Canceling Trump: Twitter, lies, incitement and finding the limits of speech

 Well.  So that happened.  Twitter blocked Trump's account.  Permanently.  OK, so I'm going to start writing, and I am only partially certain where I am going here, because I am deeply ambivalent about this.  Some of us think by writing, and since nobody reads this damned blog, I can use it however I want anyway.  In tenure veritas!  Anyway, the source of my ambivalence is as follows.  If you are one of the very, very few readers of this pretentious, little blog, you know that I am about as close to a free speech absolutist as you are ever going to find.  However, if you have only one principle, then put down the Ayn Rand, and grow up.  There are two points on which a free speech absolutist (or near-absolutist) may be made uncomfortable with speech.  The first is with lying.  I'll spare you another lecture on why I hate lies so much.  We just saw the Capitol building stormed, with people dead, motivated by lies.  Lies kill.  And that leads to the second point on which a free speech absolutist may be made uncomfortable with speech.  Speech as precursor to action.  In other words, Trump checks every box for "I'm a free speech absolutist, and I can't defend him."

But...

Yeah, there's always a "but," and as they say, "everything before the 'but' is irrelevant."  Not quite, but I'm gonna ramble a bit, because free speech is one of my shibboleths.

Let's start by getting a few things straight, because there are a lot of myths and fallacies about speech.  First, "well, there are limits to speech.  Like, you can't yell 'fire' in a crowded theater."  You've heard this one before, I'm sure, and perhaps you have even used this line.  Perhaps even in the last few days.  It is not quite right.  In a sense, it is technically right in that a theater is private property, and just as it can mandate "no shirt, no shoes, no service," they can kick you out for being a douche.  Yelling "fire" is douche-y.  Limits on what private businesses can do to limit service only kick in when you start running up against civil rights, and the whole, "yelling fire," thing doesn't do that.  "People who yell 'fire' in a crowded theater" are not a "protected class" under civil rights law.  They're just douchebags.  Yes, they are a minority, and yes, we hate them, but we hate them justifiably.  We want them excluded from stuff.  Theaters, lunch counters... pretty much everything.  So, yeah, theaters, even if we decided that they were public accommodations, would be able to kick out the fuckwit who yells "fire" in a crowded theater.

What about the law, though?  Is it illegal to yell "fire" in that theater?  Not quite!  Here's the deal.  You sort of have a First Amendment right to yell fire, and if all that happens is that you are escorted off the premises, then no laws were broken.  On the other hand, if you actually do start a panic... a... riot... then you have committed a crime.  A very specific crime.  "Incitement."

The yelling of "fire" isn't a crime, and can't be a crime, under the First Amendment.  Free speech, motherfuckers.  Learn it, know it, live it.  (Plagiarize it, don't criticize it.)  Lawmakers have gotten around this restriction, which is both a legal issue and a moral issue, by finding that you can be held accountable for the consequences of your speech, under specific circumstances, such as the flamey theater thing.  We will, obviously, come back to this.

Next.  Sorry, but I gotta do this again.  One of the arguments that always bugs me is when someone pulls the, "well, the First Amendment only protects you from government infringement, not private action, so blah, blah, blah."  I spared you another lecture on the dangers of lying, but this one, I'm doin' again, because I must.  Any time you encounter someone who gives you this blather, respond as follows:  "if you, personally, are ever fired from your job because your boss overheard you at a cafe or restaurant (remember those?), expressing a political belief with which he disagreed, or saw you write something with which he disagreed on FaceBook, would you say, 'well, that's just fine because the First Amendment doesn't protect me from my boss punishing me for political opinions with which he doesn't agree!  I deserved that!'"

According to the law, your boss can fire you for expressing political opinions with which he disagrees.  Mine can't, 'cuz I'm a tenured professor of political science, and "in tenure veritas," and all that, but I had to work my ass off to get here.  Unless you have tenure, shut your fucking pie hole.  And if you are telling me that the First Amendment only protects you from government restriction, as a point of political argument, then are you telling me that you want to be told to shut your fucking pie hole?  By your shitbag boss?  And frankly, even I have to watch what I say about some things.  I may have tenure, but academia is nuts.

Anyway, the basic point, which I cannot repeat with enough frequency, is that if you believe in the principle of free speech, then you must oppose private restrictions on speech in addition to governmental restrictions.

Free speech is the cornerstone of civil society.  Marketplace of ideas, and all that.

The problem, of course, is that speech can undercut the "civil" part of society.  It does so when it is dishonest, and it does so when it "incites."

And that brings us back around to Donald J. Trump.  So here I am, a free speech absolutist, or rather, as close as you will ever find to an absolutist, given that no thinking person adheres to one, single principle to the exclusion of all others.  (I repeat, put down the Ayn Rand.  She wasn't even a good novelist.)

It should go without saying, at this point, that Donald Trump is not just a liar, and not just the most egregious liar in American history, but a dangerous liar.  We have come to this point because of one particular set of Trump's lies:  the lie that the 2020 election was "rigged" or "stolen."  It was not.  The Republican election administrators in the swing states confirmed this, his own appointees at the federal level charged with overseeing election security confirmed this, his lawsuits were all thrown out of court with extreme prejudice after his lawyers were excoriated for their failure to present any evidence of their claims, and the Supreme Court, one third of which was appointed by Trump, brushed this bullshit aside without even deigning address it.  These are insane, tin foil hat lies.  A person has to be insane, stupid or both to believe that the 2020 election was "rigged."

Alas, there are a lot of very stupid people in this country.  That's what gives this kind of lie its power.  Stupidity.  And Trump somehow lied so much that he convinced himself of his own self-serving bullshit, which is just...  Oy.  There's a reason Nancy Pelosi is worried about the fact that Trump still has access to nukes.  A low-probability concern, with a very high cost if a roll of the dice goes wrong.  Yet, given the diseased nature of Trump's brain, these are valid concerns.

Anyway, point being, Trump is a liar, and those lies have a cost.  We saw the cost this past week, in the form of a riot/insurrection.  People died.  Do we care about the Trumpist who got herself shot storming the Capitol for her Mad King?  I don't.  I have zero sympathy for her.  On the other hand, Brian Sicknick, the Capitol Police Officer murdered in the riots?  Yeah, I care about him.  Trump's lies were responsible for the murder of a cop.

Mr. Law And Order, support-the-cops...

That was always code, of course.  Racial dog whistle bullhorn.

Then we come to the question of cause and incitement.

In social science terms, did Donald Trump cause last week's riots and insurrection?  Yes.  I am confident, as a political scientist, that Donald Trump is the cause.  I'm going to handle this quite simply, but we could be more elaborate if we wanted.  After the Supreme Court ruled in Bush v. Gore,  Al Gore conceded.  Trump told his supporters to fight, and so on.  Different behavior, different outcomes.  And of course, the rioters were clear why they were there.  In social science terms, Trump was the cause.  In the counterfactual world in which Trump concedes and doesn't tell his cultists to fight and protest and all that... the riots don't happen.  Of course, in the quantum mechanical multiverse, there aren't a whole lot of universes in which Trump concedes.  Most of those universes are universes in which someone breaks into the White House and drugs him with Ecstasy, or something.

Anyway, though, that's social science.  The difference between a social scientist and a lawyer is that a social scientist looks at the world and interprets it, while a lawyer sticks his head so far up his own ass that he can see only his own digestive tract, and then he tells you what "the world" looks like.  I hate lawyers, as all right-thinking people do.  Kids, don't go to law school.  Isn't there enough misery in the world?

Where was I?  Aside from not up my own ass, because I'm not a lawyer.  Oh, right.  "Incitement."  The Department of Justice, as of right now, is not investigating whether or not Donald Trump incited the riots.  Democrats may ask whether or not Biden's DoJ would reconsider, but... no.  Biden will tell them, quite explicitly, not to do so.  Yeah, he says he doesn't want to interfere with investigations, but that's bullshit.  He'll interfere to protect Trump.  Yes, he will.  Why?  Because he's a coward, and he doesn't want to face the backlash that would come from investigating Trump, and that's presuming Trump doesn't pardon himself, which is highly likely.  If Trump does pardon himself (your safe bet), then Biden just says no-investigation because there's no point investigating someone who cannot be charged because he has been pardoned.  Biden ain't chargin' Trump with nothin'.  Guaranteed.

But is the DoJ right?  Here's the thing about incitement.  Because of the broad nature of the First Amendment, in order for someone to be charged with a crime when the act is merely speech, you need a very direct connection between the words themselves, and the crime.

Suppose Trump had said, "have fun storming the castle Capitol."  Suppose he had said, "do whatever it takes, get into that building, and use any means necessary to keep me in office," or something like that.  Add, "I'll pardon anyone who kills a cop in the process.  Bring your guns and don't be afraid to use them."  OK, Trump would use a lot more all-caps, and things, but I don't feel like Trump-ifying the language there.  You get the point.  If Trump had written those types of Tweets, the connection between the words and the violent acts would be clear and direct.  The connection would be akin to yelling "fire" when there is no fire, such that a death caused by a stampede would be on the head of the person yelling "fire."

But that's not quite what Trump wrote.  Even the word, "fight," is ambiguous.  Hell, that disingenuous hack, Elizabeth Warren built her whole presidential campaign around the word.  Her worthless answer to every observation that her proposals couldn't be implemented was the magic word, "fighting," as though if you just "fight," the impossible becomes possible.  I don't think anyone seriously believed Elizabeth Warren was arguing for storming the castle Capitol.  That would have taken a miracle.  What did she mean?  Really, nothing.  It was just some bullshit.  If you, like, yelled and got really mad and proposed your bills with enough zeal, they'd pass... 'cuz.  Warren was speaking metaphorically/idiotically.  She was not, in any way, calling for violence.

Hence the ambiguity.  So if Trump uses language that could be considered metaphorical, can he be charged, criminally, with incitement?

First Amendment law needs to come down clearly on the side of speech.  In order to make an incitement case given the law, you need to have zero ambiguity.  After all of that lawyer-bashing I did earlier, I think the DoJ may have gotten it right on incitement charges.  Remember, I hate Trump.  I think he belongs in prison, and I think you have a clear case for that Georgia Sec. State call for an attempt at election fraud.  I'd also argue that his behavior was impeachable, but criminal charges for incitement?

No.  Sorry, folks.  DoJ got it right.  I really hate to say it, but the DoJ is right.

Impeachment?  Fully justified.  25th Amendment?  Should have been invoked years ago.  Criminal charges for incitement?  Too much ambiguity in his wording for the charges to stick.  First Amendment.  If I were on a jury, I'd vote to acquit.

And remember that nobody hates Trump more than I do.

Yet this brings us to Twitter.  Holy shit, folks!  Donald Trump got canceled!  Cancel culture!  They canceled the fuckin' President!  And this brings me to my long-running issues with cancel culture.  I... don't like it.  "As... you... know."  Except when I type that phrase, it is a true statement about what you actually know, rather than an attempt to get you to accept a falsehood without argument.

So legally, yes, Twitter can lock Trump's account.  It's a private platform, blah, blah, blah.  Should they?  I have to admit, I was a bit baffled by how they went about it.  There were so many points throughout Trump's Presidency at which he violated their terms of service, but Twitter's announcement was weird.  Like, they picked the tweet about not attending Biden's inauguration?!  Seriously?!  That one?  Twitter claimed it was a veiled statement that the inauguration would be a safe target because he wouldn't be there.  Look, folks, I fuckin' hate Trump, and I give him the benefit of the doubt on nothing, but I didn't read it that way.  I read it as sulking, and an acknowledgement of what we all knew anyway.

What was going on was that Twitter was looking for an excuse.  Trump had violated the terms of service so many times, that they just needed something.  It was like Einstein's Nobel, in reverse.  You know he didn't get it for relativity, right?  He got it for the photoelectric effect.  Same thing.

That said, I don't like de-platforming.  On general principle, I don't like it.  What I would like, if I could have it, is an information system in which mediators perform the role that the press used to perform:  ensuring that the information people receive is actual information rather than straight-up lies.  Social media don't do that.  Right now, the various social media companies are trying to decide whether or not to try to play the role of editor.  Are they news media or town squares?  I tend to think of them more as town squares, with all the attendant problems.

Now, hypothetically, let's say it were possible to shut Trump the fuck up.  Would I do it?  Um... well, I'm running up against my "free speech, motherfuckers" principle, but I really, really want him to shut the fuck up.  He is a liar, and a dangerous liar at that.  I'm not sure anyone has ever done more damage to American democracy.  Yeah, we can look back at the Civil War, but I don't know how to repair this, because so many people's "minds" have been warped beyond repair by his stupid, dangerous lies.

But kicking Trump off Twitter will not shut him the fuck up.  No mortal can shut Donald the fuck up without violating criminal laws.  Even closing down Parler distribution isn't going to shut Donald the fuck up.

What will happen is as follows.  Trump and the rest of that crowd are in the process of setting up their own media ecosystem.  They have been whining-- in fact, lying about conservative censorship on social media for years-- but this time their cult leader really did get kicked off Twitter.  And now, they are going to respond.  They will set up/elaborate on their own social media ecosystem.  Its form?  At this point, who knows?  However, the fragmentation and balkanization of the media will continue.

You've heard the term, "dark web," many times, I am sure, but its meaning is vague given the variety of contexts in which it is applied.  Consider, for example, "the intellectual dark web."  What's that?  As far as I can tell, it includes any site that publishes anything written by John McWhorter, which... oh, fuck off, people.  (Oh, no!  I just mentioned McWhorter!  This blog is now part of the "intellectual dark web!")

So the media ecosystem continues to splinter.  Trumpists follow their cult leader.  How much stock do we put in stuff like this?  It's Politico.  It's probably just junk, although I do enjoy seeing right-wing loonies refer to Trump as a "tranny cuck pedophile."  The thing is, he actually did enjoy walking into the dressing room of rather young beauty pageant contestants, and creeping on kids in malls, so the pedophile thing?  Maybe not so far off!  (And I wrote a contrarian post a while back on Trump and gender identity, so...)  Give me a few paragraphs, and I could make a case for the "cuck" thing too.  In literal terms, I'm sure Melania has her dalliances anyway!

Back on track.  A further fragmentation of the media ecosystem.  What do we gain if there's just a separate social media system for the right-wingers?  The only way we gain anything is if the conspiracy theories and lies stay contained within the fever swamps.  They won't, though.  Tweeting and retweeting a news story, posting a YouTube video on FaceBook... crossing platforms is a thing.  It won't matter if Trump's lies start on Twitter or whatever platform he uses.  Parler, or if he starts something new... it won't matter.

On the other hand, consider the riots.  The backlash against the Capitol Police is that we knew this was coming.  How?  Social media.  Everyone could see it.  Why?  You were all on the same social media.  (Not me, 'cuz all I do is write this cockamamie blog, but you people spend your lives on FaceBook and Twitter, n' shit, right?).

This is serious.  The fact that y'all were on the same social media platforms meant that the riots were predictable.  That town square thing?  It has a benefit.  Knowing what those fuckin' wackos are thinking and saying?  It has a benefit.  Once they go off on their own, into the fever swamps of a completely separate ecosystem, you lose that.  Sure, the FBI could, in principle try to monitor that, but you're in a different world, and a different legal area.

At the end of the day, then, I'm just not sure what we gain by kicking Trump off Twitter.  A moment of moral satisfaction?  Yeah, I admit to feeling that.  Because fuck Trump, Waters rule notwithstanding.  He is the worst human being in the history of the species, he takes pride in something as stupid and petty as his number of Twitter followers and retweets, because he is a teenaged girl-- Heather Chandler for the 21st Century-- and watching him lose that is watching a bully get his worthless ass kicked.  Yeah, that was fun.  I want to watch that again.

But does this help?  No, I don't think so.  It doesn't really meet my principles, and I don't see any real good coming from the cancelation of Donald Trump.  In the media sense.

Canceling Trump's Presidency?  One of the better moments in American history.  Removing him from power may not set things right.  We have a lot of challenges.  A lot of challenges.  Trump may have done too much damage to repair, but with him in the White House, there was no chance of recovering America.

Blocking his Twitter account, though?  That's as small, and petty as Donald himself.