On Sept. 11, Michigan representatives proposed an internet content ban bill unlike any of the others we've seen: This particularly far-reaching legislation would ban not only many types of online content, but also the ability to legally use any VPN.
The bill, called the Anticorruption of Public Morals Act and advanced by six Republican representatives, would ban a wide variety of adult content online, ranging from ASMR and adult manga to AI content and any depiction of transgender people. It also seeks to ban all use of VPNs, foreign or US-produced.
Main issue I have with this article, and a lot of articles on this topic, is it doesn't address the issue of youth access to porn. I think any semi-intelligent person knows this is a parenting issue, but unfortunately that cat's out of the bag, thanks to the right. "Proliferation of porn" is the '90s crime scare (that never really died) all over again. If a politician or industry expert is speaking against bills like this, their talking points have to include:
- Privacy-respecting alternatives that promise parents that their precious babies won't be able to access that horrible dangerous porn! (I don't argue that porn can't be dangerous, but this is yet another disingenuous right-wing culture (holy) war)
- Addressing that vagueness in the bill sets up the government as morality police (it's right there in the title of the bill, FFS), and NOBODY in a "free" country should ever want that.
- Stop saying it can be bypassed with technology. The VPN ban in this bill is a reaction to talking points like that.
- Recognize and call out that this has nothing to do with protecting children and everything to do with a religious minority imposing its will on the rest of the country (plenty of recent examples to pull from here).
Unfortunately this is becoming enough of "A Thing" that the left is going to have to, once again, be seen doing "something" about it. So they have to thread a needle of "protecting kids," while respecting the privacy of their parents who want their kids protected and want to look at porn, and protecting businesses that require secure communications.
Release the Epstein files
We are so past that shit.
Never. The administration continues to play keep-away precisely because they are afraid of the files coming out. And the sooner the files do, the less complete the stranglehold on power, the more damage the files being released would do.
Trump could start tossing toddlers in wood chippers on the (remains of) the white house lawn and two days later his supporters will be wearing wood-chipper T-shirts.
He owns the executive branch, the judicial branch and has a collar around congress and makes them lap up water from a dog bowl. He wouldn't face consequence more than light-night comedian jokes and produce a lot of content for leftist youtubers to rant about.
Our real problem here is the work being done in the background that is stripping rights from workers, defunded oversight panels and watchdog groups in the government, and basically all departments that rely on science and factual knowledge, as well as the slow, creeping work being done from state to state to dismantle privacy as a concept. To say nothing of the massive amount of money being shuttled out the back door in inside trading every time the white-house pulls the tariff lever.
Literally everything else we're distracted with is just that, a distraction. Epstein, ICE, the lies and performances and dance routines to get everyone screaming at each other about what's the biggest problem to address. The scattershot method of lighting too many fires for anyone to target is working spectacularly. As evident by the fact that we're still here trying to get justice about something that will NEVER see justice.
We need to be dismantling his support system with focused efforts at ousting congresspeople and senators and redrawing district maps to stay ahead of their own gerrymandering, as well as campaigning for local and state lawmakers who aren't subservient to Trump's clan.