Watching the violent chaos night after night in the US, I keep thinking of what Benjamin Franklin said to the woman who asked him, as he emerged from the constitutional convention in 1787: "Well, Doctor, what have we got, a republic or a monarchy?" To which he famously replied: "A republic, if you can keep it.
" What's happening on the streets there at the moment suggests that they could be coming close to losing it.When Trump was elected, I was assured by my American friends that the republic's democratic institutions, conventions and constitution were strong enough to rein in the narcissistic despot. Sure, it might be a rollercoaster ride, they conceded, but the republic would pull through. Well, if my transatlantic email is anything to go by, some of that cheery confidence seems to have evaporated.The thing that keeps my friends going, though, is the fact that Trump, despite his frantic, violent flailings, and despite his apparently rock-solid hold on a third of the electorate, is trailing Joe Biden in the polls. So, the thinking goes, if we all hold our nerve, the nightmare will end on 20 January 2021, when Trump has to hand over power to his victorious opponent.At which point my mind goes back to this time in 2016, when similar sentiments were the conventional wisdom about the chances of Trump defeating Hillary Clinton. And one of the most agonising questions in the aftermath of that election was: how could Nate Silver and co have got it so wrong?The answer is simple: nobody, including opinion pollsters, knew about the Trump campaign's astonishing mastery of social media, especially Facebook. Trump may not have known much about that at the time – he really only understood Twitter – but Brad Parscale and his team sure knew how to make use of Facebook's micro-targeting machine. And they did.Spool forward to now. Trump knows that if things continue as they are – with no party conventions or mass rallies and if the election is held in November (a sizable "if" IMHO) – then Biden will win. The only thing that could change that is – you guessed it! – Facebook.This thought is now informing everything he does. In particular, it explains his response to having his tweets labelled by Twitter by issuing a fatuous executive order (EO) threatening changes in Section 230 of the 1996 Communications Decency Act. This is the clause that shields social media companies from legal liability for stuff that users post on their platforms. It's what underpins the business models of Twitter, Facebook and Google, among others.Legally, the executive order is a farce and may be unconstitutional. Most of the media thought it was aimed at Twitter but in fact, as the academic Zeynep Tufekci spotted immediately, its real target was Facebook, which has much more to lose if Section 230 were to be radically amended. And, as a warning shot, it worked a treat. No sooner had news of the EO emerged than who should turn up – on Fox News, Trump's favourite TV channel – than Mark Zuckerberg, the Facebook boss, solemnly intoning his view "that Facebook shouldn't be the arbiter of truth of everything that people say online. Private companies probably shouldn't be… in the position of doing that."Evidence that the strategy of ensuring that Facebook was onboard for the Trump ride quickly emerged. When Trump, addressing "those THUGS" demonstrating in Minneapolis, tweeted "When the looting starts, the shooting starts", Twitter flagged the tweet as violating its policy against "glorifying violence". Over at Facebook, however, Mark Zuckerberg made a personal decision to leave the equivalent message up on Facebook.What it all comes down to is this: only one man – Mark Zuckerberg – now stands between Joe Biden and the US presidency. If he were to decide (and in these matters his controlling stake in Facebook means he is unchallengeable) that the company's famed micro-targeting engine were to be off-limits to both Trump and Biden and their various supporting organisations, then Trump's candidacy would be toast.He won't do it, of course, for the simple reason that there's a lot of money to be made from politics in the 150 days between now and the presidential election. And if Trump wins, Zuckerberg will have that – and its grisly aftermath – on what is laughingly called his conscience. But so too will a former deputy prime minister of the UK who happens to be his consigliere and was once, I believe, a liberal and a democrat. Makes one wonder, doesn't it, how Nick Clegg can sleep at night. What I've been readingTransport of delightIn a lovely New Yorker essay, Anthony Lane ponders the enduring romance of the night train. Conflict resolutionsIn a thoughtful piece in Foreign Policy, historian Nicholas Mulder predicts that the coronavirus "war economy" will change the world .Controlling interestIan Leslie writes in the New Statesman about learning from near-misses in the wake of Sars, Ebola and Mers
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