We're Losing the Information War

 If Russian troops invaded us, we would all come together to defeat the enemy.

But, the thing is…Russia has invaded us.

This has been years in the making. Russian disinformation bots are all over our social media. Facebook won’t stop them, so fb has become a cesspool of bad information.

We are living in the equivalent of a hostile Russian occupation…on our social media. And when something like Covid hits, it’s incredibly hard to overcome their weaponization of information. People share posts and opinions, not because they’re true, but because they read it on facebook and it fits either what they want to be true or what they’ve been brainwashed into believing is true.

Russia can’t possibly be the bad guy. Trump’s friends with Putin. It’s those evil democrats, who have the nerve to try to save us from more Covid deaths, that are the real problem.

Think how fucking insane that is. The company Trump keeps includes Putin, Jong-un, Bolsonaro, Erdogan and Mohammad Bin Salman. These are dictators who murder journalists, rig elections and poison rivals.

They are evil and Trump is too. He is not hanging out with them to infect them with democracy. He’s hanging out with them, because he wants to be in their dictatorship training program. He screwed over our allies, the Kurds and the Germans, to support Russia’s interests. He won’t call out Putin for putting bounties on our troop’s heads, even though Pompeo did. Trump is still lying that the bounties are a hoax even though the intelligence was credible enough that our allies were briefed and he was too, he just isn’t a strong reader (alternate pronunciation “leader”).

Trump lies pathologically. He attacks the free press. He pardons convicted friends if they don’t rat him out. His former associates who do tell the truth get thrown under the bus by Trump via personal attacks. Trump has put a stranglehold on checks and balances. The US Attorney General is supposed to be the people’s lawyer, but instead, William Barr does whatever is best for the president. Same with Mitch McConnell, it’s not the American people that he serves, it’s Trump or Russia or both. Trump is, once again, actively interfering in our election…seeking help from the Ukraine, Russia and China, continuing to falsely claim that mail in voting isn’t safe (Barr said under oath that there is no proof of that), and even installing a big time donor as the Postmaster General. All of those things fall into “things a dictator would do”.

It is absolutely impossible that this could have happened during any other time in our history. But, the Russian disinformation bots, Fox News, Trump and the GOP have created an alternate reality. There’s the actual truth. And then there’s the lies they start that spread like wildfire on social media. Their Covid lies are currently destroying us.

So, instead of being united to defeat the enemy, like we would have been during the Cold War era, we’re divided and refuse to fight Covid together, because some of us are mistaking Russian disinfo for truth.

If you’re Russia, our worst enemy, how much would you be loving this? America divided against itself, with the President not putting out the flames, but stoking them. And better yet, what Trump has said publicly about Covid mirrors what the Russian bots are saying. Get enough people repeating the same lies and Covid has become a deadly game of telephone where a hoax is now responsible for 178,000 deaths and climbing.

You know who kills 178,000 Americans? America’s enemy. And Trump has proven to be just that. No remorse for the deaths he’s caused. No sympathy for the victim’s families. Night one at the RNC had literally zero mentions of 178k dead. If 10% of those deaths occurred with Hillary as President, that’s all they would be talking about.

Instead, they just pretend like it doesn’t exist. Schools should open. College football should come back. “How unfair is it that the democrats are trying to take that away from you?” Prey on emotions. Repeat the lies that the real enemies are China and the democrats. “They want to cancel the great life I’m trying to give back to you,” says the man who created this nightmare with his Covid inaction.

It’s lunacy. Every other civilized country in the world flattened the curve. Trump gave no national effort to contain it. He put it on governors so he could blame them. And discredited the people that spent their whole lives training for this moment, like Dr Fauci.

Trump said churches would be reopened by Easter. Fauci countered that we do not set the timeline, the virus sets the timeline.

We’re living a reality where economic advisors to the president, like Kudlow and Navarro, are making public statements about Covid instead of Fauci.

On 6/22 Kudlow said, “There is no second wave coming.” Technically he’s right, because this current disaster is still the first wave. We never flattened the curve. Other countries reopened, because they absolutely destroyed the curve. Us? Not so much. The day Kudlow made that statement we had 30k cases. About 3 weeks later, we hit a single day high of 75k.

Same bullshit with Navarro. He had the fucking nerve to say that Fauci has been wrong about everything Navarro interacted with him on.

Kudlow and Navarro have economic roles in the WH. For them to make statements like they did above resulted in American deaths. They should both be held criminally responsible. The only voice we should have been listening to was Fauci. But, instead we took the word of the pathological liar who thought he “might be a natural” at virus containment.

Trump is out of his god-damned mind. He’s why we’re here. He currently keeps bragging about how many tests we’ve done. Do you fucking realize how stupid that is 6 months into a pandemic? It means that you failed so badly to contain the virus that you have more cases (and deaths) than any other country.

Having the most testing would have been something to brag about in February and March. When massive testing and contact tracing would have all but eradicated the virus. We are the fucking United States. Greatest country in the world. New Zealand can completely shut down Covid, but we can’t?

And why didn’t we? Countless reasons, but part of it was because Kushner, again a WH official with zero pandemic credibility, thought we shouldn’t test too much, because it would spook the markets. That fucker also had FEMA seize state shipments of life-saving supplies, to redistribute them to private companies to sell for profit. Money matters. People don't.

None of the above should ever happen in a democracy.

But, we’re not one. Trump has absolute control with Russia’s help.

And instead of fighting Trump, Russia or Covid, the Maga crowd is fighting for them against America. This is Civil War 2, complete with Trump deploying unidentifiable federal troops to shoot peacefully protesting moms in the forehead with rubber bullets and tear gas and beat journalists trying to cover the truth. They’ve picked up people walking down the street and thrown them in to unmarked vans. The amount of police initiated or escalated violence far outweighs that of protesters. The protests are overwhelmingly peaceful, but there have been plenty of examples of outside agitators trying to give the protests a bad name, like the white supremacist in Minnesota who tried to incite looting by breaking out all the windows of an auto zone.

Or take this past Saturday in Portland. Maga and the proud boys white supremacist group organized a counter protest to Black Lives Matter. (full thread here… https://twitter.com/MrOlmos/status/1297240487066103808) The video evidence is not just of proud boy initiated violence, but those mother fuckers pointed guns at Black Lives. They had shields with nails in them so when they ran up into BLM, more damage would be done.

We know if BLM pulled a gun, they’d be dead. So, what was the police response to the white supremacist violence? None. They did not intervene at all…until the proud boys left, then they declared it an unlawful assembly and used force to move BLM out of the area.

There’s reality. And then there’s Trump’s alternate universe. Maga hears “protester” and thinks “rioters, looters and anarchists.” Imagine being so brain washed that the Fascist in the White House has you convinced that those who are against fascism, antifa, are the problem and peacefully protesting moms are “violent looters”. Trump sent in federal troops to get a handful of video clips that he can edit heavily to rally his base. He plays on their racist sensibilities by echoing the coded language of Lyndon Johnson after Watts and George HW Bush after Rodney king, demanding “Law and Order” from his lawless, corrupt and very white house.

At least Mitt Romney walked with Black Lives. I’d argue it was just for show, but it was something. Since George Floyd’s death, Trump has offered zero words of support for the protests. He won’t praise their spirit. He won’t praise their cause. He won’t listen. There have been 3 straight months of protests in Portland and Trump has had only negative things to say.

It dawned on me today that the nicest thing Trump has ever said about protestors is that of the Charlottesville protestors and their white supremacist counter protestors, there were very fine people on both sides. Joe Biden spoke to that point and the Daily Caller, an alt-right news outlet, said on Twitter, that Joe was repeating the lie that trump called the white supremacists very fine people.

Trump did say that. Obviously. It was not a lie. But, even when you have an easily provable direct quote, the alt-right fascists will try to claim that truth isn’t true. The worst part? The Daily Caller is one of facebook’s fact checkers. (https://twitter.com/atrupar/status/1296795613443612677)

So, the truth is being filtered by facebook in a pro-trump, pro-russia and pro-covid way. Cake is a band who makes a lot of pro-democracy posts. They got a notice from facebook saying that their page was in danger of being unpublished because of “community standards violations”. The alt-right fact checkers would pull or hide Cake’s legit news articles, not because they weren’t true, but because it was a voice contrary to what fb is trying to push.

So, facebook is littered with this bull shit. All the Russian bot info. All the actual Trump quotes. And the opinions of random people who are deeply influenced by both.

It’s terrifying. I go to Twitter and it’s like I'm on another planet. There’s actual truth there. And intelligent conversation from people who get that our democracy is in danger. Twitter has pulled some of Trump’s posts, because they are lies. Not all, but it’s something. And Twitter actively remove bots instead of letting them infect our minds at will, like facebook does.

And all of that is why this fall is going to be next level painful for all of us. Trump is going to continue to lie his ass off and do any and everything he can to stay in power, because if he loses, he’s going to prison.

So, we’ve got our actual democracy to worry about, but Covid is going to be what ends up taking time away from that. We are fucked, because of all the Russian disinformation. The shit I see every day on facebook regarding covid is next level crazy. the truth has literally become obsolete on most of facebook.

As a whole, we are not thinking rationally. What has literally every other country done? Contain the virus, then reopen. We shut down at most about 50% at the very beginning, while countries that successfully stopped the spread shut down 95% (that according to Fauci).

We got tired of putting in the hard work after a couple of months, so we just gave up. And the bots are a big part of that. There’s what people wanted to be true. And there’s what actually was true. the bots would prey on cooped up americans, telling them that they deserved their freedom. Of course people want freedom, so they’d “retweet” any and every story that supported that.

When we needed to listen to fauci, that the virus sets the timeline, we instead heard trump with his easter comments about how the economy would be roaring back in a couple of weeks. Maga latched on to what they wanted to be true, ignoring the actual pandemic expert. It’s now 5 fucking months later. We never hear from Fauci anymore and we’re impossibly fucked as a result.

If we had contained the virus back in March, the economy would be fine and 10s of thousands of us would still be here. So, Trump’s completely ass-backwards and evil plan is to not learn from our mistakes, but just push forward with reopening schools and restarting sports? It says a lot about who we are as a nation that human life is that unimportant.

Is the curve flat? Did we stop the spread? No. So, shut the fuck up. Any other country in the entire fucking world would be sheltered in place right now. Cases are surging. This is madness.

After Kudlow’s asinine “no second wave” comment we had a solid 3 week stretch where cases were double what they were the day he said that. our numbers haven’t improved since then because we’ve actually done better, they improved once trump took away reporting from the CDC.

HHS took over reporting and are using TeleTracking. TeleTracking was given this crucial role by getting a no bid contract, where instead of fielding competitive offers from around the industry, HHS called them. Add to that the fact that “Teletracking CEO Michael Zamagias had links to the New York real estate world — and in particular, a firm that financed billions of dollars in projects with the Trump Organization.” (source NPR)

We’re in the middle of a fucking pandemic. And one of the most crucial roles is handed to a company who just happens to have a CEO that helped Trump with financing. Predictably, TeleTracking can’t handle the job and Dr Birx said today that the CDC could end up taking back over.

our national numbers aren’t improving because we’re doing better, they’re improving because all the data that was going to the CDC is not making its way to HHS/TeleTracking yet. Trump got to repay a favor and temporarily make himself look better as our covid numbers artificially went down..

And in all likelihood, some Americans look at our Covid chart and get false hope, because our 7 day average is closer to 40k than 60k. but, I couldn’t find any data to indicate just how many sources are unable to get the data to HHS, so we really have no idea where we’re at. Like when Bolsonaro in Brazil just stopped reporting Covid data when it got really bad, Trump found a way to manipulate data in the US.

The integrity of data is a massive problem, but just as big is the idea that people would see 40k daily cases and think that’s a good thing. France was one of the early covid epicenters. Adjusting for population difference, at their absolute worst, france had what would be equivalent to us having 21k cases a day.

We’re now, even with bad data, twice as bad as france was at its worst. and were 3x worse when trump tweeted that schools must open. And instead of fighting that, we’re still letting Russian bots and our traitor of a president continue to tell us we should reopen schools and resume sports.

Reason has given way to passion. If you only look at facebook, the loudest voices appear to be winning out instead of the sane ones. But that’s not true. There are plenty of fact based, rational responses to this, they just don’t appear often on facebook for reasons above.

And take my own home county. We’re currently having parents protest the school boards rational, fact based, by the numbers decision to start school online. These parents think their freedom to infect is greater than other at risk people’s freedom from infection.

The thing is, through june 15 my county did fucking amazing, because we followed the rules and had a little luck. We didn’t have more than 33 cases in a day and most days were much lower than that. all told, through june 30^th, we had 1800 total cases. Since 7/1 we’ve had 5600…more than 100 a day, including a 237 count day this past Saturday, which was far and away our worst day.

Our covid line is trending hopelessly upward. But, instead of being willing to follow the rules that saw us do great through june, we just gave up. I do not understand how parents are going to explain this to their kids years down the line.

“You mean a deadly virus was transmitting rapidly throughout our community and you were willing to send us to school? You were willing to put our teachers at risk? Our most vulnerable community members at risk? You were willing to ensure that the virus would continue to spread in our community, guaranteeing more lives would be lost, possibly including one of us?”

The passion of this moment to rush back to normalcy cannot outweigh the truth…you must contain the virus before normalcy is possible. I keep seeing the idea that we need to get back to normal, because suicides are up. I can’t even begin to understand how that makes sense to someone. Why are there suicides? Because we didn’t contain the pandemic like we should have in March. The mental trauma that each of us go through every day should not be happening. To reopen to “get back to normal” will have the exact opposite result. Reopening guarantees the virus will continue to spread, which will make the virus drag on even longer, making the mental trauma much, much worse than it is now. Not only will reopening result in more suicides, it’ll result in more covid deaths.

You have to fucking contain this virus. Every other country gets that. But, some of our population is hell bent on what they want to happen being more important than other people’s need to stay alive. And it’s not just life or death. I heard the story today of a college soccer player who, 8 weeks into having Covid, still can’t shake it. She can’t play soccer this year and still doubles over on short walks. We have no idea if cases like that will result in long term problems.

 Or take the idea that kids don’t transmit. Or that kids always recover. We don’t have reliable data on that, because kids haven’t been in school.

But, no matter the justification, they’re all just excuses for why it might be okay. You know who’s willing to roll the dice with our kids health like that? Russia. And Donald Trump. And the fact that some parents line up with that thinking is sick.

Just look at how college reopenings are going. UNC is a mess. When cases are 2x (maybe 3x) france epicenter level bad already in the US, why would we expect that reopening schools will go well? We’re not respecting the virus and that’s going to make everything infinitely worse.

We still don’t get that there is no economy until the virus is contained. There is no mental health until the virus is contained. We want everything to be back in full, but we haven’t earned that. There is no normal until we actually put in the work to contain this thing. We don’t set the timeline. The virus sets the timeline.

To have 4% of the world’s population, but 22% of the world’s deaths is unforgiveable. Worse is our own citizens begging for the chance to kill more of us. We’re at war and some are fighting for the virus.

As I was thinking this through, the Dawes line that shuffle played was, “Ignoring all of the remedies, believing all of the rumors.” That’s my county to a t. Don’t look at the chart of cases going hopelessly upward. Don’t look at the pandemic high number of cases we had 3 days ago. Don’t listen to the school board trying to keep us safe. Don’t even acknowledge what you knew was true in March with regard to flattening the curve. Just go with whatever the bots said on facebook that aligns with what you want to be true. Going that route has killed 178,000 of us. Russia appreciates you continuing to share posts that will make things worse.

We’re here because we’re the only country fighting on behalf of the virus. That wouldn’t be true without the Russian bots. It wouldn’t be true without Fox news. And it would be true without Maga and their lord and savior, Donald Trump. Maga takes a page out of Trump’s book with their current push for school and sports: taking zero personal responsibility. The collective cry to reopen is going to kill people. And to recklessly post to facebook without bothering to acknowledge that fact is to have blood on your hands.

Fucking pro-lifers pushing for their right to kill their fellow Americans is as GOP as it gets. instead of bringing us together to hate our common enemy, covid, they are tearing America apart, making “owning the libs” more important than human life. It’s fucking sickening. All these avoidable deaths and trump is being celebrated at the RNC instead of being treated like the war criminal that he is. Russia has a huge lead in World War 3, because some Americans are fighting for them in the Covid war of 2020.