On Statesmen, National Myths, and Reality

In the days following Senator John McCain's death, I noticed a recurring theme in the news and on social media (particularly Twitter.) A lot of outside-the-mainstream media outlets and private individuals were aiming some harsh criticism at both the late Senator for actions he took during his career, as well as mainstream outlets for "whitewashing" McCain's career immediately following his passing.  The timing of that criticism left a bad taste in my mouth, because there's a proper time and place for it, and right after someone passes away is not that time. 

Still, McCain made his share of shameful decisions throughout his tenure, like choosing Sarah Palin as his running mate for the 2008 presidential election or running interference for Saudi Arabia's human rights abuses.  Those things need to be brought out into the open, because we as citizens are not doing ourselves any favors by pretending they never happened.  At some point, it's appropriate, even necessary, to discuss McCain's record honestly and fairly.  Seeing the entire picture - the good, the bad, and the ugly - helps us make better choices when we're selecting our elected officials or exercising any other form of political expression.  Democratic forms of government like ours endow more decision-making power upon the citizens, and like any other form of  power, it comes with certain responsibilities. One such responsibility is doing the research to make an informed decision.

Here's the uncomfortable truth about many of the shameful deeds that tend to get whitewashed, though: they're often necessary evils. For example, one of FDR's more detestable decisions was brokering a deal with Stalin in order to get the Soviet Union's help with defeating Nazi Germany, and a condition of that deal was essentially throwing Poland to the wolves.  Stalin already had an established reputation as a mass-murderer, and FDR surely knew what evil fate was in store for Poland.  Yet would the Allies have been able to defeat the Nazis without Stalin's troops? We don't have any way of knowing, but the best case scenario would be the European part of World War II drags on for another few years.  Or maybe the US decides to drop an atomic bomb on Berlin. Or maybe without the Soviets tying up millions of German troops to the east, the Allies are outnumbered and either collapse or are defeated. Or, to bring up a contemporary example, how about America's relationship with Saudi Arabia? I'm no fan of the way our government turns a blind eye to Saudi's many atrocities, but once you realize how important oil is to our day-to-day lives, it becomes clear that Saudi Arabia has a lot of leverage on us. The situation is getting better, but taking a hard stance would trigger a huge economic hit.  And by the way, they've known this since the 1970s.

My point here is that it's easy to be the armchair quarterback when you're not the one making these kinds of important decisions, but it's important to remember two things.  First, people are imperfect.  I don't think anybody over the age of about fifteen thinks our elected officials are noble, virtuous, and pure.  Even the ones we've seemingly transformed into legends. That would be considered hugely gullible. For instance, the Founding Fathers.  They did some great things, but also their fair share of disgraceful ones.  It's extremely rare that a politician is either all good or all bad.  Second, the decisions the elected officials make are usually messy with no good answers.  A few of them will probably trigger nightmares for years or even decades. People who are expecting perfect candidates and perfect decisions might as well be wishing for unicorns. They have the luxury of not bearing the weight of making those decisions.  So, a decent portion of criticism needs to be taken with a grain of salt.

Of course, it's also very likely that some of those so-called agonizing decisions are made with personal gain in mind.  Maybe it's a reliable campaign donor, or a lucrative private sector job once a politician's term is over.  Or maybe the UAVs Saudi Arabia uses against Yemeni rebels are manufactured in a candidate's home district, meaning a few hundred jobs, meaning a dependable voting bloc. A person would be naive to not consider that.  Well, that's where being informed comes into play, and why knowing what unsavory actions a candidate takes matters.

An informed citizenry is important to a democracy, and while focusing on McCain's more shameful deeds right after his death was classless, it still serves the function of informing the public.  It was how the Founders anticipated the media acting as a check on the political class.  This kind of adversarial journalism keeps the voters informed and the politicians in check.  Frankly, we could use a lot more of it.

Fix the timing and delivery, though.

Why I Don't Care about Alex Jones Getting Dropped from Facebook, iTunes, and YouTube

In the wake of Facebook, YouTube, iTunes, and Spotify (and possibly others) banning Alex Jones from their platforms and purging all of his content, I'm seeing a handful of people (some of whom have fairly large audiences) criticizing the social media companies for what they are calling corporate censorship.  The main thrust of this argument seems to be that in allowing the social media companies to ban Alex Jones, we have granted a handful of tech CEOs the power to "determine what 'content' should and should not be available for public consumption", to use one person's phrasing.  While a handful of companies wielding disproportionate control over the media, with little transparency or accountability, is certainly something we should worry about almost as much as government censorship, what happened to Alex Jones is not a particularly good example of it.

I want to emphasize that none of these people are defending Alex Jones.  None.  What they are taking issue with is the social media platforms censoring a content creator without any apparent transparency, accountability, or due process.   However, that complaint is baseless, for a number of reasons.

First, the obvious point: the First Amendment only restricts what the government can do. It doesn't give citizens any protection from private businesses.  Facebook and the other platforms can ban someone at any time for violating their Terms of Service. Users acknowledge that and implicitly agree when they sign up to use the site and check "okay" on the ToS button.  These platforms have had the authority to ban Alex Jones the entire time he's been using their service, they just chose not to exercise it until now.

Second, the near-simultaneous decision by multiple platforms to drop Alex Jones gives the impression that the decision was sudden and arbitrary.  It wasn't. Alex Jones has been a controversy magnet for years.  He has repeatedly labeled survivors of the Sandy Hook school shooting, as well as relatives and friends of the victims, "crisis actors." In fact, he's dwelled on this point so much that the parents of one victim have had to move seven times, and he is currently on trial for defamation, in a lawsuit brought by families of the victims. So lest you think this came out of nowhere, it has been building for a long time.

Additionally, the social media CEOs were not acting (entirely) on their own initiative.  They were responding to public pressure to remove Jones' videos, etc, from their platforms.  That means it's hardly a decision made in isolation.  In fact, given Jones' track record of controversy, it's a bit surprising he has lasted as long as he has.

Third, Alex Jones was an outlier. Some content providers are worried about the precedent this might set, but unless you're harassing victims of a mass shooting, it's safe to say that you won't end up on YouTube's/Spotify's/Facebook's radar.  So relax, nobody is coming to boot you off their platform.

Fourth, the barriers to entry on any of these sites is nonexistent.  Now, iTunes requires a little bit of technical know-how as far as recording, editing, and uploading a podcast; but that's pretty much as far as it goes.  For the most part, all you have to do is know how to create an account and upload content.  So the idea that we're all suddenly at the "tech overlords' mercy" is laughable.  They won't even care unless your content draws a lot of complaints, and even then that's not a given.  Hell, I see more people complaining about the lack of policing on social media.

Fifth, James Gunn.  He's been in the news lately, so the name probably sounds familiar.  The reason he's in the news is Disney fired him because of a handful of inappropriate tweets he posted a few years back. Not even close to the level of the bile Alex Jones spews, but still inappropriate.  Here's why I'm bringing him up.  Gunn certainly needs to be held accountable for those, but the difference between Gunn and Jones is that Gunn grew and changed, and now he contributes something meaningful to society.  He eventually cleaned up his act, got better at his craft, and went on to deliver some top-notch work.  (Seriously.  Guardians of the Galaxy is an awesome film.) These days, Gunn is also widely respected by the actors and film crews he works with, and has a growing movement dedicated to getting him reinstated because of his artistic contributions.  The point is that you contribute something to society, your fans and peers will back you up.  Can anyone argue in good faith that Alex Jones has made a meaningful contribution?

Now, people should be worried when news outlets gradually morph into an increasingly-consolidated oligarch-like structure (for example, the "Big Six Media" or the current Sinclair Broadcast Group situation.) But social media is not like that.  It's opened the door to a multitude of news and information outlets.  Take Twitter: because of it, I've been able to follow literally dozens of news agencies from around the world: Balkan Insight, Der Spiegel, Euronews, to list a few.  And thanks to iTunes, I can find a podcast covering just about any niche topic I find interesting.  So good, independent sources of news are out there, and social media has helped make that possible.

So, to everyone getting worked up about Alex Jones getting sent packing: relax.  It's not - repeat, not - going to usher in some new era of censorship.