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The story of net neutrality as an Obama-led takeover of the Internet has been a key Republican talking point for months, a talking point which has been refuted by internal FCC documents obtained by Motherboard using a Freedom of Information Act request. These findings were made by the independent, nonpartisan FCC Office of Inspector General an Inspector General. However, the findings were not made public prior to Thursday’s vote.
[...] First, some background: The FCC is an independent regulatory agency that is supposed to remain “free from undue influence” by the executive branch—it is not beholden to the White House, only the laws that Congress makes and tells it to regulate. This means the president cannot direct it to implement policies. In November 2014, President Obama released a statement saying that he believed the FCC should create rules protecting net neutrality, but noted that “ultimately this decision is theirs alone.”
[...] Since 2014, Republicans have pointed to net neutrality as an idea primarily promoted by President Obama, and have made it another in a long line of regulations and laws that they have sought to repeal now that Donald Trump is president. Prior to this false narrative, though, net neutrality was a bipartisan issue; the first net neutrality rules were put in place under President George W. Bush, and many Republicans worked on the 2015 rules that were just dismantled.
What happened, then, is that Republicans sold the public a narrative that wasn’t true, then used that narrative to repeal the regulations that protect the internet.
Internal FCC Report Shows Republican Anti-Net Neutrality Narrative Is False
(Score: 1, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday December 20 2017, @05:26PM
GP here. It could be the case that the D team periodically takes up positions that happen to be in line with liberal (as in liberty, not SJWs) ideals because they know that left-wing authoritarian followers are not a stable power base. Left-wing authoritarian followers pop up every now and then, but it seems to only be right-wing authoritarian followers that have staying power.
A free internet is in everybody's best interest, sans authoritarian leaders and their authoritarian followers (both wings).
There's another question that's much more interesting I've been wondering about: why do the right-wing authoritarian leaders who rally against SJWs seem to want TwitFace to be entrenched?
Are they really that stupid? I don't think they are. When I was young and stupid myself, I assumed that many people were ignorant about technology, so I tried to help educate them. I've found that most people are ignorant about technology; most people have taken a position of silence with regards to technology. They simply don't care. My position that they were ignorant was incorrect; they are stupid. When it comes to authoritarian leaders, sociopaths, and other gaslighting assholes, those are not stupid or ignorant. They have some other objective that will somehow increase their power.
I propose that TwitFace is the unifying Enemy of these (so called “alt right”) authoritarian leaders. Authoritarian leaders cannot function without a unifying Enemy to rally their followers against. They are just as afraid of free speech as SJWs, who are also authoritarian leaders and followers. Therefore, if (“alt right”) authoritarian leaders wish to be entrenched (and given increasing power by their followers), they must also entrench the unifying Enemy.
Left-wing authoritarianism lacks staying power because it often does not have a viable, long-term unifying Enemy. Sure, it might be trendy to hate white people, or to hate people assigned the male gender at birth, or to hate men who are cisgendered, but it simply isn't viable long-term. Progressive values tend to deprecate and vanquish left-wing authoritarianism. However, right-wing authoritarianism, by its very reactionary nature, has staying power, because of the way it uses nostalgia in a quixotic attempt to turn back time. If one's enemy is time and the loss of class privileges relative to other classes in society, it's easy to find a long-term unifying Enemy.
However, that being said, I must not fail to note that right-wing authoritarianism cannot take hold if there is a rising tide lifting all boats. The real economy has been stagnant going on 40 years now. That's the real reason for the rise and success of right-wing authoritarianism. It's the economy, stupid.