From the right: What the Anti-Facebook Mob Wants
The uproar against Facebook and Cambridge Analytica for the latter’s harvesting of the former’s user data to help the Trump campaign isn’t really about data, argues National Review’s Michael Brendan Dougherty. Four years ago, the Obama campaign’s similar play was “much larger and arguably more manipulative.” And the reaction was not outrage but admiration. That’s because, Dougherty avers, “at the macro level, mass broadcast media was a boon to the Left and center-Left.” But the rise of social media “allowed common conservatives and populists to broadcast their own views, and in some sense legitimate them within their social circle.” Thus the anti-Facebook freakout and “efforts to criminalize conservative groups who use social media, and legally suppress citizens’ openly sharing unapproved views, are an attempt to put the new class filter back on.”
From the left: GOP’s Gamble on Trump and Mueller
As fears grow that President Trump will fire special counsel Robert Mueller, Republicans in Congress are expressing their disapproval without going full-tilt against the president. The reason, suggests Jamelle Bouie at Slate, is that their fates are increasingly tied to the Trump presidency’s prospects for survival. “Republicans almost certainly know that an attack on Mueller would be catastrophic for Trump and his presidency, galvanizing opposition and virtually ensuring a Democratic wave in November,” Bouie writes. “But they also know that a preemptive move against Trump could have a similar effect, bolstering Democrats and demoralizing Republican voters who still support the president.” It might backfire, though, by giving Trump a sense of invincibility. So if the president “doesn’t fire Robert Mueller between now and November, Republicans — and the country — will have simply gotten lucky.”
Foreign desk: Turkey’s Global Dissident Purge
Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan is hardly the first strongman to pursue dissidents abroad. But his current purge, argues Nate Schenkkan at Foreign Affairs, is “remarkable in its speed, scale, and aggression.” Erdogan has been on the warpath since he survived a failed coup in 2016, though even before that his hunt was under way. “In at least 46 countries across four continents, Turkey has pursued an aggressive policy to silence its perceived enemies and has allegedly used Interpol as a political tool to target its opponents,” Schenkkan writes. “Ankara has revoked thousands of passports, and achieved the arrest, deportation, or rendition of hundreds of Turkish citizens from at least 16 countries.” So much for “the hope that the globalization of a liberal order would result in democratic consolidation.”
Tech wonk: Next Automation Wave Will Be Different
Free-marketeers often pooh-pooh automation’s effects by pointing to the opportunities created by technological progress. But the next wave, predicts Diane Francis at The American Interest, is going to be bigger. “The most common job held in 29 out of 50 states is as a truck driver, and an estimated one in eight workers drives a vehicle of some sort for a living,” she writes. “This means robot vehicles and drones will take jobs away from tens of millions of breadwinners and those who provide services for them.” Retail jobs are also common and are threatened by online merchants. The US transition “from farm to city took generations and was grueling, scarred by social disruption, mass underemployment.” Unless automation is slowed, this time’ll be different, and “possibly worse.”
Culture file: Children’s Movies Get a Bum Rap
Many reviews of the new film adaptation of “A Wrinkle in Time” suggest a condescension toward children’s movies. But, counters Alyssa Rosenberg at The Washington Post, audiences shouldn’t assume something from a child’s point of view is simplistic. “In fact, the art that most effectively summons what it’s like to be a child explores the moments we discover that the world is more complicated than we once knew.” The “Toy Story” franchise tackled abandonment, “Finding Nemo” addressed the fear of independence and the classics of children’s literature from Louisa May Alcott, Mark Twain and others “endure in part because they recognize that children are not protected from disease, death, hunger, marital strife, violence and racism.” — Compiled by Seth Mandel
