Our successor to This Week in the Guardian, This Week in the New Normal is our weekly chart of the progress of autocracy, authoritarianism and economic restructuring around the world.
1. Reason to hate the media no. 5691
On Friday CNN reported that Donald Trump had “revoked” Kamala Harris’ secret service protection under the simple headline:
Trump revokes Kamala Harris’ Secret Service protection
But the body of the article explains that former Vice-Presidents only get 6 months of SS protection by law and that Biden had extended Harris’ protection for 18 months via Executive Order. Further, it reports that the SS had conducted a threat assessment concluding Harris was in no danger prior to the revocation of her special status.
None of this matters. Nobody is going to assassinate Harris and if they were, the SS would be in on it anyway, they always are.
Rather, this is just an object lesson in how the media sucks. The headline is designed to outrage the 90% of people who will only read the headline. It’s purpose-built to make liberals cry and scream about Trump putting a black woman in danger and how he would never revoke her protection if she were white, and yadda yadda yadda.
It’s a boring non-story turned into manipulative ragebait.
2. “Oi mate, you got a license for that 3D printer?”
The always entertainingly hysterical Centre for the Study of Organized Hate (CSOH) is concerned about 3D printed guns, writing in their new report:
A growing number of far-right extremists are turning to 3D printers to build untraceable firearms, posing a new challenge for governments struggling to keep pace with digital-age weaponry. These advancements are reshaping the development of weapons and altering the nature of conflict and terrorism.
But what do about this new threat?
Well, regulation of course. To quote this report from last month:
…lawmakers should take steps to regulate 3D-printing technology in a manner that makes it impossible to use a 3D printer to print a gun.
“Regulate 3D-printing technology” is the key here. Guns are just an excuse.
3. Spot the hidden message!
Are you ready for the most Deep State-y TV show of the year?
I present The Savant, starring Jessica Chastain, which “follows an undercover investigator and mother who infiltrates hate groups online to detect and prevent domestic extremists before they act.”
…yeah, I’ll give this one a miss thanks.
Sidenote, but from Zero Dark Thirty to Miss Sloane Jessica Chastain has an odd history of being in Deep State propaganda…I mean even more than most Hollywood A-listers.
Bonus: Warning of the week
This week Big Brother Watch reported that facial recognition technology had incorrectly labelled an inoccent girl a criminal. She was removed from the store.
Now, I’m always careful of the “it’s bad because it doesn’t work” argument, because it can unintentionally open up the ground to “if it works then its ok”. But we also tend to talk focus on the downsides of dystopian tech working, neglecting the impacts of error and malfunction.
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All told a pretty hectic week for the new normal crowd, and we didn’t even mention Coventry becoming the first UK city to contract Palantir for social services or the developing CDBCs vs stablecoins narrative.
There’s a lot of change in the air, a lot of agendas in the works, if you see a headline, article, post or interview you think is a sign of the times, post it in the comments, email us or share it on social media and we will add it to the next edition.
Read the full article here