow of lies, conspiracy theories and right wing propaganda. The reason, according to Haugen, is simple: Pure profit motive.

"There were conflicts of interest between what was good for the public and what was good for Facebook," Haugen told Scott Pelley. "And Facebook, over and over again, chose to optimize for its own interests, like making more money."

I continue to think regime change is a useful way of understanding politics. That's the idea that American political history turns in cycles. For 40 or 50 years, one party and its ideas prevails over the other with a majority of voters. From the 1930s to the 1970s, it was the Democrats. From the 1980s to the 2010s, it was the Republicans. Each period is punctuated by crisis — world wars, economic shocks or, in our case, the covid pandemic.

Regime change is useful because it helps put the chaos of lived experience into a coherent historical context. But that's not all. Once you're aware of the cycles of political history, you realize very little is set in stone. The political assumptions of the past may or may not be relevant to the new political assumptions of the present. Plus, the political assumptions of the present are not really new. Even as one set of assumptions dominates an era, another set is always already in some stage of development. It just needs an opportunity to emerge.

One of the more memorable quotes from the 2020 post-election period was the one in which a Republican insider blithely told a reporter for the Washington Post that there was no harm in letting Trump cry himself out:

"What is the downside for humoring him for this little bit of time? No one seriously thinks the results will change," the official said. "He went golfing this weekend. It's not like he's plotting how to prevent Joe Biden from taking power on Jan. 20. He's tweeting about filing some lawsuits, those lawsuits will fail, then he'll tweet some more about how the election was stolen, and then he'll leave."

We all know how that turned out, don't we?

One lesson we learn over and over from the news is to check the data that gives rise to conclusions and emotions.

The New York Times report on a recent study showing official records are seriously undercounting police killings neatly captures that idea.

America remains in the grip of an existential democracy crisis: Donald Trump's Republican-fascists and their movement are on the march, winning victory after victory while the Democrats and the "resistance" are hunkered down, doing little if anything to fight back.

This article first appeared in Salon.

Loving thy neighbor and serving the poor are the foundations of what it means to be a faithful Christian. For more than and 200 years, this "Christian nation" has failed in that calling. Back when Haiti gained independence from the French in 1804, John Adams wanted to recognize Haiti as an independent country. He hoped to open trade with the newly formed government, but Thomas Jefferson refused, out of fear that American slaves would start to see themselves as equal. In the modern era, any new immigration laws created either by Democrats or Republicans over the last 50 years always finds a way to ignore the needs and requests of the Haitian people. Apparently, Haiti is too poor and too Black for America to love and to serve. The church has failed Haiti, the politicians have failed Haiti and America has failed Haiti.

This article first appeared in Salon.

It is historically ignorant to describe Joe Biden as a failed president, which hasn't stopped pundits from trying. From MSNBC to New York Magazine, the view has emerged that if Biden's package of infrastructure and spending bills falls flat, it will be his political death sentence. Centrist Democrats like Joe Manchin and Kyrsten Sinema are depicted as holding the president's very career in their hands. By refusing to support filibuster repeal, and then throwing up roadblocks to his proposed $3.5 trillion spending package, they are seemingly making it impossible for Biden to get anything done at all.

This article first appeared in Salon.

Taxing the rich doesn't just entail closing tax loopholes and instituting a new wealth tax. It also means ensuring they pay what they owe in the first place — and that means boosting the Internal Revenue Service's funding.

The richest 1 percent of Americans evade $163 billion every year in taxes. How do they get away with it? Because the IRS doesn't have the tools and resources available to audit these wealthy tax cheats.

I love the word "neurodiversity." "Neurodiversity" — which refers to the idea that some conditions viewed as developmental disorders are actually normal variations in the brain — exists to de-stigmatize autism and spread awareness that some neurological differences can be normal and healthy. My favorite thing about that word, though, is how it implies that there are a great many ways life shapes each distinct neurological type. Like a lot of others with autism, I tend to develop obsessive interests about which I insatiably acquire extensive, detailed knowledge. Worlds have changed because certain interests have caught fire within specific autistic minds.

This article originally appeared at Salon.

In case you missed it, on Monday, Republicans in the narrowly divided U.S. Senate voted to block the approval of new borrowing intended to pay for old debt that they're complicit in racking up.

While entirely unsurprising, the GOP's united front on the debt ceiling is the most transparent kind of political cynicism.

Just over a week ago, the company that calls itself the Cyber Ninjas announced the results of its supposed "audit" of the 2020 election results in Maricopa County, Arizona, the state's major population center. Their findings were disappointing to hardcore Trump conspiracy theorists: Joe Biden's margin of victory actually increased by 99 votes, and there was no finding of systemic errors or election fraud.

This article first appeared in Salon.

A common point in centrist and conservative spaces is that academia has a liberal bias. This charge is levied most often at the social sciences. The logic is easy to follow. There is universal agreement that professors in the social sciences are liberal and vote Democratic. Moreover, it is in social science departments (sociology, anthropology, gender studies and the like) where ideas that challenge inequality are produced. You rarely see a sociologist or someone from African-American studies making claims conservatives find agreeable.

So this must mean their activities are biased. It must mean their research confirms liberal ideas about society, and their teaching will be about indoctrinating students into a liberal worldview. Right? No.

There was a curious hypocrisy in the Senate and House Armed Services Committee grilling of Pentagon brass this week – taking glee in apparent criticism of the White House of Joe Biden, but attacking for disagreeing with that of Donald Trump.

These were the hearings that earned headlines because Republican senators were pressing on gaps between public statements by Biden (or Trump before him) and his generals about whether they were all lined up in support of total withdrawal from Afghanistan. What emerged was that the Pentagon had advised both presidents to keep 2,500 troops longer – until Kabul fell and it became obvious that we needed an emergency effort that airlifted 120,000 Americans and Afghan allies out of the country.