We had a very consequential week, followed by a consequential weekend. Sunday was both the Super Bowl and Groundhog Day. It was also a very rare eight-digit palindrome when written as 02/02/2020, the first since 11/11/1111.
We had the âdeal of the centuryâ that isnât, and the Chiefs won the Super Bowl. But the Constitution died.
And so did Kobe Bryant and his daughter, along with seven others. It doesnât take a basketball fan to feel shocked and saddened when a Dad and his 13-year old daughter are suddenly killed. Of course we know about Kobe Bryant, a basketball genius who, in his retirement, helped young people and championed womenâs basketball. His life story was complicated, but if you think that people can work hard and redeem themselves, Kobe Bryant is your prime example:
The movie thatâs always on repeat:
Peace? Or pieces?
Brexit happened, the UK is now going it alone:
Failing to call witnesses shows that the GOPâs loyalties have shifted:
Beauty is in the eye of the beholder:
Brown paper bags have replaced the MAGA hats for GOP Senators:
With Iowa voting tomorrow, itâs important to know your enemies:
The Subway, Zion NP, UT – 2019 photo by DarthButane. This is a nine-mile round trip hike.
When it comes to the impeachment trial, nothing thatâs said really matters, if you are hoping for a fair review of guilty, vs. not guilty.
Letâs spend a moment reviewing Adam Schiffâs closing remarks on Thursday night. He was off the charts brilliant:
âThe American people deserve a president they can count on to put their interests first, to put their interest first. Colonel Vindman said, here, right matters. Here, right matters.
Well, let me tell you something. If right doesn’t matter, if right doesn’t matter, it doesn’t matter how good the constitution is. It doesn’t matter how brilliant the framers were. It doesn’t matter how good or bad our advocacy in this trial is. It doesn’t matter how well-written the oath of impartiality is. If right doesn’t matter, we’re lost. If truth doesn’t matter, we’re lost. The framers couldn’t protect us from ourselves, if right and truth don’t matter. And you know that what he did was not right. â
Schiff concluded with: (emphasis by Wrongo)
âBut here, right is supposed to matter. It’s what’s made us the greatest nation on earth. No constitution can protect us if right doesn’t matter anymore. And you know you can’t trust this president to do what’s right for this country. You can trust he will do what’s right for Donald Trump. He’ll do it now. He’s done it before. He’ll do it for the next several months. He’ll do it in the election if he’s allowed to.
This is why, if you find him guilty, you must find that he should be removed. Because right matters. Because right matters. And the truth matters. Otherwise we are lost.â
He didnât read this, he spoke from the heart. He wasnât histrionic, or angry. However, he did deliver a sharp condemnation of Trump. He all but said âIf Trump walks, and is re-elected, this country is finished.â
That fell flat with some Republicans:
Republicans have really thin skins when it comes to attacks on the guy who tweets insults for a living.
Schiff didn’t pretend that witnesses are a real possibility. He didn’t pretend Democrats are going to get documents. He didn’t pretend that GOP Senators will do the right thing.
He made it clear to the real jury, Americaâs voters, whatâs at stake, and exactly who is shirking their duties. Heâs shown us that Republicans no longer even pretend to give a flying f__k about democracy, honesty, or the Constitution.
Was it a tough week for you? Jim Lehrer died. The long-time anchor of the PBS NewsHour was possibly the last of his kind. Wrongo often watched Lehrer’s careful, considered journalism on PBS, along with his moderation of presidential debates. He was never one of those in the news media who thrive on gotcha questions and confrontations.
Time to let it all go for a few minutes. Iitâs time for our Saturday Soother. Here, the fields of Wrong still have snow on the ground, although it is now crisscrossed by the tracks of all sorts of animals. Weâre in for a rainy weekend, so letâs start by brewing up a mug of coffee that is recommended by Wrongoâs daughter, Merrill. Itâs Colombia Santa Rita coffee ($16/12 oz.) with its notes of caramel, toasted almond, and powdered cocoa, from Rainier Coffee.
Now settle back near a fire, and listen to a piece of cello music from Henry Eccles, a violinist from Great Britain who was born in 1670. We will listen to the Largo section of his âSonata for Violoncello in G minorâ, played by Maxim Kozlov, who calls himself âCellopediaâ:
Wrongo and Ms. Right heard this played on New Yearâs Day by Sam Magill, cellist with the NY Metropolitan Opera Orchestra. He hasnât recorded it professionally, but you will love this sad, emotional performance by Kozlov.
Those who read the Wrongologist in email can view the video here.
Trump survived the week. The Democrats got just about everything they hoped for out of 32 hours of impeachment hearings. Current and former Trump administration officials told different parts of a consistent story, and reinforced a consistent narrative of wrongdoing.
But Trump liked the week, since no cracks emerged in Republican defenses. On to cartoons. The real Impeachment jury:
Hearings gave another platform to GOP conspiracy theories:
Behold the noose of Sondland:
GOP talking points:
Trump and Bibi: Two pleas in a pod:
One if by Facebook! Two if by Twitter:
Prince Andrew will be spending more time with family and less with underage women:
Regarding the omnipresent Trump/Biden news, virtually all Republicans are on the same page:
The Bidens are guilty of something
They should be investigated
Trump committed no crime
The Democrats are out to get Trump
The right has worked with Fox State News to neutralize facts, so every issue is up for grabs, even things you know is true. Global warming? It’s undecided. Biden’s activity with Ukraine? Every newspaper has debunked it. And it wasnât just Obama and Biden who wanted that Ukraine prosecutor gone, all of the European leaders and the head of the IMF wanted him out too.
But for Republicans, those arenât facts, because something must have been going on. Now, Bidenâs let Trump and the GOP define him. They say he should be investigated, because he must have done something wrong, everyone says so.
You’ve got to fight to win the news cycle these days. We can’t remember what happened yesterday, let alone last month.
But, once again, it looks like the Dems plan to work very slowly, sacrificing the narrative. All they have to say is, âhe did itâ.
Will they again grab defeat from the jaws of victory? On to cartoons. Hereâs the meme of the week:
Views differ on what the Ukraine thingy means:
GOP is strangely silent on Trumpâs actions:
New movie hits theaters this weekend. Most would like to wipe this horror show from their minds:
Itâs more likely that Trump would say: “It would be unfortunate if somehow, he got shot in the leg“:
Rudy plans a spirited defense of whatever this is:
Torres del Paine NP, Chile – 2016 photo by Andrea Pozzi
After our granddaughterâs graduation in PA (summa cum laude), we had a few wines and beers, and talk turned to politics and the mess America is in now. Son-in-law Miles, (dad of next weekâs grad) asked a very good question. âIs now really the worst of times? What about when Martin Luther King was assassinated?â
Wrongo immediately flashed back to JFKâs assassination. He was a DC college student when JFK died. But his focus wasnât on the loss of a president, or what that meant to the country. His focus was on what the loss of JFK meant personally.
That changed in 1968 with the assassinations of MLK and RFK. Wrongo was in the Army, stationed in Germany when Dr. King was killed. There was great tension in the enlisted menâs barracks. For a few days, it took a lot of effort in our small, isolated unit to keep anger from boiling over into outright fighting between the races.
By the time we lost RFK, it was clear that the Vietnam War would drag on, killing many of Wrongoâs friends. But, Wrongoâs job was to defend America from the Russians, with nuclear weapons if necessary.
It was difficult to see how or when Vietnam would end. It was hard to imagine Richard Nixon, Henry Kissinger, or Robert McNamara doing much to stop young Americans from dying in Asia.
The year 1968 also included the Tet Offensive. Mark Bowen in his book, Hue 1968, says:
âFor decades….the mainstream press and, for that matter, most of the American public, believed their leaders, political and military. Tet was the first of many blows to that faith in coming years, Americans would never again be so trusting.â (p. 507)
When Americans finally saw the Pentagon Papers in 1971, they learned that Americaâs leaders had been systematically lying about the scope and progress of the war for years, in spite of their doubts that the effort could succeed. The assassinations, Vietnam, and Watergate changed us forever.
Our leaders failed us, it was clearly the worst of times. We were in worse shape in 1968 than we are in 2019. Back then, it felt like the country was coming apart at the seams, societyâs fabric was pulling apart. Then, May 4th 1970 brought the killings of college kids at Kent State, which was probably the lowest point in our history, at least during Wrongoâs life time.
Last week, we acknowledged the 49th anniversary of Americaâs military killing American students on US soil. We vaguely remember the Neil Young song âOhioâ with its opening lyrics:
âTin soldiers and Nixon coming, weâre finally on our own…â
Thatâs why the decade from 1960-1970 was the worst of times. We got through it, but we have never been the same.
In 1968, we saw that change can arrive suddenly, fundamentally, and violently, even in America. Bob Woodward spoke at Kent State last week, on Saturday, May 4th. He offered some brand-new information about Nixonâs reaction to the student shootings: (emphasis by Wrongo)
âIn a conversation with his chief of staff H.R. Haldeman in September 1971, Nixon suggested shooting prisoners at New Yorkâs Attica Prison riot in a reference to the Kent State tragedy. âYou know what stops them? Kill a few,â Nixon says on a tape of the conversation.â
Woodward continued:
âWe now know what really was on Nixonâs mind as he reflected…on Kent State after 17 months….Kent State and the protest movement was an incubator for Richard Nixon and his illegal wars.â
Woodward meant that what was coming was a war on the news media, creation of the âPlumbersâ unit to track down leaks, and attempts to obstruct justice with the Watergate cover-up.
Many of us see 2020 shaping up as another 1968. Some see Nixon reincarnated in Trump.
We havenât faced this particular set of circumstances before, so we canât know just how it will go. Will it be worse than the 1960s, or just another terrible American decade? Is it the best of times, or the worst of times?
Are we willing to fight to preserve what we have anymore?
Wake up America, you have to fight for what America means to us. Constitutional liberties are under attack. The right to vote is being undermined. Extreme Nationalism has been emboldened.
To help you wake up, listen once again to âOhioâ by Neil Young in a new solo performance from October, 2018. Heâs added some documentary footage and a strong anti-gun message:
You may not know that Chrissie Hynde, the future lead singer of The Pretenders was a Kent State student, and was on the scene at the time.
Those who read the Wrongologist in email can view the video here.
How comfortable will Americans be with Trump in the White House, now that they have learned that he did nothing prosecutable while he was trying to get the job?
âDemocrats only control who they nominate and what they emphasize in the campaign….On policy, Democrats have a wide variety of subjects that could allow them to make a favorable contrast with Trump: climate change, health care, and economic fairness, just to mention three. The message and the messenger will be critical.â
Sabato points out that the Democrats did not run on the Mueller probe in the 2018 mid-terms, and that for the most part, the announced 2020 candidates havenât really been doing much of that either.
The biggest fallout from the Mueller investigation is that Trump gets to say heâs an undeserving victim for the next two years. No matter what negative things may come out in the next two years, Trump has been inoculated against real political harm. He can always say itâs the same people who were wrong about him during the Russia investigation. Heâs certain to keep saying the mediaâs coverage of him is âFake Newsâ.
One victim of Muellerâs non-findings is the main stream media. They were largely anti-Trump and anti-Russia throughout the Russia investigation. Now, they look biased in exactly the manner that Trump has been saying they were for the last two years.
âNobody wants to hear this, but news that Special Prosecutor Robert Mueller is headed home without issuing new charges is a death-blow for the reputation of the American news media.â
He means most of the mainstream media. Itâs a long read in which Taibbi highlights several media outlets including the NYT. He starts with Mondayâs Times editorial: âWe donât need to read the Mueller reportâ. Taibbi says they make that point because: (brackets by Wrongo)
âWe [the NYT] know Trump is guilty, Baker at least [NYTâs Peter Baker] began the work of preparing Times readers for a hard question: âHave journalists connected too many dots that do not really add up?â
He compares the mediaâs coverage of Russiagate to their coverage of whether Iraq had weapons of mass destruction (WMD) when we were making the decision to invade during GW Bushâs administration. In hindsight, the media was badly compromised then when they dutifully reported what the administration wanted them to report.
Finally, the Democrats have to deal with their own fallout. They can continue investigating Trump, looking for some fire behind all the smoke. Or they can move forward, and focus on building a winning campaign for 2020. Itâs possible that the ongoing House investigations of Trump may bear fruit, and provide some campaign fodder.
Journalism in 2019 appears to have returned to the way it was in Americaâs early history. Itâs become another partisan element in our politics. And, as the process of journalism has decayed, somehow, peopleâs ability to contextualize facts seems to have decayed right along with our journalists.
The reputation of the American media as free, independent and truth-seeking was always a myth. Think about our unjustified Spanish-American war (âRemember the Maineâ) was more than 100 years ago and it was promoted by the press (Hearst papers).
We do know that Russia conducted a sophisticated information operation to influence the 2016 election. Muellerâs investigation firmly established this. But Wrongo still doesnât see anything to say their efforts upended the 2016 electoral results.
The various Congressional and DOJ investigations will continue, just as sure as the sun will rise in the east. What is uncovered is likely to be more of the same, and not advance the ball towards the goal line.
Hopefully soon, weâll see a press conference by AG Barr and Mueller. That will be must-see TV.
Grand Prismatic Spring, Yellowstone NP – 2018 photo by dontyakno
Wrongo hasnât written much about the Trump/Russia investigation. Most of those pieces have shown skepticism about Russian interference in our election process. There is, however, clear evidence that the Trump campaign reached out to the Russians more than 100 times. While thatâs unusual, it isnât on its face, criminal, although the Trump campaign failed to alert the FBI about those contacts.
There are investigations underway by Mueller, the Southern District of NY, and several House committees. Trump has castigated each, calling them a witch hunt and fake news. Nearly all Republicans have sided with him about these multiple investigations.
It isnât unusual that the GOP is indifferent to the range of possible Trump wrongdoing. On Tuesday, the WaPoâs Greg Sargent helpfully cataloged the things that Republicans in Congress think should not be investigated about Trump by the Democrats in Congress:
Materials relating to any foreign government payments to Trumpâs businesses, which might constitute violations of the Constitutionâs emoluments clause.
Materials that might shed light on Trumpâs negotiations about a real estate project in Moscow, which Trump concealed from the voters even after the GOP primaries were in progress. Michael Cohen is going to prison for lying to Congress about the deal.
Parenthetically, and not part of Greg Sergeantâs list, Marcy Wheeler thinks that the most important crime in the Trump era is a probable quid quo pro in which the Russians (and Trump) seemed willing to trade a new Moscow Trump Tower for sanctions relief should Trump win the presidency.
Materials that might show whether Trumpâs lawyers had a hand in writing former Trump lawyer Michael Cohenâs testimony to Congress that falsified the timeline of those negotiations.
Materials that might illuminate/prove Trumpâs suspected efforts to obstruct the FBI/Mueller investigation.
Materials that would shed more light on the criminal hush-money schemes that Cohen carried out, allegedly at Trumpâs direction, and on Trumpâs reimbursement of those payments. These most likely violate campaign finance laws.
But, they close by saying that Trump may survive all of it, and that Republican voters seem basically unmoved by the mounting evidence.
Why is it so difficult for people of both parties to coalesce around either his guilt, or innocence? Â How is it that we just forget about the breathtaking corruption of Trump Cabinet Secretaries Scott Pruitt, or Ryan Zinke?
Many of the Federal judges on the Russian investigation who have ruled against Trumpâs associates. The judges say the Trumpies were selling out the interests of the US. That has consequences for Americans, including the constituents of the Republican members of Congress who want us to stop investigating.
Itâs depressingly clear that 2020 will be another close presidential election. The Republican Party is willing to condone bad behavior and criminality when the perpetrator is one of their own.
How can America rectify this problem? Even if a Democrat wins the presidency, it is unlikely the Dems will win a majority in the Senate. So, the GOP will again use the same obstructionist game plan we saw during the Obama administration.
It turned out that most people agreed with the statement, until they are told that it was said by someone in the other political party. Then they disagreed. If people can only agree with a meaningless statement when they think it was said by their political party, what hope do we have to find agreement when the stakes are high, like in the Mueller investigation?
Given the Republicansâ disinterest for seeking the truth behind the Trump scandals, the outlook for our democracy is grim.
We need to be clear-eyed about how much work, and how long it will take, to right the ship.
The Cuernos del Paine in Chile â photo via Live Science. The 4,300-mile-long Andes, the longest continuous mountain range in the world, didn’t form slowly by one geologic plate sliding under another. They grew in two growth spurts helped by volcanic action. (Hat tip to Ottho H.)
What Trump said about El Paso in the SOTU:
âThe border city of El Paso, Texas, used to have extremely high rates of violent crimeâone of the highest in the country, and (was) considered one of our nationâs most dangerous cities. Now, with a powerful barrier in place, El Paso is one of our safest cities,â
Local politicians werenât happy with Trumpâs false claims that the city was violent and dangerous before a border wall was built. Trump was repeating bogus information from Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton. And, he had made the same claim at the American Farm Bureau convention in mid-January.
Here is an example of the local outrage. Jon Barela, the chief executive officer of the Borderplex Alliance, which leads economic development efforts in the El Paso region, tweeted:
Texas Monthly reports that El Paso has made lists of the nationâs safest cities for almost two decades. But what are facts when you have a wall to build on the back of a racist narrative?
Wrongo lived in El Paso for a time when he was in the military (Vietnam era), back before there was talk of a wall, before the Maquiladora factories became a part of NAFTA, when Ciudad Juarez was probably far more dangerous than it is today. But back then, El Paso couldnât be considered dangerous for someone who went to college in Washington DC, and lived on the outskirts of NYC.
One state over in New Mexico, Governor Michelle Lujan Grisham, a Democrat, has ordered the withdrawal of the majority of National Guard troops stationed at the US state’s southern border, denouncing as “a charade” President Donald Trump’s warnings about migrants swarming the border, saying:
“I reject the federal contention that there exists an overwhelming national security crisis at the southern border, along which are some of the safest communities in the country,”
Are you getting the theme here? Two of the states closest to âthe problemâ say there isnât a problem.
Kevin Drum at MoJo gathered the El Paso statistics. He shows that Trump cherry-picked the data, looking at 2005-2009. There was a spike from 400 crimes/100,000 people in 2005 to 450 crimes/100,000 people in 2008. Here is a chart showing the same statistics from 1993 to 2013:
Do you see the big reduction that came with the Wall? The Wall had almost no effect on crime in El Paso. It’s also important to remember that crime rates have come down throughout the US since the 1980’s.
The most damning fact about crime on the southern border is that it is way down. American Progress reports that:
Border cities are among the nationâs safest: Phoenix and other large border (and near-border) cities have some of the nationâs lowest crime rates, including San Diego, El Paso, and Austin
Border counties have low violent crime rates: Counties along the southwest border have some of the lowest rates of violent crime per capita in the nation. Their rates have dropped by more than 30% since the 1990s.
Thereâs no evidence of âspilloverâ of violence from Mexico: El Paso, Texas, has three bridges leading directly into Ciudad Juarez, Mexico, a city which has suffered a significant percentage of the national death toll brought on by the Mexican war on drug cartels, which approaches 23,000 today.
El Paso experienced only 12 murders in 2009, which was actually down from 17 in 2008. San Diego, California saw 41 murders in 2009, down from 55 in 2008, and Tucson, Arizona experienced 35 in 2009 a significant decrease from the 65 murders committed in 2008.
We should remember that Trump is from Queens, an outer borough of New York City. He lived there during the 1970s and 1980s, so he knows first-hand what living in a high crime city feels like. He also knows that the high crime he (and Wrongo) experienced, wasnât caused by immigrants. That was when the Guardian Angels were founded in NYC. Trump lived there the whole time, he probably even took the subway.
His argument is false, and is clearly purely political. Heâs playing to the fears of those suburbanites too intimidated to visit NYC, even if they live less than 25 miles away. His audience is suburbanites in the Midwest and Northern states.
These same people believe European cities like London and Paris are full of Muslim âno-goâ zones. You can show them evidence that those cities are safer than their own suburbs, but that’s not the point.
Maybe “safe” really means “white”, so any place with too many non-whites is just too dangerous.
Plague Fort (or Fort Alexander), St. Petersburg, RU. It was built between1838 and 1845 on an artificial island in the Gulf of Finland. From 1899 to 1917, the fort housed a research lab focused on plague and other bacterial diseases.It was abandoned in 1983.
The Economist has an 8500-word interview with the documentary film maker, Adam Curtis. For 30 years, Curtis has produced documentaries on politics and society. Apparently, he has emerged as a cult-hero to the UKâs young thinkers trying to comprehend our chaotic world.
His latest film, âHyperNormalisationâ (you can view the trailer here, or watch the entire 2+hour documentary here) argues that governments, financiers, and technological utopians have, since the 1970s, structured a simple “mostly fake world” for us, run by corporations, and kept stable by politicians.
Wrongo was attracted to this in part because Curtis takes the title of his documentary from work by a Russian historian, Alexei Yurchak, now a professor at Berkley. He introduced the word in his book Everything Was Forever, Until It Was No More: The Last Soviet Generation (2006). Yurchak says that in the 1980s, everyone from the top to the bottom of Soviet society knew that it wasnât working. They knew that it was corrupt. They knew that the bosses were looting the system. They knew that the politicians had no vision. And they knew that the Party bosses knew they knew that.
Everyone knew it was fake, and they just accepted the fakeness as normal. Yurchak coined the term âHyperNormalisationâ to describe that feeling. When Wrongo was in Russia in October, he heard a few Russians express this exact idea about the end stages of the Soviet Union in the 1980s.
The fall of the Soviet Union didnât stop them from despising Gorbachev, who ended the state economy and replaced it with a less-than-functioning market economy. They longed for the simpler state of affairs, with less to think about, and less to worry about. Where everyone knew that the system didnât work, but they all had jobs, and there was food in the markets.
2018 America is far from being the Soviet Union, but this is exactly the way the US is today. In most ways, everything the government touches, like elections, environment, tax policy, and health policy, could be substantially better for all of our citizens.
We all know everyone is unhappy, but everyone just says, âItâs the system. We canât change it.â
A quote from Curtis:
There is a sense of everything being slightly unreal; that you fight a war that seems to cost you nothing and it has no consequences at home; that money seems to grow on trees; that goods come from China and donât seem to cost you anything; that phones make you feel liberated, but that maybe theyâre manipulating you, but youâre not quite sure.
He talks about the concept of âriskâ, and how it entered our discussion, migrating from finance to politics in the 1980s. Today, everything has become about risk analysis, and how to stop bad things happening in the future: (emphasis by Wrongo)
Politics gave up saying that it could change the world for the better and became a wing of management, saying instead that it could stop bad things from happening. The problem with that is that it invites all the politicians to imagine all the bad things that could possibly happenâat which point, you get into a nightmare world where people imagine terrible things, and say that you have to build a system to stop them.
Can the people take power back from corporations and their captured politicians? Maybe, maybe not. People like stability and they fear instability. We saw that with Gorbachev in Russia in the 1980s.
But if we are to move past the collusion of corporations and politicians trying to keep us accepting things we know are unacceptable, we need to have better politicians.
The job of a master persuader is to tell a story that says, âYes this is risky, but itâs also thrilling, and it might lead to something extraordinaryâ. The persuader must say, âYes, I understand your fears but look, whatâs happening isnât right. We can do better than thisâ.
People are asking, âWhat is our future? What is this existence for?â
If you live in West Virginia surrounded by people taking opioids, you surely want to know what all that sorrow is for
If you are a recently laid-off GM worker, youâre asking the same thing
If youâre a student with $75k in student debt, and a cog job, youâre asking the same thing
If youâre a plumber with no health insurance and pancreatic cancer, youâre asking the same thing
If youâve worked hard to elect someone who just lost because of ballot-stuffing, youâre asking the same thing
These are the questions that our politicians should be answering.
Do you see someone who can bring people together behind a better vision?
In fall 2016, Mark Zuckerberg…was publicly declaring it a âcrazy ideaâ that his company had played a role in deciding the election. But security experts at the company already knew otherwise.
They found signs as early as spring 2016 that Russian hackers were poking around the Facebook accounts of people linked to American presidential campaigns. Months later, they saw Russian-controlled accounts sharing information from hacked Democratic emails with reporters. Facebook accumulated evidence of Russian activity for over a year before executives opted to share what they knew with the public â and even their own board of directors.
The company feared Trump:
In 2015…presidential candidate Donald J. Trump called for a ban of Muslim immigrants…Facebook employees and outside critics called on the company to punish Mr. Trump. Mr. Zuckerberg considered it â asking subordinates whether Mr. Trump had violated the companyâs rules and whether his account should be suspended or the post removed.
But…Mr. Zuckerberg…deferred to subordinates who warned that penalizing Mr. Trump would set off a damaging backlash among Republicans. Mr. Trumpâs post remained up.
Most disturbing was FBâs disinformation and lobbying campaign:
As criticism grew over Facebookâs belated admissions of Russian influence, the company launched a lobbying campaign â overseen by Sheryl Sandberg, the companyâs chief operating officer â to combat critics and shift anger toward rival tech firms.
Facebook hired Senator Mark Warnerâs former chief of staff to lobby….Ms. Sandberg personally called Senator Amy Klobuchar to complain about her criticism. The company also deployed a public relations firm to push negative stories about its political critics and cast blame on companies like Google.
Those efforts included depicting the billionaire liberal donor George Soros as the force behind a broad anti-Facebook movement, and publishing stories praising Facebook and criticizing Google and Apple on a conservative news site.
But the lobbying and disinformation was dark and wrong. FB used a Republican opposition-research firm Definers Public Affairs, and its connections to the Anti-Defamation League to link the anti-FB movement to George Soros and claim that some criticism against FB was anti-Semitic.
A research document circulated by Definers claimed Soros was an âunacknowledged forceâ behind the widespread condemnation of Facebook.
A news site called NTK Network, an affiliate of Definers, also published articles that bashed Google and Apple for âunsavory business practices.â
The Times reports that while NTK Network did not obtain large audiences, its content was picked up by Breitbart.
FB also called on the Anti-Defamation League to flag a sign used to depict Zuckerberg as an octopus encompassing the globe as anti-Semitic.
Thereâs more. After The NYT, The Guardian and others published a joint investigation into how user information was used by Cambridge Analytica to profile American voters, Facebook executives tried to contain the damage. FB hired a new chief of lobbying to quell the bipartisan anger in Congress, Kevin Martin, a Bush administration veteran, and former FCC Chair.
Just before Sandbergâs Congressional testimony, Facebookâs lobbyists asked Sen. Richard Burr (R-NC), Intelligence Committee chair to limit questioning to the topic of election interference. It worked. Burr issued a stern warning to all committee members to stick to that topic.
There are three big picture take-aways from the Times article about Facebook.
First, nearly everyone in America hates the media, but without them, we wouldn’t know anything about these FB actions. We wouldnât know that FB was willing to distribute disinformation to save its skin. So, letâs not give up on the media and journalism.
Second, America needs to learn from how Europe is fighting Google and Facebook on privacy and content, and do the same. They have created very specific rules and guidelines and have issued very expensive fines to these companies.
Third, why do these high-tech executives fail to see the big picture? Sandberg and Zuckerberg have had huge financial success, but their business is an ethical and moral failure.
The Times article shows that they value power, their egos, and their money far more than whatever good the Facebook service can deliver.
