Don’t Make Mark Zuckerberg America’s Political Truth Czar

Pinocchio dolls in a shop window in Florence. Photo by Vladimir Menkov. Dual-licensed under the GFDL and CC-By-SA-2.5, 2.0, and 1.0
Pinocchio dolls in a shop window in Florence. Photo by Vladimir Menkov. Dual-licensed under the GFDL and CC-By-SA-2.5, 2.0, and 1.0
Politicians lie.

Not all of them. Not every time. But most of them, from both “major” political parties, lie. A lot.

It’s not always easy to tell when they’re lying. It’s not always easy to prove they’re lying. Often, it’s not even easy to tell if they’re just lying to us or to themselves as well.

Some politicians want Facebook to stop politicians from lying. They phrase that desire as a request for Facebook to “fact check” content posted by politicians, especially political advertising.

Perhaps I’m too cynical, but I’m not sure it’s  coincidence that the examples politicians offer tend to be drawn from content posted by their political opponents.

US Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-NY) is a notable exception. She asked Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg if Facebook would let her target Republican politicians by running ads falsely accusing them of voting for her “Green New Deal” proposal (Zuckerberg said he couldn’t answer “off the top of his head”).

On the other hand, AOC’s own take seems  a bit naive.  “So you will take down lies or you won’t take down lies?” she asked Zuckerberg.  “I think this is a pretty simple yes or no.”

It isn’t.

Let’s use the Green New Deal as an example.

If a Facebook employee has to “fact check” an ad asserting that the proposal would “tank the American economy,” how should that employee evaluate the truth or falsehood of the claim?

What criteria should that employee use for deciding what “tank” means? Is slow economic growth “tanking?” Or would it take a recession or depression to meet the threshold?

Should that employee rely on analyses from the Heritage Foundation? Or perhaps from People for the American Way? Or the Congressional Budget Office? Or the Office of Management and Budget? Four sources, likely four wildly conflicting sets of claims and projections.

For a conflicting ad claiming the Green New Deal would “boost the American economy,” should that employee “fact check” the ad using the same sources as for the original ad, or different sources? Would 1% growth of GDP constitute a boost? If not, what number, applied to what metric, would?

What if both ads fail the “fact check?” Should the public just flip a coin and vote accordingly, since the two sides are forbidden to offer us their takes to  evaluate and decide between for ourselves?

Politics consists of conflicting narratives. No two opposing narratives can both be true. In fact, both could be false (Spoiler: Both are probably at least partially false, intentionally or not; personal biases affect politicians’ beliefs, and ours, at least as much as facts do).

The question is not whether politicians’ claims should be fact checked. The question is who should do the checking.

In an even remotely free society, the only answer is “all of us.”

Yes, some of us will  fail to accurately distinguish truth from falsehood. Some of us will get things wrong.

That’s better than one centralized “fact checking” operation getting them wrong for all of us.

Thomas L. Knapp (Twitter: @thomaslknapp) is director and senior news analyst at the William Lloyd Garrison Center for Libertarian Advocacy Journalism (thegarrisoncenter.org). He lives and works in north central Florida.

PUBLICATION/CITATION HISTORY

In Syria “Withdrawal,” Less is Probably More

Us troops in syria

When US president Donald Trump announced his plan to relocate a few dozen US soldiers in Syria — getting them out of the way of a pending Turkish invasion — the Washington establishment exploded in rage at what it mis-characterized as a US “withdrawal” from Syria.

Instead of fighting that mis-characterization, Trump embraced it, pretending that an actual withdrawal was in progress and announcing on October 9 that “we’re bringing our folks back home. ”

If he’s telling the truth, hooray! But so far as I can discern, no, he isn’t telling the truth.

Since taking office (after campaigning on getting the US out of military quagmires in the Middle East and Central Asia), Trump has boosted US troop levels in Syria from 500 or fewer under Barack Obama to at least 2,000 and possibly as many as 4,000.

Even at its most ambitious, the supposed US “withdrawal” from Syria consisted of moving a few hundred soldiers across the border into Iraq, from which they could launch operations in Syria at will.

The Iraqi government objected to hosting more US troops on its soil, so now the plan has changed to deploying elements  of an armored brigade combat team (“less than a battalion,” so call it “less than a thousand troops” depending on what kind of battalion) to protect Syrian oil fields from the Islamic State (and from Syria’s own government).

Exactly how many US soldiers, sailors, airmen, and Marines were in Syria prior to the supposed withdrawal? How many are there now? How many will be there by the end of the year?

That’s hard to say with any exactitude. Over the last several years (and not just on Trump’s watch), the US government’s troop level claims have become less specific and more general,  less matters of public record and more notional state secrets.

But so far, according to those claims, Trump has escalated US involvement in every conflict he inherited from Obama, even after promising to do the opposite and even while pretending to do the opposite.

If past performance is an indicator of future results, what’s going on in Syria isn’t a US withdrawal at all. Instead of US forces departing the country, more troops and heavier weapons seem to be flowing into the country (and the region, including B-1B bombers to Saudi Arabia).

Will Trump’s non-interventionist supporters finally notice or admit that, as usual, his rhetoric and his actions don’t match? Fat chance.

Thomas L. Knapp (Twitter: @thomaslknapp) is director and senior news analyst at the William Lloyd Garrison Center for Libertarian Advocacy Journalism (thegarrisoncenter.org). He lives and works in north central Florida.

PUBLICATION/CITATION HISTORY

Impeachment: Trump Has Already Confessed to “High Crimes”

The Senate as a Court of Impeachment for the Trial of President Andrew Johnson, illustration in Harper's Weekly, April 11, 1868, by Theodore R. Davis (public domain).
The Senate as a Court of Impeachment for the Trial of President Andrew Johnson, illustration in Harper’s Weekly, April 11, 1868, by Theodore R. Davis (public domain).

Every time a witness testifies behind closed doors in the US House of Representatives’ methodical march toward the impeachment of President Donald Trump, Trump supporters scream “no quid pro quo” while Trump opponents breathlessly inform us that the “smoking gun” has turned up and that impeachment is now “inevitable.”

What’s with all this “smoking gun” stuff? The decision to impeach is political, but in terms of evidence, it’s already a lock. President Trump publicly confessed to multiple “high crimes” before House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-CA) even announced the impeachment inquiry, then threw in a corroborating White House document.

Readers, meet Article VI of the US Constitution:

“This Constitution, and the Laws of the United States which shall be made in Pursuance thereof; and all Treaties made, or which shall be made, under the Authority of the United States, shall be the supreme Law of the Land …”

And now let us consult a lesser-known document, the US government’s  Treaty With Ukraine on Mutual Legal Assistance in Criminal Matters:

“Each Contracting State shall have a Central Authority to make and receive requests pursuant to this treaty. For the United States of America, the Central Authority shall be the  Attorney General or a person designated by the Attorney General. For Ukraine, the Central Authority shall be the Ministry of Justice and the Office of the Prosecutor General. … A request for assistance shall be in writing except that the Central Authority of the Requested State may accept a request in another form in urgent situations.”

Donald Trump is not the Attorney General of the United States, nor has the Attorney General publicly produced a document designating him the US government’s requesting authority under the treaty. Volodymyr Zelensky is the president of Ukraine, not a principal of its Ministry of Justice or Office of the Prosecutor General. A request by phone is not in writing, nor are matters years in the past and already subject to substantial investigation “urgent.”

Donald Trump made a request he had no authority to make, to a person he had no authority to make it of, in a form he had no authority to make it in. That’s at least three violations of the “Supreme Law of the Land.”

So, what’s a “high crime?” It may sound like a synonym for “serious crime” — espionage, treason, assassination, that kind of thing — but it’s actually a “term of art”  more concerned with the person committing the act than the act itself.

As Alexander Hamilton put it in Federalist #65, “high crimes”  for purposes of impeachment are “offences which proceed from the misconduct of public men, or, in other words, from the abuse or violation of some public trust.”

Donald Trump’s public trust, per the Constitution, includes “tak[ing] care that the laws be faithfully executed.” Instead, he violated “the supreme Law of the Land,” then publicly confessed to doing so, then corroborated his confession with evidence.

The “smoking gun” has been there the whole time. The rest is just details and politics.

Thomas L. Knapp (Twitter: @thomaslknapp) is director and senior news analyst at the William Lloyd Garrison Center for Libertarian Advocacy Journalism (thegarrisoncenter.org). He lives and works in north central Florida.