Russian bots are still at it, with bots pushing
relatively extreme positions into controversial debates, getting legitimate
people to repost them so that outlier ideas gain traction. That process makes it harder to pass reforms
on narrower issues, like gun control and especially school safety.
That’s the thrust of a front page story today by
Sheera Frenkel and Daikuse Wakanayashi in the New York Times.
This problem seems more subtle than just possibly
perturbing elections. The Russians are
trying to make it appear that open speech is dangerous to society, because it
distracts electorates and keeps elected politicians afraid to settle issues and
pass reforms. This is also a serious
future problem for “individual” speech like mine that isn’t connected to one
side or another – which is ironic inasmuch as I see my speech as an answer to tribalism.
Instead, you could wind up requiring everyone to join one side or the other.
But generally it’s distractions on the right-wing side
that are more troubling. For example, I’ve pointed to arguments that the “absolutist”
position on the Second Amendment as an individual right (including access to assault weapons) tends to feed the
doomsday prepper narrative, that some day citizens will need to function
without a central government after a calamity.
In this environment, it’s harder to focus on the grief of victims of major
attacks. It’s easier to maintain an atmosphere
of personal aloofness -- the so called “stoicism”
problem, which may in turn feed to extreme right-wing or Nietzchean narratives that
might suit oligarchical enemies, like Putin.
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