Against Normalization

Dear readers of First Post: These are not normal times. The choices of a few tens of thousands of voters, less than .1 percent of all the ballots cast, have unleashed a massive shift of power. In the last few days, we have already started to see many signs of people trying to come to terms with this shift by talking about the new administration-in-formation in the usual ways. Most of us *need* to feel a sense of normalcy and the media is programmed to provide it now. This space will not do that. Very dangerous forces are at work that, if not interrupted, confronted, defused and dismantled, will turn America into an authoritarian state. The other shoes have yet to drop, though it is safe to predict that whether it is because of a cop being killed or a black youth being killed by a cop or a mosque or church burned—all things that happen with depressing regularity in America—the resulting tensions and protests will lead Trump and his allies in Congress to try to impose massive restrictions on dissent. So our focus will shift, to all the useful things we need to know and do to try to prevent that from happening, since freedom of speech and assembly is at the heart of civic tech. We are in that moment in the science fiction movie Abyss, where the people down on the ocean’s surface have just survived the collapse of the tower up above, and it’s come tumbling down on their heads but avoided killing them, and then it slides into the ocean trench they’re sitting next to, and while they’re breathing a sigh of relief the chain that holds them to the tower starts pulling them down too. Hold on. If you are reading this and don’t already receive First Post in your inbox every day, support what we are doing here with Civicist and Civic Hall and join as a network member.

Steve Bannon, the chairman of Donald Trump’s presidential campaign, has just been named White House chief strategist and senior counselor. In response to the news, John Weaver, political strategist for Ohio’s Republican governor John Kasich, tweeted, “The racist, fascist extreme right is represented footsteps from the Oval Office. Be very vigilant America.”

Newt Gingrich, the former House Speaker who is being touted as Trump’s likely Secretary of State, told CBS Face the Nation that Bannon couldn’t be anti-Semitic because he has worked for Goldman Sachs and Hollywood. As Eric Cortellessa notes for The Times of Israel, “Anti-Semitic conspiracy theorists often name Goldman Sachs, an investment banking firm founded by Jews, and Hollywood to argue that Jews control the global finance system and the media.” Jonathan Greenblatt of the Anti-Defamation League condemned Bannon’s appointment unequivocally.

Mary Louise Piccard, the ex-wife of Bannon, swore in court that he hates Jews. “The biggest problem he had with Archer [a school in Los Angeles that he didn’t want their twin daughters to go to] is the number of Jews that attend,” Piccard said in her statement signed on June 27, 2007, Nancy Dillon reported for the Daily News in August. “He said that he doesn’t like the way they raise their kids to be ‘whiny brats’ and that he didn’t want the girls going to school with Jews,” Piccard wrote. Her statement was part of a child custody lawsuit that also included allegations that Bannon abused her physically.

Breitbart News, the site Bannon has long chaired, “has accused President Obama of “importing more hating Muslims”; compared Planned Parenthood’s work to the Holocaust; called Bill Kristol, the conservative commentator, a “renegade Jew”; and advised female victims of online harassment to “just log off” and stop “screwing up the internet for men,” illustrating that point with a picture of a crying child,” Michael Shear, Alan Rapport and Maggie Haberman report for the New York Times.

On his radio show, Bannon regularly hosted and praised many leading anti-Muslim extremists (including one whose call for closing mosques he affirmed) and personally pushed the false story of Shariah courts taking over Texas, Mother Jones’ Josh Harkinson reported earlier this year.

Remember all the people who warned that if Obama didn’t reign in the national security state, his successor might abuse its vast powers? Read Charlie Savage in the New York Times today and consider what Anthony Romero, the director of the ACLU says: “Obama’s failure to rein in George Bush’s national security policies hands Donald Trump a fully loaded weapon. The president’s failure to understand that these powers could not be entrusted in the hands of any president, not even his, have now put us in a position where they are in the hands of Donald Trump.”

The Intercept’s Micah Lee has a great walk-through of all the steps you should take if you want to be able to securely communicate in Donald Trump’s America

A time for refusal, by Teju Cole.

Today in Gaslighting: “No One Has a Clue What Kind of President Trump Will Be,” Dan Balz of the Washington Post opines.

Life in Facebookistan: ICYMI, Wednesday night, Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg—who Trump attacked personally for favoring immigration reform—posted that he is “feeling hopeful” about the election.

He also took on critics who have said Facebook’s tolerance for “fake news” proliferating in users’ News Feeds helped tilt the election, writing in a post yesterday that “Of all the content on Facebook, more than 99 percent of what people see is authentic. Only a very small amount is fake news and hoaxes. The hoaxes that do exist are not limited to one partisan view, or even to politics. Overall, this makes it extremely unlikely hoaxes changed the outcome of this election in one direction or the other.” He added, “Identifying the ‘truth’ is complicated.”

Jillian York of the Electronic Freedom Foundation commented, “Zuckerberg’s fear of Facebook becoming ‘arbiters of truth’ suggests he has no idea what his company’s influence is on the world.”

And as Casey Newton, Silicon Valley editor for the Verge, noted, “Facebook is now in the awkward position of having to explain why they think they drive purchase decisions but not voting decisions.”

Facebook now says it will stop allowing advertisers of credit, housing or employment from excluding users by race, Julia Angwin reports for Pro Publica. No word if that extends to advertising for political purposes.

Today in stupid: The giant international e-group Avaaz (which claims 44 million members) mailed its U.S. list yesterday with a tantalizing and completely dishonest subject line: “The incredible law that can still stop Trump.” It went on the promise that “there’s an incredible Hail Mary plan that could still stop Trump—if we act really fast!” and urged recipients to sign a petition urging states to adopt the “Popular Vote Plan.” That’s a reference to a project called the National Popular Vote, which has been slowly gaining support as states vote to commit their electoral votes to the winner of the popular vote and to shift to that approach once at least 270 electoral votes are on board with the plan. The truth is that no such change can be implemented in time for this election, and worse—trying to change the way the Electoral College works now sets a deeply dangerous precedent and will only empower people who want to get rid of other democratic norms, like free speech. If you insisted on Trump accepting the results of the election, you can’t change the rules after the election just because you don’t like the results. What’s even worse about Avaaz’s email: When you click the link to get to the petition it automatically counts you as signing it. That’s downright fraudulent.

Silicon Valley tech VC Shervin Pishevar is doubling down on his misguided effort to help California secede, tweeting “After conferring with mentors & advisors I’ll be holding a press conference soon to announce a legitimate 3rd Party focused on State Rights.” States rights!?

There’s a lot of postmortems on the election, but here are two that stand out: Joan Williams on “What So Many People Don’t Get About the U.S. Working Class,” in the Harvard Business Review. And Jamelle Bouie in Slate on “Why Did Some White Obama Voters Go For Trump?“

Hillary Clinton’s campaign aired more TV ads in Omaha, Nebraska, aimed at picking up one electoral vote there, than in Michigan and Wisconsin combined, in the final weeks of the race, Jim Tankersley reports for the Washington Post.

New York City Mayor Bill de Blasio says that a city database that has the identities of hundreds of thousands of undocumented immigrants, built to support the city’s innovative IDNYC card program, would not be handed over to the Trump administration without a fight and could be deleted.

Data & Society founder danah boyd says that “polling is dead” and the media should stop reporting on polls, given how inherently inaccurate they are. “By covering polls as though they are facts in an obsessive way, they are not only being statistically irresponsible, but they are also being psychologically irresponsible.”

Anthea Watson, a civic tech veteran (and friend of Civic Hall) who was a product manager for the Obama 2008 campaign, calls foul on Zack Exley and Becky Bond’s recent piece in the Huffington Post that asserted, mainly using anecdotal evidence, that the Clinton campaign GOTV operation had inadvertently contributed to Trump’s turnout.

This is civic tech: Writing in the New York Times Magazine, Yiren Lu offers an in-depth look at Code for America’s ongoing effort to build better tech for California’s CalFresh food-stamp program. In some alternative universe, this would be a our lead item. Sad!