Robert Burnson, reporting for Bloomberg*:

In the new lawsuit, filed Monday in state court in Redwood City, California, the company is accused of collecting, storing and profiting from the biometric data of more than 100 million Instagram users, without their knowledge or consent.

The practice violates an Illinois privacy law that bars the unauthorized collection of biometric data, according to the lawsuit. Under the law a company can be forced to pay $1,000 per violation -- or $5,000 if it’s found to have acted recklessly or intentionally.

Everything Facebook does is either reckless or underhanded. The company is defined by their old motto of “move fast and break things”.

The system needs to come down hard on Facebook. Clearly, they don’t care about legal slaps on the wrist: what they need is a hard, legal kick in the balls that causes them to double over in pain and take a beat to catch their breath. Prosecutors need to not back down and accept a measly settlement, they need to pursue every dime they can in the hopes that they get enough to teach Facebook a real lesson, and if it financially levels them and drives the whole operation into the ground, so be it. All of Facebook’s products are doing more harm than good at this point, anyway.

#deletefacebook

*Quick note to remind readers that last year, Bloomberg was the publication that put out “The Big Hack”, a sensational piece by Jordan Robertson and Michael Riley which claimed that many American companies, including Apple and Amazon, were having data siphoned from their servers by a tiny, Chinese military unit designed chip which had made its way onto their motherboards during production in Chinese factories without the companies’ knowledge. All parties involved denied the claims made by the Bloomberg reporters after conducting internal investigations which yielded no evidence that such tampering had occurred. Bloomberg has offered no evidence to corroborate their “reporting”. By all accounts, it seems like The Big Hack was a big farce. Until Bloomberg retracts the story or corroborates it, their institutional credibility must be questioned.

From The New York Times:

President Trump is considering new immigration regulations that would allow border officials to temporarily block American citizens and legal permanent residents from returning to the United States from abroad if authorities believe they may be infected with the coronavirus. In recent months, Mr. Trump has imposed sweeping rules that ban entry by foreigners into the United States, citing the risk of allowing the virus to spread from hot spots abroad. But those rules have exempted two categories of people attempting to return: American citizens and non-citizens who have already established legal residence.

This is outrageous and treasonous.

🇺🇸 United States: 0

🦠 COVID-19: 26

Check out CopyrightBro’s COVID-19 coverage roundup.

Shan Li and Jennifer Calfas, reporting for The Wall Street Journal:

The U.S. has surpassed five million confirmed cases of the coronavirus as some states saw sharp upticks while others showed signs that the spread of the virus was easing.

The U.S. continues to lead the world in number of confirmed cases, followed by Brazil with about three million cases and India with more than two million, according to data compiled by Johns Hopkins University.

Brazil and India. Great company we’re keeping these days.

It’s been a little over two weeks since we hit 4,000,000. Still, it seems to be the south’s fault.

🇺🇸 United States: 0

🦠 COVID-19: 25

Check out CopyrightBro’s COVID-19 coverage roundup.

That didn’t take long. Just fourteen days to add another million cases — that’s a 33% increase from July 9th — and it’s almost entirely the south’s fault. Like I said when we hit three million, these next few are on us.

On the bright side (ha), at least the Trump administration seems to be taking this a little bit more seriously now. 
God knows how long that’ll last, but hopefully it’s not an act.

Southerners, listen up:

• Stop being selfish and put on a mask. Don’t confuse inconvenience with oppression.

• Wash your hands, and carry some hand sanitizer.

• Don’t listen to antivaxxer bullshit. Or do, honestly, cause if you’re that far gone you’re beyond reason. If your kids die from COVID-19 because you won’t get them their shots, don’t act surprised, Darwin called that shit like a hundred years ago. Can’t believe we’re still having the conversation about vaccines.

• Stay home.

• Push your representatives to renew the $600 weekly unemployment benefit so that people whose jobs aren’t essential can stay home.

🇺🇸 United States: 0

🦠 COVID-19: 23

Check out CopyrightBro’s COVID-19 coverage roundup.

Zachary Cohen, Luke McGee, and Alex Marquardt, reporting for CNN:

Russian cyber actors are targeting organizations involved in coronavirus vaccine development, according to a new warning by US, UK and Canadian security officials on Thursday that details activity by a Russian hacking group called APT29, which also goes by the name “the Dukes” or “Cozy Bear.” […]

Cozy Bear is one of two hacking groups linked to Russian intelligence that is believed to have accessed the Democratic National Committee's internal systems in the lead-up to the 2016 US election, but Thursday's announcement is the first time this group has been named in connection to cyberattacks related to the coronavirus pandemic.

The NCSC, which is the UK's lead technical authority on cyber security and part of the UK's Government Communications Headquarters (GCHQ), assessed that APT29 "almost certainly operate as part of Russian Intelligence Services". […] This assessment is also supported by partners at the Canadian Communication Security Establishment (CSE), the US Department for Homeland Security (DHS) Cybersecurity Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA) and the National Security Agency (NSA), the NCSC said. […] "APT29's campaign of malicious activity is ongoing, predominantly against government, diplomatic, think tank, healthcare and energy targets to steal valuable intellectual property," according to a press release.

Russia? Conduct a cyber attack against the United States!? They would never!

🇺🇸 United States: 0

🇨🇦 Canada: 0

🇬🇧 United Kingdom: 0

🇷🇺 Russia: 1

🦠 COVID-19: 20

Check out CopyrightBro’s COVID-19 coverage roundup.

Natural selection at work in the case of Mr. Richard Rose, reported by Fox News:

“Let [me] make this clear,” Rose wrote. “I’m not buying a f—ing mask. I’ve made it this far by not buying into that damn hype.”

Karma’s a bitch.*

🇺🇸 United States: 0

🦠 COVID-19: 19

*I may sound like a bitch too — let me elaborate a bit. Yes it’s a tragedy that someone died, but this man’s death was completely preventable, and it was brought on by his own ignorance and pride. A larger tragedy will be if anyone he came in contact with also dies as a result of his selfishness. Still more tragic is the fact that so many people in our nation are willfully blind to reason because they apparently value the ugly principles of their orange demagogue more than they value their lives.

Check out CopyrightBro’s COVID-19 coverage roundup.

Today, the United States surpassed three million cases of COVID-19. This is an astonishing number already, but it represents just one percent of the country’s population. The scariest part is that this pandemic could — and likely will — get much worse. If the northeast was to blame for the first two million cases, then the south is certainly to blame for this million (and the next two or three, at this rate).

I don’t know about everyone else, but I’m ready for this nightmarish campaign of sickness, death, and governmental negligence to come to its end and be placed definitively in the trash can of history. But some shortsighted people can’t reckon with the fact that the easiest way for us to truly and safely end the lockdowns and get the economy back on its feet (and restart sports, and educate our kids, and take the masks off, reopen businesses, and...) is to decisively beat the virus so that people will feel safe when we’re able to do those things, so we seem to be stuck in this hellscape indefinitely. Beating the virus means wearing masks, avoiding crowds, washing your hands; you know the drill. At this point, if you aren’t doing all you can to help our country move past this embarrassing chapter of our history, then you’re a selfish, irresponsible asshole.

And again, it’s important to ask ourselves why our country has done such a remarkably poor job of dealing with this compared to the countries we usually like to be compared to. Could it have anything to do with our incompetent Commander in Cheeto? You decide.

🇺🇸 United States: 0

🦠 COVID-19: 18

Check out CopyrightBro’s COVID-19 coverage roundup.

I live in the south, and though many people here don’t realize it yet, we’re about to get slammed with a wave of COVID-19 infections. In conversations with family members, friends, and coworkers, a frustrating trend has popped up where, even after being presented with valid data or charts showing the increases in COVID-19 cases in the south, they still seem largely unbothered. When you ask why this is, you typically get one of two responses.

The first retort that comes up from people here in the south who aren’t taking the pandemic seriously is that they think hospitals are greatly exaggerating the number of cases they have in an effort to acquire three to four times more money from insurance companies. This piece from USA Today explains some of the details behind that. While it would be possible for a hospital to exaggerate their numbers and receive more money, the amount of the increase in funding is far less significant than fearmongers would have you believe. Additionally, the piece seems to indicate that only Medicare is subject to these possible manipulations, not private insurers. Regardless of these finer details, allow me to pose two questions.

1. Many people claim to know nurses and other hospital staff who provide them with “insider knowledge” of this alleged insurance fraud. But how could one trust the word of such a source, if that source is a person who regularly sees such fraudulent and immoral activities transpiring and doesn’t have the integrity to speak out publicly or report them?

2. If the rise in COVID-19 cases is primarily attributable to dishonest hospital staff, why are states in the sun belt experiencing such an explosion of cases while other areas of the country are not? Do the people who live there suffer from a lack of morals that allows them to be comfortable with their complicity (a lack of morals which, if based on areas with more reported COVID-19 cases, doesn’t seem to affect the northeast or the west coast)? Or is it more likely that the demonstrably less defensive responses of the states with the most severe increases (Florida, South Carolina, Arizona, Texas, etc.) simply led to an increase in new infections in the region?

Another rebuttal they’ll offer to support their dismissal of the gravity of the pandemic is the high number of people who experience mild symptoms or no symptoms at all. It’s true that many people who have COVID-19 won’t know it. However, we may not be looking for symptoms in the right places: from the start, we’ve compared sickness caused by the coronavirus to the flu. We looked for respiratory symptoms, but we didn’t necesarily spend a lot of time looking at what other dots we could connect. It’s possible that we missed some things, and new evidence suggets as much. Just this week, we learned that in addition to the serious respiratory symptoms many COVID-19 patients are experiencing, they’re also experiencing serious neurological symptoms. From an opinion piece in The New York Times by Melinda Wenner Moyer:

Earlier this month, French researchers reported that 84 percent of Covid patients who had been admitted to the I.C.U. experienced neurological problems, and that 33 percent continued to act confused and disoriented when they were discharged.

According to Dr. Mady Hornig, a psychiatrist and epidemiologist at the Columbia University Mailman School of Public Health, the possibility that neurological issues “will persist and create disability, or difficulties, for individuals downstream is really looking more and more likely.”

Note that the French President is a very liberal man, and it wouldn’t make any sense for the “fake news media” (which presumably exists in France) would drum up false conspiracies about COVID-19 to make their President look worse.

If you’re in the south and you still don’t believe this is a big deal, you may not be thinking rationally. Maybe you’re stuck under the spell of Trump’s demagoguery, forced to deny the validity of anything that could cast him in a negative light. Or, maybe you have COVID-19, and it’s affecting your cognitive abilities. Whatever the case may be, I encourage you to take a hard look at the data that supports your arguments and question its legitimacy (assuming you have any data to point to).

If you’re in the south and you’re capable of rational thought, check out these charts. They’re frightening but they’re informative, and it’s important for everyone to understand the weight of the threat we face. This is not a left versus right issue. Like it or not, how you react to this will affect others, and how others react will affect you.

Check out CopyrightBro’s COVID-19 coverage roundup.

These charts are startling. The south is heading into a peak similar to the one New York experienced, and we are woefully unprepared for it.

Those charts are interactive over on 91-DIVOC.com, so if you head to their site, you can touch any point to see the specific data behind it. The data itself is from Johns Hopkins University and the WHO, so you can trust it (unless you’re a complete COVID denier or someone who thinks it’s caused by 5G towers/was started in a lab/etc.).

While it’s true that COVID-19 isn’t as deadly as we first thought, that doesn’t mean that it isn’t still extremely bad for a ton of people. While a lot of people who get the virus will be asymptomatic, they can still spread it to others. There’s no way to know whether you’ll be someone who experiences the symptoms of not, and it’s selfish to decide that “it’s worth the risk”. People who do experience symptoms get seriously sick, and are appearing to suffering long term problems ranging from difficulty breathing because of scar tissue in their lungs to permanent loss of smell. And that’s not to mention the fact that people are dying. Nearly 130,000 Americans have died: that’s more than the number of American soldiers and civilians who died in World War One.

If you’re in the south, please, do all you can to keep yourself and those around you safe. Here is a list of some of the most important things we all need to do in order to keep this from really getting out of hand.

• Make a concerted effort to stay home more and avoid crowds.

• If you need to go somewhere, try to use a drive-thrus or use curbside pickup at stores. Also, remember to sanitize items you bring into your home. Spritzing groceries with hydrogen peroxide is a great way to get germs, including coronavirus, off of your items (which plenty of other people likely touched).

• If you must go into a public place where you’ll be around people you don’t know, please wear a mask. It isn’t difficult, and it’s not that uncomfortable. Find a cool mask and get excited about wearing it; they don’t have to be boring and ugly to be effective.

• Use lots of hand sanitizer and wash your hands with soap frequently.

• Don’t hoard toilet paper. Or anything else, for that matter.

• Reach out to your representatives and let them know that you expect them to do what’s necessary to keep us safe, from enforcing social distancing and implementing mask requirements, to ensuring that the pandemic unemployment benefits (which end this month) get extended so that people employed in nonessential industries can stay out of work without living in poverty.

Finally, to those who say that this pandemic presents us with a choice between letting a bunch of people get sick and saving our economy, listen up. That line of thinking is being fed to you. It is a false choice. There’s no reason we can’t do both, and in fact, stopping the pandemic definitively will be the best way to get the economy back up and running like normal. Doing a half assed job like we did the past few months is only going to prolong the pain from a belly up economy with 11% unemployment (a number which is about to jump back up). Even if businesses are open, they aren’t going to be successful if people don’t go to them because they’re scared of contracting a deadly virus. It isn’t hard to understand.

Also, Donald Trump still thinks the pandemic is going to “disappear”, so make of that what you will. Plenty of other countries have figured this out, why hasn’t ours?

🇺🇸 United States: 0

🦠 COVID-19: 17

Check out CopyrightBro’s COVID-19 coverage roundup.

UPDATED: 7/9/20, 19:09

Ali Breland, reporting for Mother Jones:

The fact that the upside red triangle has been an explicit piece of deadly Nazi iconography for seven decades hasn’t deterred Trump’s 2020 campaign from using them in Facebook ads. This week, the campaign started running a series of ads, disparaging Antifa demonstrators and featuring a large, bright red, upside-down triangle. Antifa, is of course, short for anti-fascist. The red triangle was sewn on uniforms of people interned in concentration camps, including anti-fascist political prisoners. Millions of Soviet and Western anti-fascist soldiers died defeating Nazism, including hundreds of thousands of Americans.

“Dangerous MOBS of far-left groups are running through our streets and causing absolute mayhem. They are DESTROYING our cities and rioting—it’s absolute madness,” reads one 2020 Trump ad featuring the symbol.

In case you don’t understand the parallels, refer to this chart used by the Third Reich. It specifies which badges should be afixed to the uniforms of concentration camp prisoners to denote the nature of their crimes against the reich. For those of you who haven’t recently brushed up on your German history and German language skills, the word “politisch” in the first column of the chart above the red symbols refers to political prisoners. Political prisoners included a variety of people, including anti-fascists, socialists, communists, and others who were critical of Hitler’s regime.

Image from the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum website, available at https://encyclopedia.ushmm.org/content/en/article/classification-system-in-nazi-concentration-camps

The President of the United States is campaigning for reelection using a Nazi concentration camp symbol.

Nazis used the red triangle to mark political prisoners and people who rescued Jews.

Trump & the RNC are using it to smear millions of protestors.

Their masks are off. pic.twitter.com/UzmzDaRBup

— Bend the Arc: Jewish Action (@jewishaction) June 18, 2020

The similarities are not subtle. The Trump campaign is growing more brazen in their fascism by the day.

Facebook spokesperson Andy Stone said the company “removed these posts and ads for violating our policy against organized hate. Our policy prohibits using a banned hate group’s symbol to identify political prisoners without the context that condemns or discusses the symbol.”

In the name of giving credit where it’s due, this is one rare example of Facebook doing the right thing by removing the ads. (You should still #deletefacebook, though.) It’s worth pointing out that Facebook’s decision to remove these ads highlights just how egregious they were, given Facebook’s tendency to let Trump get away with things.

See also: my thesis paper, which explores the experiences of men who bore the pink triangle in Nazi concentration camps.

Stacey who has been a cop for 15 yrs went to @McDonalds She paid for it in advance and this is how she gets treated for being a cop😢😡 Come on America. We are better than this. pic.twitter.com/IcudsNfVLY

— 🌷🇺🇸Ann🇺🇸🌷🐇 (@tkag2020_ann) June 17, 2020

If a gun wielding police officer can have this much anxiety over whether or not they‘ll be able to defend themselves against a McMuffin that may have been spat in without provocation, just imagine how nervous black people must feel when they’re pulled over by a gun wielding cop that may execute them without provocation.

If you’re a police officer and your response to the current state of affairs in this country is to seek pity on social media by (a) posting a video of yourself crying over your McDonald’s drive thru experience and asking people to be nicer to you, or (b) posting a video announcing that you’re resigning because you can’t take a little bit of scrutiny to make sure you don’t abuse innocent black people, the I would suspect that lack empathy to such an absurd degree that a psychiatrist would probably like to study you. It goes without saying that you have no business carrying a badge, much less a firearm. You should resign.

If you’re not a police officer and your response to the current state of affairs is to flock to social media to share and boost videos like the ones above, and spread other nonsense about how “it’s just a few bad apples” and “more white people are killed by police than black people” you’re either openly racist, or you’re too ignorant to realize that you’re a racist. We have established that there is a deep, systemic problem with policing in America, and more people have realized that fact in the past few weeks than ever before. Just because you’ve always “backed the blue” before doesn’t mean it’s too late to open your eyes to the reality that is the abusive nature of policing in the United States.

Ed Kilgore, reporting for The Intelligencer:

In a sweeping and consequential 6-3 decision, the U.S. Supreme Court has ruled that the workplace anti-discrimination provisions of Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 banning discrimination on grounds of sex protect LGBTQ employees.

In Bostock v. Clayton County, Neil Gorsuch wrote the opinion for himself, Chief Justice Roberts, and the Court’s four liberals (Ruth Bader Ginsburg, Stephen Breyer, Sonia Sotomayor, and Elena Kagan).

From the opinion penned by Gorsuch:

Sometimes small gestures can have unexpected consequences. Major initiatives practically guarantee them. In our time, few pieces of federal legislation rank in significance with the Civil Rights Act of 1964. There, in Title VII, Congress outlawed discrimination in the workplace on the basis of race, color, religion, sex, or national origin. Today, we must decide whether an employer can fire someone simply for being homosexual or transgender. The answer is clear. An employer who fires an individual for being homosexual or transgender fires that person for traits or actions it would not have questioned in members of a different sex. Sex plays a necessary and undisguisable role in the decision, exactly what Title VII forbids.

Those who adopted the Civil Rights Act might not have anticipated their work would lead to this particular result. Likely, they weren’t thinking about many of the Act’s con-sequences that have become apparent over the years, including its prohibition against discrimination on the basis of motherhood or its ban on the sexual harassment of male employees. But the limits of the drafters’ imagination supply no reason to ignore the law’s demands. When the express terms of a statute give us one answer and extratextual considerations suggest another, it’s no contest. Only the written word is the law, and all persons are entitled to its benefit.

Few facts are needed to appreciate the legal question we face. Each of the three cases before us started the same way: An employer fired a long-time employee shortly after the employee revealed that he or she is homosexual or transgender—and allegedly for no reason other than the employee’s homosexuality or transgender status.

Gerald Bostock worked for Clayton County, Georgia, as achild welfare advocate. Under his leadership, the county won national awards for its work. After a decade with the county, Mr. Bostock began participating in a gay recreational softball league. Not long after that, influential members of the community allegedly made disparaging comments about Mr. Bostock’s sexual orientation and participation in the league. Soon, he was fired for conduct “unbecoming” a county employee.

Donald Zarda worked as a skydiving instructor at Altitude Express in New York. After several seasons with the company, Mr. Zarda mentioned that he was gay and, days later, was fired.

Aimee Stephens worked at R. G. & G. R. Harris Funeral Homes in Garden City, Michigan. When she got the job, Ms. Stephens presented as a male. But two years into her service with the company, she began treatment for despair and loneliness. Ultimately, clinicians diagnosed her with gender dysphoria and recommended that she begin living as a woman. In her sixth year with the company, Ms. Stephens wrote a letter to her employer explaining that she planned to “live and work full-time as a woman” after she returned from an upcoming vacation. The funeral home fired her before she left, telling her “this is not going to work out.”

[…]

Some of those who supported adding language to Title VII to ban sex discrimination may have hoped it would derail the entire Civil Rights Act. Yet, contrary to those intentions, the bill became law. Since then, Title VII’s effects have unfolded with far-reaching consequences, some likely beyond what many in Congress or elsewhere expected. But none of this helps decide today’s cases. Ours is a s-ciety of written laws. Judges are not free to overlook plain statutory commands on the strength of nothing more than suppositions about intentions or guesswork about expectations. In Title VII, Congress adopted broad language making it illegal for an employer to rely on an employee’s sex when deciding to fire that employee. We do not hesitate to recognize today a necessary consequence of that legislative choice: An employer who fires an individual merely for being gay or transgender defies the law.

This is a truly historic ruling, and I hope everyone can appreciate the gravity of this moment, particularly for those of us who find ourselves attracted to members of the same sex, as well as others who don’t identify as the gender associated with their biological sex.

I’m particularly glad to see Justice Gorsuch on the right side of history. I’d imagine his ruling feels like as much of a slap in the face to conservative religious bigots and homophobic Trump supporters as it feels like an unexpected, resounding victory for those fighting for equality under the law.

For your records: dissenting justices include three straight men, Clarence Thomas, Samuel Alito, and Brett Kavanaugh (who still likes beer).

UPDATED: 06/15/20, 17:00

From Wikipedia:

The paradox of tolerance states that if a society is tolerant without limit, its ability to be tolerant is eventually seized or destroyed by the intolerant.

The paradox of tolerance: Unlimited tolerance must lead to the disappearance of tolerance. If we extend unlimited tolerance even to those who are intolerant, if we are not prepared to defend a tolerant society against the onslaught of the intolerant, then the tolerant will be destroyed, and tolerance with them.—In this formulation, I do not imply, for instance, that we should always suppress the utterance of intolerant philosophies; as long as we can counter them by rational argument and keep them in check by public opinion, suppression would certainly be most unwise. But we should claim the right to suppress them if necessary even by force; for it may easily turn out that they are not prepared to meet us on the level of rational argument, but begin by denouncing all argument; they may forbid their followers to listen to rational argument, because it is deceptive, and teach them to answer arguments by the use of their fists or pistols. We should therefore claim, in the name of tolerance, the right not to tolerate the intolerant.

Today it was discovered that Muriel Bowser, mayor of Washington D.C. has renamed a section of 16th Street in front of the White House “Black Lives Matters Plaza” and had “BLACK LIVES MATTER” painted on the street in 50-foot letters.

The section of 16th street in front of the White House is now officially “Black Lives Matter Plaza”. pic.twitter.com/bbJgAYE35b

— Mayor Muriel Bowser (@MayorBowser) June 5, 2020

#BlackLivesMatter pic.twitter.com/OQg6977n5r

— Muriel Bowser #StayHomeDC (@MurielBowser) June 5, 2020

I hope that paint is permanent; this street will become iconic.

I’m sure this is a real eyesore for Trump and his racist followers, but for anyone with a conscience, it’s a beautiful symbol of determination and hope.

✊🏼✊🏾✊🏿

From an opinion piece by Paul Krugman for The New York Times:

Donald Trump isn’t Richard Nixon — he’s much, much worse. And America 2020 isn’t America 1970: We’re a better nation in many ways, but our democracy is far more fragile thanks to the utter corruption of the Republican Party. […] The Trump-Nixon comparisons are obvious. Like Nixon, Trump has exploited white backlash for political gain. Like Nixon, Trump evidently believes that laws apply only to the little people.

These guys have a few interesting parallels, including their utilization of concepts and dog whistles like the “silent majority” and “law and order”, but their divergences are also stark and worthy of recognition.

Nixon, however, doesn’t seem to have been a coward. Amid mass demonstrations, he didn’t cower in the MAGAbunker, venturing out only after his minions had gassed peaceful protesters and driven them out of Lafayette Park. Instead, he went out to talk to protesters at the Lincoln Memorial. His behavior was a bit weird, but it wasn’t craven.

And while his political strategy was cynical and ruthless, Nixon was a smart, hard-working man who took the job of being president seriously.

His policy legacy was surprisingly positive — in particular, he did more than any other president, before or since, to protect the environment. Before Watergate took him down he was working on a plan to expand health insurance coverage that in many ways anticipated Obamacare.

A Republican who didn’t burn tires and thought people should have access to healthcare? Must’ve been a communist plant.

So Trump is no Nixon. And the country he’s trying to dominate — his favorite word — is very different, too. […]

A majority of Americans are willing to acknowledge that racism is real and see it as a problem, which represents huge moral progress. Nixon’s “silent majority” is now a noisy minority.

At the time, Nixon’s silent majority was basically code for “white people who all agree that they’re better than everyone else”. Now, Trump’s silent majority is actually a noisy minority of white people who pretend that they don’t think they’re better than everyone else, but make arguments in bad faith that prop up systemic racism and facilitate the preservation of the status quo that makes them feel comfortable because it affords them a disproportionate amount of social power.

But it’s a very dangerous minority. While we are, as I said, in many ways a better nation than we were, we’re also a nation in which the rule of law and democratic values are very much under siege.

At this point it’s alarmingly easy to see how the United States could follow the path already taken by Hungary, becoming a democracy on paper but an authoritarian one-party state in practice. And I’m not talking about the distant future: It could happen this year, if Trump wins re-election — or even, potentially, if he loses but refuses to accept the results.

Unfortunately, the way the electoral college is designed, it allows for the ballots of such a minority to have disproportional sway.

And the reason democracy is threatened in a way it never was under Nixon is not simply that Trump is a worse human being than Nixon ever was; it is the fact that he has so many enablers.

Trump’s authoritarian instincts, his admiration for and envy of foreign strongmen, his desire to militarize law enforcement have long been obvious.

To paraphrase the hosts of a political (though admittedly left-biased) podcast I enjoy, countries don’t typically enthusiastically adopt fascism on principle, it’s something they stumble into. The road to authoritarianism is a slippery slope, and I’m afraid that Lady Liberty has one foot on that slope and the other on a skateboard.

These things wouldn’t matter so much, however, if the Republican Party were still the institution it was in the 1970s — a big tent with room for a variety of views, represented in the Senate by many people with real principles. These were people willing to remove a president, even if he was a Republican, when he betrayed his oath of office.

The modern G.O.P., however, is nothing like that. Many of its leading figures — people like Senator Tom Cotton — are every bit as authoritarian and anti-democratic as Trump himself.

The rest, with hardly any exceptions, are loyal apparatchiks, intimidated into obedience by an angry base. This base gets its information from Fox and Facebook and basically lives in an alternate reality, in which protesters demonstrating peacefully against police brutality are actually a radical horde that will begin a violent insurrection any minute now.

The point is that today’s Republican Party wouldn’t object to a Trumpian power grab, even if it amounted to a military coup. On the contrary, the party would cheer it on.

Nixon isn’t the only unsavory politician with whom Trump has some unfortunate similarities.

UPDATED: 7/15/20, 23:43

This is just a small collection of statements, quotes, and responses from individuals and organizations that I found particularly moving, insightful, and appropriate for the events and the pain our country is experiencing. This compilation has been curated to strike a balance between amplifying black voices and casting a spotlight on constructive remarks from white people, because at the end of the day, the repsonsibility to address systemic racism lies with those of us who have benefited from centuries of privilege at the expense of those who were subjected to centuries of injustice (largely at the hands of those sworn to protect them).

I hope these sentiments will inspire you to start conversations and give you a starting point in the fight for change that our country so desperately needs and deserves.

Ben & Jerry’s very direct statement:

What happened to George Floyd was not the result of a bad apple; it was the predictable consequence of a racist and prejudiced system and culture that has treated Black bodies as the enemy from the beginning. What happened to George Floyd in Minneapolis is the fruit borne of toxic seeds planted on the shores of our country in Jamestown in 1619, when the first enslaved men and women arrived on this continent. Floyd is the latest in a long list of names that stretches back to that time and that shore. Some of those names we know — Ahmaud Arbery, Breonna Taylor, Oscar Grant, Eric Garner, Trayvon Martin, Michael Brown, Emmett Till, Martin Luther King, Jr. — most we don’t.

Akilah Hughes’s monologue on Crooked Media’s daily news podcast, “What A Day”:

How many white men have you watched die in HD video? Can you name five? Cause I bet you can’t name ten. The video footage is shorthand for desensitization. You know, ask yourself why you’re even comfortable looking at a video of someone being murdered. Then ask why you’d share it with everyone you know. If it was a dog, you wouldn’t, so what’s the reasoning? For what reason should we share footage of a person being murdered? […]

When I say “don’t look away”, I don’t mean “consume black death like it’s a meme on TikTok“. I mean “look in the mirror, look at your family, look at the community you live in, look at your friend group, look at the wealthy white woman with the rescue dog in the goddamn park, okay, and don’t look away. Because we know what the problem is. No one is unclear on what the problem is. So where is the justice?

Niall Horan’s tweet:

Racism has been rampant for hundreds of years, it’s just that in this century people have camera phones to video it. It’s absolutely disgusting that you get mistreated because of the colour of your skin. You would think that those that are there to protect us, would protect.

— Niall Horan (@NiallOfficial) May 29, 2020

Marques Brownlee’s vlog, “Reflecting on the Color of My Skin”:

J.K. Rowling’s loss for words:

I've paused on commenting on children's drawings because, like everyone, I've been watching what's happening in America. Anything I say feels inadequate. All I know is that the world has to change. Power structures have to change. White people have to change. #BlackLivesMatter

— J.K. Rowling (@jk_rowling) June 1, 2020

The University of Tennessee Athletic Department’s statement:

Wherever you're reading this, it likely holds true that the cultures that exist in the sports programs at your local high school or college are much healthier than the culture in your local community. Why do these healthy cultures exist in small sports teams' locker rooms all across the country, but not in our larger communities? […]

If you're going to support our Black student-athletes when they compete, please have the courage to support them and their families in their daily pursuit of peace, happiness and equity.

Logan Lerman’s offered some succinct yet widely applicable sentiments in response to a video of a peaceful protestor being arrested:

Fascist fucks https://t.co/F3VrOi2l5D

— Logan Lerman (@LoganLerman) June 2, 2020

This incredible tweet:

It’s not white vs black, it’s everybody vs racists

— RomeAlone2 (@Alone2Rome) May 28, 2020

Taylor Swift had a stern message for President Bone Spurs:

After stoking the fires of white supremacy and racism your entire presidency, you have the nerve to feign moral superiority before threatening violence? ‘When the looting starts the shooting starts’??? We will vote you out in November. @realdonaldtrump

— Taylor Swift (@taylorswift13) May 29, 2020

Apple CEO Tim Cook issued a poignant statement on behalf of the company:

To create change, we have to reexamine our own views and actions in ight of a pain that is deeply felt but too often ignored. Issues of human dignity will not abide standing on the sidelines. To the Black community — we see you. You matter and your lives matter.

This is a moment when many people may want nothing more than a return to normalcy, or to a status quo that is only comfortable if we avert our gaze from injustice. As difficult as it may be to admit, that desire is itself a sign of privilege. George Floyd’s death is shocking and tragic proof that we must aim far higher than a “normal” future, and build one that lives up to the highest ideals of equality and justice.

Mugglenet points out that there really is a beautifully well fitted Harry Potter quote for almost any occasion.

“There is no shame in what you are feeling, Harry,” said Dumbledore’s voice. “On the contrary . . . the fact that you can feel pain like this is your greatest strength.”

Keke Palmer had a very moving address to members of the military at a protest:

How about we get @KekePalmer trending instead? This is incredible ❤️ #KekePalmer #BLM pic.twitter.com/rR1mXMsymE

— Dylan O'Brien (@dylanobrien) June 3, 2020

An important message from Bernice King, daughter of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.:

It would be great if folks were as zealous about evoking my father to eradicate racism as they are about evoking him to criticize how people respond to racism. https://t.co/GORByOXvk4

— Be A King (@BerniceKing) May 29, 2020

Finally, a powerful image taken at a protest in Washington D.C. by my good friend and former coworker, Derek Baker.

Black Lives Matter. ✊🏼✊🏾✊🏿

If you disagree with that simple statement or are too willfully ignorant to educate yourself and try to understand it, you should be ashamed of yourself, and CopyrightBro does not welcome your readership.

For all you real Kings and Queens out there, click here to get started.

UPDATED: 09/28/20, 10:43

As any non-racist person can admit, police brutality is a systemic problem that permeates law enforcement culture. This is old news. But there comes a point when we have to channel our anger at the injustices of the system into productive ideas to improve it, rather than continue down a destructive path of allowing that anger to consume us. I don’t have all the answers, but I do know that to address it, we’ll need sweeping, cultural changes in how our country handles policing and how law enforcement officers view themselves and their role in our communities. Here are a few ideas, some borrowed, some of my own, that I think could lead to meaningful change.

Ideas to demilitarize police forces:

• Adopt new uniforms that are brighter and more colorful. A hot pink or neon yellow uniform would make it easier for citizens to spot police officers and solicit their assistance when needed. It would also provide the opposite effect from the dark gray, navy, and black uniforms that are currently in use by making officers appear less intimidating. This approach has been adopted in many European countries, where police officers regularly wear brightly colored vests to attract attention.

• Make police vehicles more easily identifiable in order to attract more attention, rather than camouflaging them to let them sneak up on unsuspecting drivers like wild predators.

• Reduce funding for police departments. The trope is that police are overworked and have dangerous, impossible jobs, so let’s address that. Take some of the $112B the U.S. spends on police departments and put it toward new institutions that are better equipped to deal with issues like mental health emergencies, drug abuse incidents, traffic infractions/accidents, and homelessness issues. This will reduce the responsibilities of police officers and ensure that they can focus on stopping violent crimes, and it will allow us to send more appropriately trained, unarmed professionals to all other types of 911 calls that usually get relegated to police.

Ideas to encourage deescalation:

• Ban the use of choke holds and other neck restraint techniques.

• Hold officers accountable for using force unnecessarily.

• Take immediate punitive action for any officer who conceals their badge number, deactivates their body cameras, or tells civilians not to video their actions.

• Any time you see a police officer, video them. Record them whether they’re arresting/questioning someone, eating a donut, getting aggressive, staring at their phone, etc. If we make a habit of videoing cops all the time, it will (a) communicate a widespread lack of trust, and (b) encourage them to restrain themselves if they know their actions are always going to be recorded.

Ideas to combat ingrained prejudice and racism:

• Require more in-person training on diversity.

• Adopt more stringent personality assessments to disqualify applicants whose answers indicate potentially harmful prejudices.

• Require current members of the police force to pass personality assessments that test for prejudices.

• Hold complicit officers accountable to the same degree as offending officers in cases of racial discrimination.

• Publicly disclose the amount of money spent defending officers in lawsuits.

• Adopt programs that take civilian reports seriously and result in swift punitive action.

There have been a lot of other good ideas shared in recent days. If you have an idea you’d like to see added to this list, get in touch.

UPDATED: 06/19/20, 10:45

As everyone knows, like a hundred years ago (last week) Twitter made headlines by finally taking a stand against some of Trump’s tweets for spreading misinformation and glorifying violence. This week, Facebook is making headlines for their refusal to take a stand against Trump for the same posts.

Of course, Zuckerberg has been defending this position under the guise of free speech, but we all know that on Facebook, sowing division reaps ad revenue. His creepily robotic statement was as follows: “Personally, I have a visceral negative reaction to this kind of divisive and inflammatory rhetoric, but I’m responsible for reacting not just in my personal capacity but as the leader of an institution committed to free expression.” That’s definitely how normal people talk, affirmative?

On Friday, Zuckerberg had a phone call with the President regarding the call. In an open call with employees, he expanded on the nature of the call, saying, “I used that opportunity to make him know I felt this post was inflammatory and harmful, and let him know where we stood on it.” He then reiterated his puzzling stance that the posts didn’t technically violate the rules, because it was about “state force” which is apparently allowed under Facebook’s rules. Okay.

To their (nominal) credit, Facebook employees are speaking out against him. On Monday, The New York Times reported that a few Facebook employees were so strongly opposed to this position that they have decided to leave the company, and hundreds participated in a “virtual walkout” in protest. A large number of employees have made public remarks (usually on Twitter) criticizing Zuckerberg’s decision and saying that it makes them ashamed to work for the company. Here are a few remarks from Facebook employees:

“Along with Black employees in the company, and all persons with a moral conscience, I am calling for Mark to immediately take down the President’s post advocating violence, murder and imminent threat against Black people.”

“The hateful rhetoric advocating violence against black demonstrators by the US President does not warrant defense under the guise of freedom of expression.”

“The lack of backbone, and this weak leadership, will be judged by history. Hate speech should never be compared to free speech.”

Another employee explained his frustration with Facebook constantly moving the goalposts when it comes to holding Trump accountable. Ben Thompson and John Gruber had a good analysis of this employee’s statement on their new podcast “Dithering”. Essentially, they point out that when Zuckerberg was asked several months ago by Congress what sort of posts Facebook would remove, he explained that Facebook didn’t want to be in the business of moderating or fact checking because they saw it as a free speech issue, but he also conceded that if anyone (including a politician) posted something that incited or promoted violence, that it would be taken down. The podcast’s assessment was that in making that commitment, Zuckerberg was trying to avoid being in this position by drawing a line in the sand so far out, that even Trump wouldn’t cross it. Lo and behold, Trump crossed it, and Zuckerberg didn’t keep his word. Not a good look.

From Daring Fireball:

Facebook’s real risk here, as I see it, is getting branded as the social network for racists.

Here’s the thing, Facebook is already the social network for racists, it’s just a matter of when people start to associate racism with their brand on a fundamental level. Of course, not everyone who uses Facebook is a racist, but based on anecdotal evidence and the many structural advantages Facebook’s platform provides them, I would be willing to bet a large sum of money that people who are racists prefer Facebook over any other social network.

Not only does Facebook’s platform work well for racists to share their opinions and find one another, it helps them breed and radicalize budding racists. Facebook’s Achille's heel is that their executives are too greedy to stop this cycle. But this isn’t news, I’ve said it a hundred times: Facebook’s algorithms are designed to drive division because division drives engagement, and engagement equals ad revenue.

To back up my assessment, here’s a quote from an article posted to Medium by former Facebook employee, David Schnitt:

Unfortunately, I do not think it is a coincidence that the choices Facebook makes are the ones that allow the most content–the fuel for the Facebook engine–to remain in the system. I do not think it is a coincidence that Facebook’s choices align with the least resources required, outsourcing important aspects to third parties. I do not think it is a coincidence that Facebook’s choices appease those in power who have made misinformation, blatant racism and inciting violence part of their platform. Facebook says, and may even believe, that it is on the side of free speech. In fact, it has put itself on the side of profit and cowardice.

#deletefacebook

Jeff Horwitz and Deepa Seetharaman, reporting for The Wall Street Journal:

In essence, Facebook is under fire for making the world more divided. Many of its own experts appeared to agree—and to believe Facebook could mitigate many of the problems. The company chose not to.

Old news.

Another concern, they and others said, was that some proposed changes would have disproportionately affected conservative users and publishers, at a time when the company faced accusations from the right of political bias.

A 2016 presentation that names as author a Facebook researcher and sociologist, Monica Lee, found extremist content thriving in more than one-third of large German political groups on the platform. Swamped with racist, conspiracy-minded and pro-Russian content, the groups were disproportionately influenced by a subset of hyperactive users, the presentation notes. Most of them were private or secret.

Facebook is the social network for racists.

The high number of extremist groups was concerning, the presentation says. Worse was Facebook’s realization that its algorithms were responsible for their growth. The 2016 presentation states that “64% of all extremist group joins are due to our recommendation tools” and that most of the activity came from the platform’s “Groups You Should Join” and “Discover” algorithms: “Our recommendation systems grow the problem.”

To their credit, some Facebook employees were concerned about this, and tried to implement new features and policies to correct course.

Building these features and combating polarization might come at a cost of lower engagement, the Common Ground team warned in a mid-2018 document, describing some of its own proposals as “antigrowth” and requiring Facebook to “take a moral stance.”

Zuck said “nah, imma pass”.

One early discovery: Bad behavior came disproportionately from a small pool of hyperpartisan users.

A second finding in the U.S. saw a larger infrastructure of accounts and publishers on the far right than on the far left. Outside observers were documenting the same phenomenon. The gap meant even seemingly apolitical actions such as reducing the spread of clickbait headlines—along the lines of “You Won’t Believe What Happened Next”—affected conservative speech more than liberal content in aggregate.

The fact that conservatives are more likely to publish clickbait headlines with misinformation to ensnare ignorant readers who may not be as invested in less sensationalized news says a lot about the state of conservatism in America today. The fact that they can’t play by the rules and still win every now and then doesn’t mean Facebook should write a new, less fair rule book for them.

Don’t get it twisted: Facebook executives made a conscious decision to prioritize profit over ethics. They decided that their bottom line was more important than making sure that their platform wasn’t making human beings more hostile and inflamed.

#deletefacebook

At this point, it‘a difficult to deny that there’s something seriously awry deep within the personality of many of those who chose to become police officers in America. Many cops are just developmentally stunted boys who have deep rooted feelings of inadequacy, and in turn they subscribe to a militarized form of masculinity that leads them to sadistically need to hurt others to feel powerful. Change my mind.

If the protests over George Floyd’s murder have shown us anything, it’s that police brutality is not a problem caused by a handful of bad apples, it’s something that plagues law enforcement agencies all over the country.

See:

An officer approaches a protestor (whose hands are raised) and pulls down his face mask to spray pepper spray in his face.

Pulls down man's mask and sprays him... And I wonder why this cop chose this man out of all the others standing there with their hands up.. 🤔🤔🤔🤔
He lightly pushes the white protesters out the way. But this man gets sprayed. #BlackLivesMatter pic.twitter.com/NNCDSkfSPR

— William Allen (@Will_Akashi_Sei) May 31, 2020

An officer shoving a man with his hands raised to the ground.

Cincinnati police push man with hands raised violently to the ground with riot shield. #GeorgeFloyd #GeorgeFloydProtests pic.twitter.com/js68VUqd94

— J (@GGRHMM) May 31, 2020

Two men being shot by cops at the end of the street.

“cops wouldnt shoot you if you were being peaceful” pic.twitter.com/VBrGddaAd8

— inochi (@liveinochi) June 1, 2020

A group of officers repeatedly punching a protestor.

I don’t own this video, but I saw this and this is not what a cop should do, even if their white, or black. You shouldn’t beat someone. #GeorgeFloydProtests #riots2020 pic.twitter.com/eNy0fL4kUZ

— Jack Gorman (@jackgorman0) May 31, 2020

An officer shoving a man to the ground without provocation.

"to serve and protect" #GeorgeFloydProtests pic.twitter.com/iXgWAzcIbi

— Robert De Niro ᵖᵃʳᵒᵈʸ (@RobertDeNiroUS) May 31, 2020

Officers shooting paint canisters at citizens on their own property.

Look at how they respect private property and free expression

This shit is USA, they are a total lie.
I hope everyone wakes up & forgets the lies created by Hollywood.

USA is just a dictatorship led by a criminal elite#GeorgeFloydProtests#BlackLivesMatter#BLACK_LIVES_MATTER pic.twitter.com/OjJMoQvTdl

— Enrique 🎧🐈 (@Garou_Hidalgo) May 31, 2020

Ohio police officers spraying a woman with mace from behind as she walks away from them.

Not my video, but it shows Columbus police macing a woman as she walks away from them. Absolutely disgusting #columbusprotest #GeorgeFloydProtests #BlackLivesMatter pic.twitter.com/3qCQndM7s6

— ℜ𝔦𝔰𝔢 𝔬𝔣 𝔑𝔬𝔟𝔬𝔡𝔶 #BLACKLIVESMATTER (@lalaitskelcey2) May 30, 2020

Some officers looting and destroying protestors’ stock of bottled water and milk.

I cannot believe what I just witnessed. They pulled up onto the square with a police siren on and did this. #Louisville pic.twitter.com/65o2lgZCJh

— Natalie Neysa Alund (@nataliealund) May 30, 2020

Some cops in Utah shoving and old man with a cane to the ground.

Salt Lake City cops shove down an elderly man with a cane for the crime of standing along the street: pic.twitter.com/PCLkHqQtJg

— Timothy Burke (@bubbaprog) May 31, 2020

NYPD officers ramming a car into a crowd of protestors.

Oh my god. What is the @NYPDnews doing? pic.twitter.com/rZayr421pJ

— Rob Bennett 🤠 (@rob_bennett) May 31, 2020

A two minute compilation that includes some of the above clips and a few others.

What is the polices objective? To harm, bully, and harass everyone including women, old men and the media to show they’re not racist? #GeorgeFloydProtests pic.twitter.com/xS4gDIWtiz

— Sersi (@Sersi_M) May 31, 2020

As it stands, exerting physical force over citizens is a fundamental and existentially important aspect of policing in our country, and it disproportionately affects black men. That must change.

UPDATED: 06/01/20, 22:00