But worse than Stephens claim that leftists are out of control is his dismissal of Trump as so incompetent that we don't have to worry about our freedoms anymore. This is deeply, deeply misguided and irresponsible. 2/pic.twitter.com/Xl0U2Mo0uf
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But worse than Stephens claim that leftists are out of control is his dismissal of Trump as so incompetent that we don't have to worry about our freedoms anymore. This is deeply, deeply misguided and irresponsible. 2/pic.twitter.com/Xl0U2Mo0uf
Stephens uses a couple of examples to illustrate Trump's weakness. Lets take one: Trump wants to stop DACA, "but John Roberts won't let him." Roberts rejected DACA on narrow procedural grounds - Trump can if & re-elected probably will reissue a DACA ban that satisfies SCOTUS. 3/
This is going to be an incomplete list, but Trump has: violated international law to pervert our immigration process in a way that guarantees people seeking refugee status face violence and death. 4/https://twitter.com/donmoyn/status/1263591275871125504?s=20 …
Trump officials have in key areas just stopped co-operating with Congress, defying the basic structure of US accountability based on a theory that, as near as I can tell, gives the President the power of being a king. 5/https://prospect.org/power/40-year-war-bill-barr-oversight/ …
Trump fires inspectors general if they report evidence of corruption in his government, and has systematically targeted career officials and political appointees who testified to Congress during the impeachment. Isn't this cancel culture? 6/ https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=3607309 …pic.twitter.com/NIvSU0xHsc
Even if we just stick narrowly to Stephen's concern here - facing punishment for your views - Trump has sent the FBI after people for having the temerity to organize peaceful protests. 7/https://theintercept.com/2020/06/12/fbi-jttf-protests-activists-cookeville-tennessee/ …
I could go on, but if you are not convinced at this point, you just don't want to be. Stephens does not want to be. His notion of speech is that people who hold views like him should not face criticism, and those that criticize him should be punished. 8/https://twitter.com/WajahatAli/status/1268975953771929600?s=20 …
As @davekarpf points out in this excellent thread, Stephens not just excludes speech he dislikes, he instead presents it as an existential threat. There is no deeper principle here than "My speech is good, your speech is cancel culture." 9/https://twitter.com/davekarpf/status/1279438242086039556?s=20 …
How do we understand this? As propaganda. It's not a coincidence that Stephens column and Trump's Rushmore speech from last night are interchangeable in many ways. There is an election to win, pandemics to be ignored, and people to terrify. 10/https://twitter.com/biblioracle/status/1279381761231912962?s=20 …
I'm sure Orwell would have had something to say about using propaganda to ramp up a culture war to protect an unpopular regime in the midst of a massive state failure in protecting human life. I just think it would be very different from what Stephens is saying. 11/pic.twitter.com/6NRjifXrFn
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