By admin 
The huge impression of Donald Trump’s Election Day victory continues to grow, with the former president not only winning all the swing states, but probably also the popular vote, the Senate and possibly even the House of Representatives. Trump also exercises much more control over his party than before. This is a total defeat for the Democratic Party, and one that will pave the way for the implementation of the Republican Party’s policy goals on a scale previously undreamed of (at least since 2004).
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Democratic officials and pundits know this is bad, though not all are willing to admit that the main fault lies with their candidate, Vice President Kamala Harris. If she doesn’t deserve it all of blame just because she shares it with President Joe Biden, whose stubborn decision to seek re-election despite his advanced age and declining cognitive skills jeopardized both their candidacies. Various commentators to have lashed outnot with Harris, but with Americans.
MSNBC’s Joy Reid, for example, claimed that Harris’ campaign was historic and “flawlessly executed” because… Queen Latifah endorsed Harris. Serious:
JOY REID: Kamala Harris was a “historic, flawlessly executed” campaign pic.twitter.com/sJMhcfVYxO
— HOTSPOT (@HotSpotHotSpot) November 6, 2024
Kamala Harris has not failed the American people; voters abandoned Kamala Harris. They are also believed to have abandoned Queen Latifah.
The explanation that Harris lost because voters are too racist to accept her will always have some appeal among the progressive pundit class. Of course, this theory faces obvious problems: Harris, apparently lost land with it virtually every demographic groupincluding black and Latino voters. As for the argument that the electorate is biased against female candidates, that may be true some underlying truth of that – but it is important to note that Harris lost even more spectacularly than Hillary Clinton. Either voters have become much more sexist – not entirely convincingly – or something else is going on.
What is that other thing? The explanation likely billed by progressives is increasingly well-known: disinformation on social media. MSNBC host Jen Psaki cited the dangers of disinformation and propaganda on And earlier in the week, before she knew Harris would lose, Psaki advised Democrats will take action against social media companies to “limit the lies they can spread.”
The hosts of The view sounded a similar note during their post-election episode.
“It would help if we could regulate social media,” says Sara Haines. “DC and Congress have failed to do one thing regarding the rogue social media companies.”
The position: We need to censor social media to prevent this from happening again pic.twitter.com/JjwM8YQwqN
— End Wokeness (@EndWokeness) November 6, 2024
It is true that outright lies and conspiracy theories flourish on social media, although one can also consume bad information on television, on the radio, in print, in books and in personal conversations. Prestigious journalistic institutions make serious mistakes: more than four years later, for example Politics has still not been corrected a blatantly misleading headline: “Hunter Biden story is Russian disinformation, dozens of former intelligence officials say.” The laptop is not disinformation, and furthermore, intelligence officials did not claim that this was the case. (They said it looked like Russian disinformation.)
Critics of the establishment’s progressive worldview often draw attention to the Hunter Biden laptop story because it is both a prominent example of how Democrats, national security experts and media elites are doing something wrong. And a prominent example of the concept of disinformation being applied in bad faith. Civil libertarians are right to fear that increasingly desperate calls to criminalize false information online – or otherwise punish the platforms for failing to police it effectively – will result in the censorship of legitimate speech; the fact-checkers, disinformation watchdog organizations and government agents have not proven themselves particularly skilled in identifying actual disinformation.
Calls from cable news experts for the government to do something to more aggressively regulate social media should be seen as self-serving. Traditional media institutions recognize and resist the fact that social media platforms are a boon to alternative, contrarian, and libertarian perspectives: they allow independent writers, thinkers, and commentators to reach audiences without relying on existing organizations.
It is important to recognize that heavy-handed regulation of social media – something that is being proposed by many Democrats and Republicans alike– would not only reduce disinformation on the internet, but also completely destroy the independent media ecosystem. Provisions like Section 230, which protects social media companies from liability for user-generated content, allow the Internet to function as it does. That’s a good thing for the platforms, for freedom of expression and for contrarian perspectives – and a bad thing for traditional media gatekeepers.
It is also striking that Democrats and media figures do not hesitate to denounce Trump’s brutal and authoritarian tendencies, but fail to recognize that threatening, intimidating, and regulating social media companies until they agree to crack down on unfavorable speech is itself is an authoritarian action.
If Democrats really think they can’t beat Trump unless they eliminate online speech protections, police social media companies and deal a blow to the First Amendment, they need to get used to the authoritarian moniker.
I’m joined by Emily Jashinsky from Undercurrents and Counter Points to discuss all the latest election news: the media’s reaction to Trump’s victory, Republican victories over Latinos, whether Musk will influence the Trump administration in a libertarian direction, and Jen Psaki’s explanation for the loss of Harris.
I finally bought the latest Zelda game, The Legend of Zelda: Echoes of Wisdom. It’s great!
EoW is a top-down 2D game that nevertheless features a lot of side-scrolling, with a similar artistic style to the Link’s awakening remake. The graphics are beautiful: the world of Hyrule and the characters and creatures that live in it really come to life. Check out these Deku Scrubs (a returning Zelda race):
I love how the deku scrubs in Echoes of Wisdom are portrayed as aesthetic metropolitan climbers obsessed with drug use for the explicit purpose of appearing cool pic.twitter.com/Qt2EzAb7s0
— karter (@karterAKA) November 5, 2024
The game is praised for being the first Zelda title in which the main playable character is actually Princess Zelda instead of Link. But what is really extraordinary about it EoW is that it successfully marries the big, open-world concept of the popular games Breath of the wild And Tears of the Kingdom with the more linear storyline and traditional structure of the beloved past Zelda titles. In other words: this is it precisely what I was looking for. Bravo, Nintendo!