Reading Time: 4 minutes My YouTube channel ATP Geopolitics is a calm, measured, and wide-ranging look at the Ukraine war from micro- to macro-level. But as its presenter and curator of sources, I am angry. Very angry indeed. YouTubing is a job for me. Indeed, in my post-teaching life, where multiple sclerosis has restricted me to working from home, […]
misinformation
Posted inWar and Peace
Can Putin, locked in a bubble of bad intel, spin his way out of disaster?
Reading Time: 5 minutes Colonel General Gennady Zhidko is being reappointed to command Russia’s Eastern Military District. One pro-Russian Telegram user has claimed that the general and others have created “a wall of lies…a sea of blood and a swamp of corpses.” That wall of lies has for many months encircled the Kremlin. Yet, in the world of geopolitics, […]
Posted inParenting & Family
My son’s Ben Shapiro phase: How critical thinking saved his life
Reading Time: 4 minutes I have been a fan of the First Amendment for my entire adult life. When I became a stripper at 18, I learned very quickly how important freedom of speech and expression was to my job and independence. As I got older, the Establishment Clause of the First Amendment became even more important as I […]
Posted inThe Secular
The poisoned church: When pastors use their pulpits to spread disinformation
Reading Time: 4 minutes As we see the world becoming victim to the effects of misinformation and disinformation of authoritarian political agents, it is worth remembering that this is also happening closer to home in our local churches. I was reading an article in Atlantic magazine last night about an Evangelical church in Brighton, Michigan (a state in which […]
Posted inSocial Media
Musk will bring Trump back to Twitter, calls the ban ‘foolish in the extreme’
Reading Time: 6 minutes Organisms generally need oxygen to survive and flourish. Certain organisms require more oxygen to reach their peak. In the social media ecosystem, whose habitats include the undrained swamps of the American elite, one apex predator once reigned supreme. And in the misinformation mudslinging and disinformation data-dumping, Trump’s famed Twitter rule came to an abrupt end. […]
Posted inWar and Peace
When Russian propaganda goes hilariously wrong
Reading Time: 4 minutes Russian propaganda is no laughing matter. It’s keeping almost an entire nation under its spell, inoculated from the truth with a constant provision of carefully curated narrative disinformation. The vast majority of Russian citizens appear to be unwittingly sucked in. Whether there are those who have seeds of doubt but who suppress those skeptical desires […]
Posted inNews
Is QAnon’s non-reality-based politics a threat to democracy?
Reading Time: 2 minutes QAnon has risen above being a fringe conspiracy theory to become one of the most influential movements in conservative politics. An analysis of QAnon-aligned candidates found that there were 78 candidates on state and federal ballots who adhered to the conspiracy theory. Those candidates are clustered in states like Florida, Arizona, and even California, and […]
Posted inSocial Media
Elon Musk buys Twitter. What could possibly go wrong?
Reading Time: 7 minutes Everyone has their line. Even 4chan, a supposedly “anything-goes platform” that many think is the worst manifestation of the internet, had a line. It was an animated depiction of child pornography, as well as concerted attacks on female journalists and others associated with Gamergate. The result? 8chan was started as an even more “libertarian” vacuum […]
Posted inCritical thinking
What we learned when Fox News viewers were paid to watch CNN
Reading Time: 5 minutes Fox News isn’t just a news network or part of a larger media and entertainment umbrella. It is a lifestyle, a political worldview, a cult. This bubble or better, cage, is where Tucker Carlson and Sean Hannity are the sect leaders, manipulating and cajoling, provoking and controlling. And like with any cult, breaking out is […]
Posted inPolitics
Is universal suffrage really such a great thing?
Reading Time: 6 minutes As I write this, exactly one year after the Jan. 6, 2021, insurrectionist attack on the U.S. Capitol to subvert the counting of Electoral College votes, I’m more convinced than ever that many, many, many Americans lack enough intellectual integrity and common sense to be trusted electing anyone. It’s becoming clearer by the day that […]