Midrange Weekly Jan 11
Your Weekly Round Up On What’s Got The Midrange Staff’s Attention
Midrange Staff @midrangeyver
Welcome back to Midrange Weekly and… holy shit, where’s the Tylenol? That was an insane week. Even in 2020 that would’ve put any other 7 day stretch to shame. Remember when we started the week perched somewhere between the edge of our seats and the edge of oblivion as we waited to learn who would control the senate and also the mutated Covid strain was rampant across the continent? Now we’ve all lived through an actual coup on American soil and Trump has burned through every twitter account he has access to except for Eric because he still doesn’t know who that is. The insurrection, the twitter ban, impeachment (again!), the 25th amendment, Ted Cruz- it’s all just a lot. There are still 51 weeks left in 2021.
You Better Believe I’m Gonna Talk About The Twitter Ban
Via Slate
For so long the idea of saying or writing President Donald Trump has been banned from Twitter seemed so surreal in its incredulity that many of us never considered that we may actually utter it. It’s easy to understand why. After all this is a platform that went out of its way to find excuses not to deplatform him. In the midst of his term Trump racked up enough terms of service violations to banish his account into oblivion for his racist, vengeful, and incendiary tweets. Still, Twitter is of course nothing if not a private company with a bottom line to consider. Despite its near ubiquitous reach in the political sphere for which our domestic lives are increasingly ensnared, it struggles to turn a profit. Trump keeps Twitter relevant, he keeps it in the news; indeed he is largely responsible for that aforementioned ubiquity in the gladiatorial arena of politics.
Yet with all of that he is- finally- banned. Inciting a coup or insurrection or whatever you wish to describe it as- although those are both chillingly apt descriptors- proved too much for the platform and, citing the very real possibility that he would use the big blue bull horn to incite another deadly riot, suspended his account. Not only that but the motely suite of messaging and social media platforms with which Twitter competes followed suit. In a stunningly swift and potent cascade of inglorious denouncements, Facebook, Instagram, Tik Tok, Snap Chat, and Pintrest (Pintrest!) are just some of the household names that have scrubbed Trump’s invectives or base appeasing bromides from their ecosystems. I don’t know if the Porn Hub one is a joke or not. Whatever you’re thoughts are about tech overreach in an increasingly decentralized media era, this is all objectively hilarious. Tik Tok banned Trump before Trump could ban Tik Tok.
Much has been made of this from all sides. From the left it’s mostly just so much fun with a splash of ethical theorizing to provide the buzz kill that you can always count on liberals to provide. The right, the true believers however, are livid. Citing disturbingly Orwellian connotations or precipitous cancel culture posturing on the part of Twitter, they deride such a drastic decision as a gross injustice. Once again, the president of the United States is a persecuted victim, once again being treated hugely unfair. Let’s break these arguments down.
The Orwellian bit of course refers to America’s tenuous relationship and indeed cognitive grasp of the 1st amendment. Referring to the chilling dystopia of 1984s Big Brother in which all public speech is monitored and controlled via authoritarian governments, they insist Trump is being unjustly censored or that his 1st amendment rights have been violated. This is grossly, hilariously, off the mark. The 1st amendment, as envisioned via the American constitution, dictates the government cannot punish you for nor suppress your speech. Sure there are a few caveats and asterisks to this; some hate speech is exempt from these protections, you can’t yell fire in a movie theatre, nor can you blurt out state secrets. But the long and short of it is, the government cannot intervene nor admonish you for what you say. Twitter is not the government; it is a private company and platform. It, like any other app or privately owned publication in no way relates to 1st amendment rights. It can deplatform anyone it sees fit as it sees fit. Good business dictates that it do so with a sense of fairness, ethical guide posting, and coherence, which is where the TOS comes in which is also incidentally what Trump has violated repeatedly. The 1st amendment says the government can’t punish you for what you say; in no way does it afford anyone- not even the president- a guaranteed platform to say anything they want. You can still face consequences for what you say, they just can’t be government implemented. Also, it should go without saying how distasteful all of this is considering George Orwell was an avowed democratic socialist who spent WWII fighting fascists. For would be authoritarians to invoke his name in a hissy fit seems particularly disingenuous. If the point needs to made any more succinctly here’s this.
Another way to look at this is that forcing publishers to publish the government's speech is what happens in China. pic.twitter.com/YDWjPbclN9
— Jameel Jaffer (@JameelJaffer) January 9, 2021
Others have lamented Trump’s excommunication to the undesirable and infertile frontiers of social media as yet another form of ever-amorphous cancel culture. That liberal elites in an insipid attempt to snuff out ideological views that don’t align with their own have been looking for any excuse to exorcize Trump from their services. Like so much around this discourse, adherents to such an argument confuse cancel culture (whatever they think that may be) with simply facing consequences. In reality what is happening as quite basic. As stated before, Twitter is merely a private firm occupied with profits and losses. For a long time Trump was a net positive on their brand, or at least brand awareness. Now that Trump has made his own brand toxic due to sedition, it’s simply not good business to be associated with him, at least from a PR perspective. The optics of being a somewhat ethically minded, or at least not straight up evil, organization tends to broaden the user base and apease shareholders alike. What we are witnessing is nothing more than pure unadultered market capitalism at work. As in, the venerated and abstract deity of commerce of which Trump’s conservative fleet of politicians serves like a dark master. Republicans always say they want to let the markets decide. Well the markets did: Trump is bad for business.
On a final and brief note, many of his supporters bemoan this as pure and demoralizing censorship. A quick rejoinder to that- As President, Trump has his own press team and briefing room. He can hold a conference whenever he wants and discuss anything his heart desires for much of the world to see. He is quite literally, in the word’s strictest context, the least censored person on the planet. Although only for a few more days, admittedly. -Tristan
On Understanding The Trump Zealot
via Ahmed Gaber/ Reuters/ Aljazeera
A little while ago I briefly touched upon my frustrations regarding ideological moderates, on both the left and the right, deriding the alleged condescending and dismissive tone in which out of touch and elitist liberals treat the more rural and pastoral variety of conservative. I wasn’t too pleased with the rhetoric then, and I’ve fucking had it with the notion now. First of all the sub-textual implications of such an argument are bullshit. That liberals are by definition pretentious elites to contrast middle class conservatives whose economic anxieties we just can’t bring ourselves to be cognizant of. To look at it another way, poll after poll shows college educated Americans across any demographic will likely lean liberal, implying it is that side of the ideological spectrum more likely to be sacked with economically crippling student loan debt. And yet it’s liberals who are constantly at fault for not understanding the financial woes of conservatives and how that motivates their ideological passions.
Not understanding. Let’s break that down a little in the context not only of the Trump attack, but the larger republican electorate. Those that attacked the capital did so motivated by the lie that Trump won the election and it was stolen from him, but that lie also holds currency in as much 70% of polled republicans. Furthermore 45% of polled republicans approve of this week’s attempted insurrection. In other words the seditionists that perpetrated the riot are not nearly as anomalous as the politicians that encouraged their vitriol but now wish to distance themselves from desperately claim. When we are told to stop condescending to and understand the grievances and economic anxieties of Trump supporters, it’s in no small part those who marched on DC that we are talking about.
Try to understand them. They are mad- this is easy to grasp. They think the election was stolen from them- also pretty simple. They think their way of life is eroding. Despite the callous arrogance and delusional privilege embedded in such a claim- yes we’ve got it. None of this is hard to understand. They psyche of the red blooded Trump patriot was never complicated; it was always being worn on their sleeve. Understanding them is easy, and that should be as far as any partisan dissenter should be asked to go, but it isn’t. Instead the formally well-defined gulf that separates terms like understanding and relating with terms like approval and permission has collapsed into a tangled nexus. Trump’s supporters can be absolutely mad as hell if they like, just like Clinton supporters were in 2016. Just like everyone is when their candidate looses. Their anger of loosing does not exist in some kind of vacuum that defies precedent and therefore obscures understanding of possible consequences. It’s all pretty darn standard. I absolutely understand what it means to be angry, just as we all do, but that doesn’t give you permission to commit treason. To try to assassinate the vice president or any elected representative. To translate that anger into any visceral form of relief or recompense you see fit. They say understanding, but what they mean is permission. Don’t play into this sloppy rhetorical sleight of hand.
Furthermore let’s look at some of the people that stormed the capital, whose economic anxieties we should consider before we condemn. Aaron Mostofsky, The son of a Brooklyn Supreme Court Judge. Nick Ochs, a former congressional candidate of Hawaii. Adam Johnson, a Florida man who is married to a wealthy doctor. Jenna Ryan, a Texas real estate agent who allegedly flew in a private jet to DC to take part in the coup. Most people with real economic insecurities can’t afford to take time off work if they are sick, let alone load up on body armour and bullets and take an impromptu sabbatical with a little recreational treason thrown in for kicks. Beyond the economic optics of all of this, where is the moral or ethical utility in finding common ground with the people who bashed a cop’s head in with a fire extinguisher- he’s dead now by they way, but sure blue lives matter to these people- or screamed repeatedly with feral glee to hang Mike Pence? Is it in the spirit of advocating for electoral utility, because absolutely fuck that. If republicans are appalled by the disrespectful or traduced tone in which they are refered to, I can only gently point them to their own rallying cry dating back to the early days of Trump’s presidential ambitions: fuck you’re feelings. -Tristan
Legacy: Alex Trebek and Donald Trump
In March of 2019 Alex Trebek announced to world that he had stage 4 pancreatic cancer. It was a shock no one saw coming. The prospect that longtime Canadian host of Jeopardy! might soon die was startling to say the least. Yet, despite the odds and his advanced age, Trebek soldiered on and did his job as best he could, for as long as he could while underwent chemotherapy treatment. He died on November 8th. He last recorded an episode of the show on October 29th. If that doesn’t tell you how much he cared for his profession, I’m not sure much else will.
That final taping aired this past Friday.
Two months after coming out with his diagnosis, Trebek sat down with the CBC’s Rosemary Barton to talk about his career, how he fared in the moment while undergoing treatment as well as to talk about his lifelong passion of literacy and geography. It’s in this interview where the true greatness of his character shines through. Fast forward to the 2:08 mark.
Compassion. Understanding. Being nicer to you. These are the words of a man whose legacy was sadly overshadowed this past week by Donald Trump and the chaos he helped usher in at the Capitol in Washington. The irony of this paragraph couldn’t be any more jarring.
Alex Trebek lost his battle to cancer just a few days after Trump lost the US Presidential election to Joe Biden, yet the legacy of both men couldn’t be any different.
The actions on the Capitol in Washington this past Wednesday were incited by the President. He is 100% responsible for them. He should be removed from office immediately. He is a danger to society. When he leaves office to whatever hole he wants to spend his remaining days, the mark he left this past week on America has to be what he’s remembered for.
Donald Trump has gamed our lives for too long. His reign is almost over. This week’s final episodes of Jeopardy! were Alex Trebek’s last. He is gone forever. Let’s give him one last look before we say goodbye. Because unlike Trump, he deserves it so much more. - Jamie
FLUX FIVE
This Week:
Vince Guaraldi “Never Never Land” 1987 Vince Guaraldi Remastered
Duckett “Looking At Mum Objectively” 2019 Chorde Raide Nulle Verse EP
Natacha “Ghanwa Bossanova” 2006 Natasha Atlas
Elou Elan“Sunday Times” 2010 Bronxwood Bubblers Six
All Natural Ft. Lone Catalyst “Renaissance” 2001 Second Nature
Enjoy! - Mick
Things From The Internet We Liked
Early Contender For Tweet Of The Year
“Guess who can still tweet motherfuc-” pic.twitter.com/RPUWk5sCw7
— Chris Jackson (@ChrisCJackson) January 9, 2021
Kara Swisher Pulls No Punches In This Must Listen Episode Of Her Podcast Sway
Parler is a right wing social media website that masquerades as champions of free speech. This recent interview with its CEO John Matze is as tough as they come. Host Kara Swisher grills him on if he believes his social media platform had an ethical duty to intervene in helping to prevent what happened this past Wednesday in Washington.
Fyi: He did. And it looks as if Amazon, Apple and Google believe so as well as all three just banned Parler from their sites.
It’s a fascinating and eye opening interview. Matze is no different than Zuckerberg or Dorsey in how he sees Parler. He wants it to be just a big as it can get. However, as we’re coming to learn with technology and more specifically social media sites these days, the balance of growing one’s audience and revenue versus policing what’s in the best interest of society is no longer an act these CEO’s can ignore. The days of the Wild Wild West for internet companies is numbered. This interview clearly demonstrates that. Do check it out.
Rockstar Made by Playboi Carti Is A Stunner
The devilish opener from the Atlanta rapper’s third LP Whole Lotta Red shows Carti exhibiting some wildly inventive and just a touch deranged vocal tricks. They’re perfect for the beat the unravels like a pulsing doom scroll.