Look, I’m a Republican (yes, yes, please deposit your “boos” and such in the box by the door), and I hate Trump. “Hate” isn’t even strong enough. But I’ll always go on the side of caution when it comes to the 1st amendment - everybody gets to say whatever they want, and not fear being muzzled. That’s the deal. You don’t get to duck the repercussions of what you say, but everyone gets to have the soapbox.
I know this attitude will not win me any friends (it never has), but there can’t be any exceptions to this concept; you make one, ONE, and it crowbars open the door to “controlled speech”.
It is not that I am out of date, it is just that I’ve never really kept up with the rigorous rules of “twitter”. I still posit that the arbitrational cut-off of certain number of characters seems like a silly thing to do. I get that they wanted to keep messages short, but really?
Historically in the US, the nebulous concept of “free speech” has more often been used as a bludgeon than as a tool for positive social change. For example, people declaring that fascists and anti-fascists should be on equal rhetorical footing. Citizens United is another unfortunate example of free speech protections gone too far. Most other liberal western democracies don’t even have constitutional guarantees of free expression, but rather approach it pragmatically on a case-by-case basis. Make anything absolute and someone with resources and a nefarious agenda will find a way to abuse it. The vast majority of us merely use the first amendment to express our political opinions, while the connected and powerful exploit it to take real actions that harm the rest of us. It’s way more complicated than simply ensuring we all get a say and expecting everything to come up roses.
I was convinced you had simultaneously observed that she looked tired and made a reference to the Dr. Who episode where The Doctor unseats the British Prime minister with a similar phrase, which would be about de platforming 45 and then I went into a hall of mirrors and there was a rabbit with a watch.
When I worked for the US federal government, we were told we weren’t able to just blab anything hateful, false, or stupid in the name of the agency we worked for, or in the name of the US government. Why shouldn’t this apply to the president? Even when he talks about the weather he gets it wrong, stupid, and politically charged.
I agree that people should have the right to speak that’s the idea behind the First Amendment.
There are exceptions to this of course, and inciting violence I believe is one of them.
Trump has often signaled in tweets and otherwise for his followers to act with violence against others, but he gets a pass because he’s the president and that’s okay?
Fuck that.
Twitter is something that I am even tired of hearing the word, much like Facebook, because my body is just trained at this point to want to vomit every time I hear either from the stupidity and revulsion both inevitably lead to every time. It’s always something negative or worse. Can we please just get rid of Twitter? Does it serve any purpose at all other than enraging people or furthering the loudest stupid voice?
I still posit that the arbitrational cut-off of certain number of characters seems like a silly thing to do.
I actually loved this feature - you had to get creative to express your idea that succinctly. And I get a lot of very lengthy emails that would have been better expressed in a single, well considered, sentence. Making it the required platform for internal communication among my colleagues is kind of appealing.
It seems a moot point however because people like Trump just spew diarrhea of the mouth in multiple successive tweets.
Twitter is definitely a twits medium, and the only thankfulness I have of it is it quickly proves the shallowness of thought and mind of most (not all) who use it. Our CheeTOUS is a prime example
If you like things, there are things on Twitter. Art, handmade stuff, people who talk about things you might like, pictures of people you might want to look at…
Well, he did fight Nazis in WWII in the original story. At least that’s what the movie version set forth. I thought that was what he was supposed to be about.
So what did they expect? Captain Obersturmbannführer?
