“The transgender thing is incredible,” said former president Donald Trump in late August, addressing the Moms for Liberty “Joyful Warriors” summit in late Washington.  “[Y]our kid goes to school, and he comes home a few days later with an operation. The school decides what’s going to happen with your child.”

Wait … what? That’s not true.  That’s not even close to true. The next time a kid comes home from school with different genitalia courtesy of government medical “generosity” at taxpayer expense, with or without express written parental consent, will be the first time.

But Trump said it, and some people no doubt believe it — because Trump said it.

Trump, the demagogue, is a midwife, always attempting to deliver the next big moral panic (“widespread feeling of fear that some evil person or thing threatens the values, interests, or well-being of a community or society”).

The members of every audience he addresses, directly or indirectly, are the prospective mothers.

Their credulity is the birth canal.

Fear is the bouncing baby [insert random gender identity here].

Fear is also the single most effective tool in a politician’s arsenal.

Fearful people are more likely to support politicians who pose as their savior — even if their fears are completely unfounded, and even if those politicians were the ones who scared them in the first place.

Where you find fear, you’re likely to find lies as well. Why? Because lying to you is easier for a politician than discovering you’ve been lied to is for you.

Most people want to believe what they’re told, especially by those who claim to support and defend their interests.

Many of those people, once lied to, close their minds to the possibility that they HAVE been lied to, no matter the actual evidence.

And both groups, are, in different measure, more likely to support the politician who lied to them … because they’re afraid, and believe that politician can and will “save” them.

No, Donald Trump isn’t the only demagogue out there. In fact, he’s not the only demagogue in this particular presidential race. Or, probably, in whatever room he happens to occupy at the moment.

He is, however, the best EXAMPLE of a demagogue currently on offer because his fear-inspiring lies are so over the top, so hare-brained, and so easily disproven that they don’t require reams of fine print analysis to rebut. Only the naive and credulous believe them for even a moment, and only the MOST naive and credulous believe them for more than a few minutes.

Unfortunately, he tells so many whoppers that an enthusiastic, if small, constituency exists for each one. He’s building a Coalition of the Afraid.

Oh, for emergency contraception against moral panic.

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

How many times have you casually mentioned buying, say, new curtains to your spouse, then found yourself bombarded with ads for window treatments the next time you opened a new browser tab on your computer?

How many times has that kind of thing left you assuming that your phone, smart speaker, etc. are listening in on your conversations and adding relevant material to advertising databases?

Advertising platforms always deny it, and maybe — MAYBE — they’ve been technically honest in denying it. But there’s no doubt they track you in various ways, from browser history to phone location, and that they use the data they gather to target advertising at you.

If your phone notices you visited Home Depot or Lowe’s and your browser history shows you looking at gazebo plans, you’ll probably start seeing ads for tools and building materials shortly thereafter.

Now we have evidence of actual eavesdropping on your conversations.

Last year, Cox Media Group admitted — nay, promoted” — its “Active Listening” technology  in a since-deleted blog post: “Imagine … a world where no pre-purchase murmurs go unanalyzed, and the whispers of consumers become a tool for you to target, retarget, and conquer your local market.”

Last month, 404 Media reported (in a paywalled article) on a CMG “pitch deck” further promoting the technology and claiming major partnerships with Facebook, Google, and other major firms to deploy it. The unconvincing responses from those major firms range from outright denial to promised “investigations.”

If that technology really is just now rolling out for advertisers, my only question is why it took so long.

We know, courtesy of exiled whistleblower Edward Snowden, that the US government  possesses those kinds of capabilities — the NSA calls it “Google for Voice” — and has been using them on us for decades. Once the “private sector” knows a thing CAN be done, it figures out how to do that thing in profitable ways.

Here’s the part where most writers start bemoaning our loss of privacy and suggesting ways to get it back.

OK, fine … I bemoan our loss of privacy. Happy?

As for getting it back, nothing short of full global reversion to a pre-computer level of technology would suffice.

Am I happy that Bing knows I’m very interested in motorcycles at the moment and keeps showing me ads and stories about them?

Yes, kind of. It’s a little creepy, but also very useful.

Am I concerned that this level of data-gathering will produce terrible outcomes?

Absolutely.

Am I willing to cancel my Internet service, throw away my smart phone and Echo Dot, wear “facial recognition defeat” clothing everywhere I go, etc. just to keep Google from knowing I’m house-hunting?

Nope.

For better or worse, privacy is dead.

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 Florida,” former and possibly future US president Donald Trump writes on Truth Social, “like so many other States that have already given their approval, personal amounts of marijuana will be legalized for adults with Amendment 3. Whether people like it or not, this will happen through the approval of the Voters, so it should be done correctly.”

I signed a petition to put Amendment 3 on the ballot — in fact, I’ve been signing similar petitions on the subject for years — and intend to vote for it in November. I expect it to pass. I hope it passes.  I’m thankful to Trump for kinda sorta endorsing it.  But that kinda sorta endorsement really highlights two aspects of the issue for me.

The first aspect is Trump’s call for it to be done “correctly,” by which he means “prohibit the use of it in public spaces, so we do not smell marijuana everywhere we go.”

I suppose it’s possible that there’s something special about Palm Beach. I’ve never been there. I live near Gainesville, Florida, and when in town I already smell marijuana everywhere I go.

I’ve also sampled the scents of Tallahassee, Jacksonville, St. Augustine, Orlando, Tampa, and numerous smaller Florida urbs. In Florida, if you exit your personal vehicle in any area boasting a population density greater than Greenland’s, you’re likely to smell cannabis.

Which leads me to the second interesting aspect of Amendment 3:

It’s nice, but not really necessary. Floridians who want to use weed already use weed. They use weed in private. They use weed in public. They’ll continue to do so. They don’t need your approval or your permission.

Would it be NICE to just have the stuff fully legal, at least to the extent that those who use it don’t find themselves at (minimal, but real) risk of arrest for personal possession? Yes, it would.

Would the failure of Amendment 3 reduce marijuana use in Florida? No, it wouldn’t.

This shouldn’t surprise you. Marijuana is informally referred to as “weed” for a reason: It grows pretty much everywhere in the wild. It isn’t difficult to grow at home, either. Human beings have used it and valued it both medically and recreationally for as long human beings have existed.

State and federal governments have spent more than a century trying to eliminate Americans’ use of cannabis. More — lots more — Americans use it now than before the war on weed began. They’ll continue to do so. Period.

Whether you use the stuff or not, legalizing it makes your life better in many ways — for example, you don’t have to pay for as many cops or as many prison cells.

Don’t like the smell? Too bad. Get used to it.

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