It’s Thanksgiving week in the United States. Since 1942 by act of Congress, and intermittently before that since the arrival of British settlers in North America, Americans have enjoyed a Thursday holiday around the end of November.

This year, the words of President Abraham Lincoln’s 1863 proclamation ring especially true: “I recommend to them that while offering up the ascriptions justly due to [God] for such singular deliverances and blessings, they do also, with humble penitence for our national perverseness and disobedience, commend to his tender care all those who have become widows, orphans, mourners or sufferers in the lamentable civil strife in which we are unavoidably engaged …”

It’s been a rough year, hasn’t it?

As I write this,  the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention reports nearly 12 million confirmed cases of COVID-19 and more than a quarter of a million deaths in the US.

Operating on Rahm Emanuel’s “never let a crisis go to waste” principle, politicians in cities and state capitals across the country jumped on the pandemic as the go-to excuse for seizing powers never before contemplated in our nation’s law or history, placing millions of Americans under de facto house arrest without charge or trial and, in the process, cratering the national economy.

We’re also going through a bruiser of a presidential election. No, it’s not over. The electors we chose on November 3 won’t meet and cast their votes until December 14.

The loser in the November 3 contest, in which those electors were chosen, continues to engage in public posturing and vexatious litigation for the purpose of creating an alternate history in which he was robbed of an honestly won victory. We can expect Donald Trump and his party to hype that myth for political gain in coming years, just as his Democratic opponents used the “Russiagate” fairy tale to dispute his own victory in 2016.

So, what’s there to be thankful for?

Well, the pandemic is going to end sooner or later. Sooner if the politicians let it, later if they continue playing their power games. We’re probably not going to “beat” COVID-19. The more likely outcome is that its weaker strains will become endemic. But humanity has survived far worse, and will survive this, and may even hold its Andrew Cuomos and Gretchen Whitmers and Gavin Newsoms legally culpable for their crimes.

And while a Joe Biden administration is nothing to celebrate in advance, the end of the Donald Trump administration is certainly worth being thankful for in retrospect.

Also worthy of thanks: More than one in every one hundred Americans who voted in the November presidential election supported Libertarian nominee Jo Jorgensen instead of either of the two creepy, handsy, senile, corrupt authoritarians put up by “major” parties. Yes, a plurality would have been nicer, but it comforts me to know that in any random crowd of 100 Americans I’ll likely find at least one who’s not a freedom-hating death-cultist.

Maybe “better than nothing” isn’t the most inspiring slogan for Thanksgiving, but it’s what we’ve got.  Selah.

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

“One day after the state reported a record 92 COVID-19-related deaths,” the Wisconsin State Journal‘s Mitchell Schmidt reports, “Gov. Tony Evers announced Wednesday he plans to extend the state’s emergency declaration and accompanying mask mandate through mid-January. … The current mask mandate was issued in July and extended by Evers in September.”

The first two mask mandates didn’t achieve the desired result! Something must be done! Hey, I’ve got an idea! How about another mask mandate?

At first blush this sounds like the old Alcoholics Anonymous definition of insanity: Repeating the same actions and expecting different results.

But there’s more to it than that. Producing a particular result hardly ever explains or justifies a particular government policy very well. Mask mandates aren’t about masks. They’re about mandates.

Evers’s obsession with issuing orders demonstrates Abraham Kaplan’s Law of the Instrument: “Give a small boy a hammer, and he will find that everything he encounters needs pounding.”

The voters of Wisconsin handed Tony Evers the hammer of political authority in 2018. Naturally, he’s swinging that hammer repeatedly and with vigor. Whether he’s  hitting nails with it, or just smashing the thumbs of Wisconsin’s people and businesses, is another question.

Keep in mind that the question of whether masks “work” is not the same as the question of whether mask mandates “work,” if by “work” we mean “impede the spread of COVID-19.”

Contrary to the claims of certain bureaucrats wearing lab coats, waving clipboards, and holding themselves out as the spokespersons for “science,” the scientific jury remains very much out on the first question. And those bureaucrats change their stories based on political considerations. Take, for example, Dr. Anthony Fauci, director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases.

Fauci on masks in March: “There’s no reason to be walking around with a mask. When you’re in the middle of an outbreak, wearing a mask might make people feel a little bit better, and it might even block a droplet. But it’s not providing the perfect protection that people think that it is.”

Fauci on mask mandates and other government orders in November: “Now is the time to do what you’re told.”

The moral of the story:

If it makes you feel better to wear a mask, wear a mask.

If wearing a mask seems justified by science, or just by common sense, wear a mask.

If a property owner requires masks and you want to use the property, wear a mask.

If the law requires a mask and you’d rather obey it than fight it, wear a mask.

But don’t assume that Tony Evers or Anthony Fauci are neutrally “listening to the science.” They’re not. They’re just enthusiastically swinging the hammers they’ve been given.

CORRECTION: This op-ed incorrectly dated a 60 Minutes interview in which Dr. Anthony Fauci dismissed the wearing of masks in public. The interview was actually in March, not in May. The date has been corrected in the column text.

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

Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act of 1996 is under attack — disguised as a cry for “reform” — from politicians on both sides of the “major party” aisle. To what purpose? Well, let’s look at Section 230’s key provision:

“No provider or user of an interactive computer service shall be treated as the publisher or speaker of any information provided by another information content provider.”

US Naval Academy law professor Jeff Kosseff calls those words “The Twenty-Six Words That Created the Internet,” and he’s right.

Section 230 made “self-publishing” of Internet content feasible by saying that when you publish something on the Internet, you, not the site which allows you to publish it, bear legal responsibility for that content.

Facebook didn’t commit libel, you did. Twitter didn’t utter a true threat, you did. Instagram didn’t post revenge porn, you did. That’s the plain and simple effect of Section 230.

“Conservative” Republicans like US Senators Ted Cruz (R-TX) and Josh Hawley (R-MO) want you to believe that Section 230 requires, or should require, sites which allow self-publishing to act as part of a notional “public square.” If those sites moderate “conservative” content — by blocking it, placing warning labels on it, or banning users who post it — Cruz, Hawley, et al. say they’re engaging in “censorship” and shouldn’t be entitled to Section 230’s protections.

“Progressive” Democrats get in on the action too, as with the “Protecting Americans from Dangerous Algorithms Act,” a piece of legislation proposed by US Representatives Tom Malinowski (D-NJ) and Anna Eshoo (D-CA). It would deprive interactive computer services of Section 230 protection if they promote “extremism” or “hate” by using “an algorithm, model, or other computational process to rank, order, promote, recommend, amplify, or similarly alter the delivery or display of information.”

Let’s unpack those positions by looking back to the age when photocopiers were a key technology for the non-wealthy to disseminate information to large numbers of people.

Suppose you run a self-service “copy shop,” and charge 10 cents per page for people to reproduce their flyers, “e-zines,” etc.

Common sense (which is what Section 230 boils down to) says that you aren’t responsible for what your customers reproduce on the machines you make available to them.

“Section 230 reform,” Republican version, says that if you refuse the use of your photocopiers to the local chapter of the Ku Klux Klan, you immediately become the “publisher” of, and legally responsible for, everything copied by all of your OTHER customers.

“Section 230 reform,” Democratic version, says that if your machines give the Klan an automatic discount for purchasing large quantities of copies, you are “amplifying” their message and become legally responsible for that message.

“Conservative” politicians want to torture social media into obediently promoting “conservative” content. “Progressive” politicians want to torture social media into suppressing “extremist” content. Neither gang seems to care if their waterboarding kills the victim.

The rest of us should care very much.  We could easily live without those politicians, but most of us wouldn’t want to live without the Internet as we know 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