Politics Is Not A Game

from the what-can-you-say dept

I spent yesterday quite numb watching the events unfolding in Washington DC, in which an angry mob of insurrectionists -- egged on by the President of the United States, a few key Senators, and certain news media personalities -- literally stormed the US Capitol to try to block the formality of Presidential vote counting or, worse, to overthrow the government. I couldn't write anything. I couldn't take care of other work happening. I was witnessing the kind of history I never thought I would witness. I was angry. I was scared. I was frustrated. But most of all I was disappointed. What can you say after a day like yesterday? Most of what I could say would be covered by everyone else. Indeed, this morning I got to my desk to find that our own Tim Geigner had written the kind of post I originally thought I would write.

So this post will be a little different. It is clear by now that there is no redeeming our President even in his last days in office. He has shown that everything is about him. He literally said "we love you!" to the mob storming the Capitol. It has long been obvious that the only thing he cares about is himself -- and that he views everything through the lens of "does this person like me or not." He does not care about America. He does not care about its people. He cares about people who like him, and those storming the Capitol did so in his name, and he obviously loved it. Because, as stupid and illegal as what they did was, they were showing that they would do stupid and illegal things for him.

However, the real anger needs to be directed as his enablers. His many, many enablers. And it has become obvious that, for many of them, this is a game. This is not about governing. This is not about representing people's interests. This is about red team v. blue team, and doing whatever it takes to win. This is not new, of course. This has been the nature of politics going back centuries. But, in the US, there were at least some limits. Some small bit of idealism, often hidden away in the back corner of the attic, highlighted by the regular peaceful transfer of power even among political enemies, that said: in the end, the greater good is more important than just winning the game.

But, for too many, that has gone away. And winning the game is all that matters -- even if it destroys the entire nation. And for all the complaints I have about the Democratic Party, this is entirely on the Republican Party and its leadership. As I said on Twitter the other day, I actually prefer a divided government that can work on compromise. Despite regular accusations from people that I am whatever they are not, I've never been a member of either party, and I have always tried to support policies that I think will be most effective -- not based on ideology, but on understanding the policy and its likely impact. That's the way governing should work.

But the events of the last few years has shown that for too many in the Republican Party it is 100% about winning. It's not even based on ideology -- as the last four years has shown that their ideology will shift on a dime if they think it will help them win. The party of free trade flipped to be the party of trade wars. The party of small government became a huge supporter of government interference in business operations. Because it was not about ideology, it was about the game. About helping the red team win.

Much of the anger at this approach to "governing" needs to be directed at Mitch McConnell, who made it clear 12 years ago that his single driving ethos was making sure his team won and the other team lost -- and then made all sorts of unprecedented moves to make that happen. But, at least when on the brink, he recognized the pointlessness of continuing to push the myth that Trump actually won when it mattered yesterday. His last minute attempts to stuff that genie back in the bottle yesterday are no excuse, but the true scorn must be reserved for those who couldn't even do that much: Josh Hawley and Ted Cruz. Respected conservative commentator George Will got this part right in his Washington Post column today. Hawley and Cruz should forever be branded as seditionists after egging on and encouraging the events of yesterday, even as they came out late in the day with weak "we didn't mean violence!" statements:

Trump lit the fuse for the riot in the weeks before the election, with his successful effort to delegitimize the election in the eyes of his supporters. But Wednesday’s explosion required the help of Hawley (R-Mo.) and Cruz (R-Tex.).

Hawley announced his intention to object to the certification of some states’ electoral votes, for no better reason than that there has been an avalanche of “allegations” of election irregularities, allegations fomented by the loser of the election. By doing so, Hawley turned what should have been a perfunctory episode in our civic liturgy of post-election civility into a synthetic drama. He turned this moment into the focus of the hitherto unfocused fury that Trump had been stoking for many weeks.

And Cruz, by organizing support for Hawley among other Republican senators and senators-elect gave Hawley’s grotesque self-promotion an ersatz cloak of larger purpose. Shortly before the mob breached the Senate chamber, Cruz stood on the Senate floor. With his characteristic unctuousness, he regretted the existence of what he and kindred spirits have not only done nothing to refute but have themselves nurtured — a pandemic of suspicions that the election was “rigged.”

“I want to take a moment to speak to my Democratic colleagues,” said Cruz. “I understand your guy is winning right now.” Read those weasely words again. He was not speaking to his “colleagues.” He was speaking to the kind people who were at that instant assaulting the Capitol. He was nurturing the very delusions that soon would cause louts to be roaming the Senate chamber — the fantasy that Joe Biden has not won the election but is only winning “right now.”

Here's the important point: we know Trump doesn't understand or care about any of this. That's not true of Hawley or Cruz. They know. They know that Trump is off his rocker. But both of them see this as a game. It's a game they both want to win. They're both famous for their levels of naked greed and ambition to get to the top spot. And both have made the political calculus that the way to win is to egg on a mob of insurrectionists in the hopes that the same mob will support them in the future.

They both know that they are selling out America, harming the public, spreading disinformation, and helping to lead on a mob of insurrectionists. Because they think it's a game and they need to win.

And that's exactly why neither of them should be anywhere near positions of power ever again.

Both were given the biggest tests of their lives yesterday: do you make the right choice? Stand up for the Constitution? Stand up for that buried, hidden, dusty, abandoned-in-the-back-of-the-attic ideal of what America is supposed to be? Or do you take the ambitious but cowardly position of egging on the mob in the hopes that one day they will be your mob? I've criticized both Senators many times over the years because their actions and statements have long predicted this moment.

And, yet... in the back of my head, I still had that slight tinge of optimism that maybe, just maybe, one or both of them might look at what they had wrought and recognize that it's not just a game and that people's lives are at stake, and the very nature of our country is at stake, and come back from the brink and admit that perhaps they had gone too far.

This is what real leadership is about. Real leadership is about making the hard choices. The choices that are right in the face of deluded people telling you to go the other way. Real leadership is about recognizing when you are wrong, admitting it, and understanding why you made that mistake.

But neither Hawley nor Cruz did that. Both continued to attack. Cruz, bizarrely, accused Beto O'Rourke (his vanquished Senate opponent from a few years ago) of pushing for division. That is not reality. Hawley, after giving a now-famous raised fist gesture to the insurrectionist mob, stayed silent for hours before having his press team put out a weak tea statement about how he doesn't support violence. And, as Nilay Patel correctly noted, Hawley issued a much more forceful condemnation of... infinite scrolling apps than he did of the insurrectionist mob that he helped to encourage.

And then, after the invaders were removed from the Capitol, after so much damage had been done, they both had another chance. A chance to admit that America is more than a game to them. They had a chance to show that politics is not just about winning and losing, but about governing and leading and doing the right thing. And they both failed again. They both continued to object to the results of the election that they both absolutely know are legitimate.

And, yes, there remained an astounding number of idiot House Members who also objected -- often spewing debunked conspiracy theories and lies about election fraud that did not happen, and demanding investigations that already happened and proved the conspiracy theories were false -- and they all deserve criticism as well (including the GOP House minority leader, Kevin McCarthy). But the Senate is supposed to be different and better than that. And beyond that, Hawley and Cruz both know better. Neither are stupid. Both have long and well documented careers. Both attended Ivy League universities. Both clerked at the Supreme Court.

They know.

And they chose to treat America like a game.

No one should ever let them forget what they did.

Filed Under: capitol building, donald trump, enablers, game, governing, insurrection, josh hawley, leadership, mitch mcconnell, mobs, politics, ted cruz, winning

Navy Deploys USS Barbra Streisand After Firing A Captain For Expressing His Coronavirus Concerns

from the walking-your-own-plank dept

In the midst of a pandemic, a Navy captain pleaded for the health and safety of his sailors. And for that, he was relieved of duty.

A letter to Navy officials, written by Captain Brett Crozier of the USS Theodore Roosevelt, was obtained by the San Francisco Chronicle. Social distancing doesn't work when you're stuck on a ship. Just ask anyone stuck on the handful of luxury cruise liners that became floating attack vectors for the coronavirus.

“This will require a political solution but it is the right thing to do,” Crozier wrote. “We are not at war. Sailors do not need to die. If we do not act now, we are failing to properly take care of our most trusted asset — our Sailors.”

In the four-page letter to senior military officials, Crozier said only a small contingent of infected sailors have been off-boarded. Most of the crew remain aboard the ship, where following official guidelines for 14-day quarantines and social distancing is impossible.

“Due to a warship’s inherent limitations of space, we are not doing this,” Crozier wrote. “The spread of the disease is ongoing and accelerating.”

Crozier went through the proper channels but one copy of his letter made its way to the press. This resulted in the acting Secretary of the Navy, Thomas Modly, relieving him of command -- supposedly for not ensuring his letter was not leaked to the press.

On Thursday, after the letter was leaked to the San Francisco Chronicle, the acting secretary of the Navy, Thomas Modly, declared that he’d “lost confidence” in the captain and was therefore relieving him of his command.

This wasn't necessarily Modly's idea. But it appears to be Modly's idea of what he thought the Commander-in-Chief would want him to do.

Two days later, David Ignatius reported in the Washington Post that Modly had told associates he’d acted at the behest of President Donald Trump. Modly then phoned Ignatius at 1 a.m. to deny the story, saying he’d moved against Crozier before he heard from Trump. Rather, he acted in anticipation that Trump would want him to do so.

The removal of Crozier from the ship should have been the first indication the Navy would be unable to control this narrative. Several recordings exist of Crozier's exit from the ship, accompanied by sailors applauding him and chanting his name. Here's one of them:

Modly made it worse by boarding the ship and addressing the sailors. His efforts to win hearts and minds consisted of telling sailors to stop complaining and do their jobs, punctuated by him insulting the man he had fired.

“If he didn't think, in my opinion, that this information wasn't going to get out into the public, in this day and information age that we live in, then he was either A, too naive, or too stupid to be a commanding officer of a ship like this,” Modly told the Theodore Roosevelt’s crew on April 5. “The alternative is that he did this on purpose. And that's a serious violation of the UCMJ which you are all familiar with.”

A recording of this speech leaked, too. An unknown sailor speaks for everyone at the 1:57 mark, when he responds to Modly's "too naive or too stupid" comment with a very audible "WHAT THE FUCK?"

The Navy's damage control continues, but it appears to consist solely of dispatching more shovels and shovel operators to its hole. A self-serving communication from Navy brass telling sailors to STFU about the Crozier debacle was leaked to another journalist, which made its way to social media immediately.

Here's the best bit of Navy's insistent self-Streisanding:

*** Please engage with your sailors onboard and let them know that they need the person's permission to record them and put them online. If they posted SECNAV's 1MC remarks on social media, they need to take them down immediately. ***

It does not get any less laughable:

I know everyone's emotions are running high but posting negative comments on social media regarding Senior Leaders will not help our current situation.

[...]

Bashing a Senior Leader online will not rally the troops.

Looks like the troops are plenty rallied already, judging from the fond farewell they gave to their unceremoniously shit-canned senior officer. And they seemed pretty united in their rejection of SECNAV Modly's "shut up and go back to work" speech.

Modly appears to have belatedly realized his speech to the Theodore Roosevelt sailors was a mistake. But his non-apology isn't going to make things any better. Modly wants people to believe he was misunderstood by everyone that heard his comments, rather than actually take responsibility for the things he said.

I want to apologize to the Navy for my recent comments to the crew of the TR. Let me be clear, I do not think Captain Brett Crozier is naive or stupid. I think, and always believed him to be the opposite. [...] I apologize for any confusion this choice of words might have caused.

Shorter Modly: "I'm sorry you thought I called Crozier naive and stupid when I was calling him naive and stupid."

This whole response has been the epitome of "naive and stupid." The Navy's best option for letting this debacle get swept under the tidal wave of news that flows through social media every day would have been to let its original response -- given to the San Francisco Chronicle -- be its only response. Within 48 hours, no one would have cared. But it chose to fire an obviously-beloved and respected captain, insult him in front of his crew, and threaten unhappy personnel with punishment for sharing anything about this on social media. The Navy's measured response to the leak of Crozier's letter is all but forgotten now, buried under layer after layer of self-sabotaging hubris.

And, of course, as the finishing touches were being put on this post, Modly announced he was resigning. Apparently he realized that he was either "too stupid or too naive" to run the Navy, if he didn't realize how nearly all of his decisions in the last few days would play out.

Filed Under: brett crozier, coverup, covid-19, donald trump, leadership, leaks, streisand effect, thomas modly, us navy, uss theodore roosevelt, whistleblowing

Trump's Very First Tweet As President Elect Basically Shits On The First Amendment

from the off-to-the-races dept

Since being declared the winner of the Presidential election, Donald Trump has actually played the part of an actual President-elect quite well. His victory speech was quite gracious and welcoming. His meeting with President Obama appeared to go well. Of course, anyone who's watched him during the campaign knew it couldn't last, but perhaps, maybe, he'd actually be presidential for a few weeks or (could we dare?) a few months? But, nope. All it took was about 48 hours and the man who four years ago demanded that people "march on Washington" because President Obama was re-elected, used his very first tweet as the President elect to shit all over the First Amendment. Compare that to his tweet from four years ago: It's true that there are lots of protests going on, some of which have turned violent. It's also true that there's been a wave of attacks on minorities across the US by Trump supporters. An actual leader would seek to tell his supporters that's not how Americans should act. But that's not what we got.

We noted that one of the big fears with a Trump presidency is what it would mean for the First Amendment, and kicking it off by attacking both the freedom of the press and the right of assembly in one go (also, with the bizarre claim of "professional protestors" -- which, you know, if it were true, wouldn't need "inciting" by the press) should be deeply concerning to anyone who supports the First Amendment. There were going to be protests no matter how this election turned out. That was a given. A President who was truly focused on bringing the country together would recognize the concerns and grievances, not attack them and deny their rights.

As (of all people?!?) Ryan Adams correctly noted to Trump in a response tweet: "you work for them now. You're hired. You work for all Americans now [and] your JOB is to DEFEND their RIGHT to protest." He's absolutely right. In particular, the oath that Donald Trump will take in a few months is that he will "preserve, protect and defend the Constitution of the United States." He talked a lot about the 2nd Amendment on the campaign trail. He should familiarize himself with the 1st.

Filed Under: donald trump, first amendment, free speech, freedom of assembly, freedom of the press, leadership, protesters

Eric Cantor's Surprising Primary Loss May Spell Trouble For The NSA

from the every-little-thing dept

The DC political world was completely shocked last night as House Majority Leader Eric Cantor lost his primary against a relatively unknown and completely underfunded challenger named David Brat. His Wikipedia page was set up only yesterday and initially had just two sentences, before the primary victory, leading people to suddenly start filling in more information. Just hours before the victory, the Washington Post had written: "the question... is how large Cantor’s margin of victory will be." Not surprisingly, the Post has now completely erased all traces of its Dewey Defeats Truman article, replacing it with one about Cantor's loss. As the political press tends to do, this morning everyone's digging for the "reasons" behind this unprecedented loss (no majority leader has ever lost a primary apparently) -- though almost all of the analysis is meaningless. Searching for a larger message in all of this is just silly -- as there are plenty of counter-examples. Whether it was about "the tea party," "immigration," "bipartisanship," "fed up with DC" or whatever... it doesn't matter. Politics can sometimes be a bit more complicated and nuanced than the single narrative.

But, on issues of importance around here, it's worth noting that Cantor's loss could be bad news for the NSA in a big way. Cantor was a key part of the House leadership that was instrumental in supporting the NSA and blocking any meaningful attempts at reform. Rather than looking into what the NSA was doing, Cantor wanted to lead an investigation into Ed Snowden. It is believed that Cantor was also a key part of the effort last year to make sure that the Amash Amendment failed.

In contrast, one of Brat's campaign platforms was the following:

Dave believes that the Constitution does not need to be compromised for matters of national security. He supports the end of bulk phone and email data collection by the NSA, IRS, or any other branch of government.

While some are trying to spin Brat's victory as a vote against the NSA, that seems unlikely (and again, seems to be people spinning this story to their own particular narrative). It appears that Cantor's loss (and, rest assured, this was much more a Cantor loss than a Brat win) was for many reasons, and it seems likely that the NSA was pretty far down the list. Obviously, assuming Brat goes on to win in the fall (now very likely), as a freshman Representative, he won't be able to do all that much. But just the fact that a very powerful ally of the NSA has lost to someone critical of the NSA is helpful in pushing back on the NSA's control over Congress.

Of course, there is one caveat in all of this. While Cantor cannot appear on the ballot (such as, by running as an independent) in the fall election, thanks to Virginia's sore loser law, he could potentially mount a write-in campaign. And, also, while the Democratic contender in the fall is considered to have absolutely no chance against any Republican listed, it is worth remembering that people also said Brat had no chance against Cantor. Either way, even if this wasn't a referendum on the NSA, it could be bad news for the NSA in losing one of its most powerful allies.

Filed Under: congress, david brat, eric cantor, house, leadership, nsa, politics, primary

Harry Reid Bows Down To Trial Lawyers And Big Pharma In Killing Patent Reform

from the same-old-story dept

Tuesday evening, I had a discussion with a friend who was working on patent reform efforts. I said that the reform effort was dead, but my friend insisted that it was being negotiated as we spoke, and that the folks working on it wouldn't be doing so if it died. But, of course, by Wednesday morning it really was dead, and basically everyone who had been working hard on it pointed their finger at one person: Harry Reid. Within minutes of Leahy announcing that patent reform was dead, a whole bunch of people reached out to all say it was Reid's fault. And, that story got out fast. Basically everyone is saying that Harry Reid called Leahy and told him to kill the bill after trial lawyers and the pharmaceutical industry complained to Reid. Reid, fearing a loss in donations from those groups that often support Democrats in an election year, killed the bill.

Most of the reports said that Reid told Leahy he wouldn't allow the bill to come to the floor, but we heard a slightly different story: Reid didn't want it to come to the floor, and if it passed out of the Senate Judiciary with strong bipartisan support, he would be forced to bring it to the floor. That's why it was killed before it even had the chance, and Leahy had to pull it off the agenda without even allowing the Judiciary Committee to vote on it.

This is politics as usual. The same groups killed patent reform efforts in 2004, and basically every two years after that until they got a watered down bill in 2011. Unfortunately, if the same pattern holds, we may not see patent reform until 2021, by which time it too will likely be useless. And all the while actual innovation and our economy suffers.

Filed Under: harry reid, leadership, patent reform, patent trolls, patents, patrick leahy, pharmaceuticals, senate, trial lawyers

NSA Top Two Officials Retiring Isn't News, But Is An Opportunity To Reshape The Agency

from the but-that-won't-happen dept

There's been some recent chatter over a Reuters report highlighting that both of the top two officials at the NSA, director Keith Alexander and deputy director Chris Inglis, are retiring in the next few months. Lots of people are misreading this, believing that this is something new, and suggesting that both were either pushed out, or are doing this in response to all of the Snowden revelations. That's simply not true. Alexander's retirement has been widely reported since at least June (and has been covered in a number of other publications as well). Both retirements were planned long ago, and appear to be exactly on schedule, rather than as any reaction to things happening in the news.

This is unfortunate, as it really does seem like there should be some punishment for the widespread excesses and abuses that have been revealed by Snowden. However, what is important to recognize is that this does present a real opportunity for the President to reshape the NSA. It seems unlikely that this will happen, but the President has said that he wants to rebuild the trust of Americans in the NSA and the wider intelligence community, and the choices he makes for who will lead the NSA are a real opportunity to at least take a step in that direction. No one actually expects him to, say, pick a civil liberties activist, but there are people out there who have experience in the intelligence community and who also have shown a respect and appreciation for privacy and civil liberties. Furthermore, finding someone who can present the case for reform -- one which recognizes that "collect it all" is not just bad policy, but bad for actually finding useful information -- would be a big step forward.

Filed Under: barack obama, chris inglis, civil liberties, keith alexander, leadership, nsa, nsa surveillance, privacy, trust

Why NSA Boss Believes His Agency Is All Good: Intentions vs. Actions

from the getting-real dept

Tim Lee, over at The Switch, has a really good post explaining why it might be that NSA boss General Keith Alexander might legitimately believe some of the ridiculous propaganda his organization has been throwing around to try to justify the massive NSA dragnet surveillance programs and its widespread abuses. His argument is basically that people in powerful positions are in something of a bubble that limits their knowledge of how bad things are:

The tendency to promote team players and marginalize dissenters creates a danger of groupthink at the highest levels of the organization. The problem is exacerbated by people’s reluctance to tell their bosses bad news. Each level of the bureaucracy gives its bosses a sugar-coated version of the information it receives from subordinates. By the time information reaches the top, it can be dramatically skewed.

This filtering process distorts the information powerful organizations receive from the outside, too. Powerful people are more likely to attend parties and give speeches with friendly audiences than hostile ones. An organization’s press office will naturally give preferential access to reporters who write positive stories about them. As a result, a man in Alexander’s position may rarely encounter well-informed critics who feel free to give him candid feedback on his performance.

It's a good theory, and I'm sure there's some truth to it -- though I'm not sure it really explains everything. It does appear that Alexander was certainly aware of the audits, the IG report and the FISC ruling that all showed massive abuses and problems with the NSA's actions. So I'll posit an alternative theory as to why Alexander legitimately believes the propaganda.

There's a saying that I've heard many times with slight variations:

We judge ourselves by our intentions, but we judge others by their actions

That is, when we do "bad" things, we often have good intentions, and so it's more difficult for us to view our own actions as being "bad." We meant well. Things just went bad. But when we look at others, we just see their actions, and don't fully understand their intentions -- and thus it's easier for people to assign "bad" intentions to bad actions.

A similar thing may be happening here with the NSA's surveillance. People like General Alexander (and James Clapper and Michael Hayden, and even President Obama) likely look at the things the NSA have done, and believe that they were being done with the best of intentions. That's why they immediately fall back on the defense that none of the abuses were intentional (even if some clearly were).

That's why they seem so exasperated that everyone's so upset with them for the massive spying and the abuses. They keep insisting that if we only were in their shoes, we'd be absolutely fine with how the NSA is acting, and they keep saying that no one at the NSA wants to abuse your civil liberties or to spy on your communications unless you're "bad." Some have assumed that they were implying that they really believe they've stopped potential attacks, but it might just also be that they really do believe that they intend to do "good" things, even if their actions are highly questionable.

Unfortunately, of course, the other famous saying is that the "road to hell is paved with good intentions." Good intentions only take you so far. When you have such a massive, highly questionable program with a very high number of abuses, it no longer matters that their intentions are good, because their actions are simply bad.

Filed Under: actions, bubbles, intentions, keith alexander, leadership, nsa, nsa surveillance

But, Wait, Whoever Said That Twitter Would Save The World?

from the strawman-alert dept

A bunch of folks sent over an editorial in the Wall Street Journal that goes out of its way to trash "techno-utopians" for believing that the internet is a good thing and can be used to help fight authoritarian regimes, such as the one in Iran. The problem with the piece, written by Evgeny Morozov, is that it basically sets up a strawman that is quite easy to knock down:

It's easy to see why a world in which young Iranians embrace the latest technology funded by venture capitalists from Silicon Valley, while American diplomats sit back, sip tea and shovel the winter snow on a break from work, sounds so appealing. But is such a world achievable? Will Twitter and Facebook come to the rescue and fill in the void left by more conventional tools of diplomacy? Will the oppressed masses in authoritarian states join the barricades once they get unfettered access to Wikipedia and Twitter?

But who made that argument? The answer, which Morozov ignores or conveniently skips over, is no one. No one is saying that Twitter or Facebook will replace traditional diplomacy. No one says that Iranians with access to Wikipedia will suddenly overthrow their government. It's a total strawman that Morozov sets up because it's so easy to knock down and there's no one at all to defend it, because no one's said it.

Instead, what people are saying is that having better tools (which, by the way, go way beyond Twitter and Wikipedia -- but it's easier to dismiss what people are saying by lumping the entire internet into two offerings) can help aid in driving change. But no one is saying it takes away the need for diplomacy or real leadership. No one is saying that the technology can't also be used by the other side -- often to oppress further (as Morozov implies later in his article). The argument is that these tools, if used well, can augment and help those fighting against such regimes. Further, the argument in many cases (though, certainly not all) is that if you provide better communication tools to "the masses," in the long run, that will enable them to more strongly advocate for their own rights. Though, again, that is as a process of augmenting true leadership -- not replacing it entirely.

Morozov uses the failure of Twitter to successfully allow the Green Movement in Iran to effect change and the (supposed) failure of West German TV in East Germany in the late 80s to lead people to tear down the wall, as his only bits of evidence. But, again, that presupposes the wrong thing: that it is the technology alone that leads to revolution. Yet, again, no one claims such a thing. The technology is a tool, and it depends entirely on how it's used as to how effective a tool it is for the purpose. But what many of us who believe in the forward march of technological progress feel is that, in the long run, the greater flow of information opens up more opportunities for people to step into a leadership role, and leverage the technology effectively.

So, yes, it's true that technology alone does not make a revolution. But no one claimed it did. That's just a strawman that's easy for Morozov to knock over. The real issue shouldn't be trying to disprove mythological statements from a nebulous group of "techno-utopian,s" but looking for ways to make sure those other elements are in place to make use of the technology in a positive and helpful manner.

Filed Under: leadership, techno-utopians, twitter, wikipedia