This is How Empires Fall

Big tech companies are no longer hiding the ball when it comes to politically biased censorship. With the recent suppression of the Hunter Biden story from the New York Post, they confirmed beyond any shadow of a doubt what many have known for years, that our tech overlords are actively supporting the Left’s social and political agenda. No reasonable person could possibly argue that Facebook and Twitter are apolitical any longer. Three possible reactions you hear tossed around are to boycott and innovate, government regulation, or to reform section 230.

Though I believe that the free market will always win in the end, I also think there are things we can do as individuals to help nudge this into a reasonable direction in the meantime.

We have given these companies immense power over our lives both here and abroad. They know everything about us, they decide what information we’re allowed to consume, and they can, and do, literally alter reality via their algorithms and search engines. During this time of global crisis, we are forced to accept whatever information they decide to feed us to make decisions concerning the safety of our families and our communities. Alternative COVID-19 theories and courses of action by legitimate medical professionals that have proven to be no less valid than that of Dr. Fauci or the CDC, have been suppressed for our “safety.”

Twitter didn’t ban the CDC or Dr. Fauci when they lied about masks back in May, damaging their credibility with many already skeptical Americans. New York’s crime rate has spiked dramatically due to police defunding and demonizing of cops in the media, yet no one holds Cuomo or de Blasio responsible. Not one person was barred from Twitter for sharing or retweeting Trump’s tax returns. Yet anyone who attempted to share or retweet a news article linking Hunter Biden to corruption in Russia and China was blocked or suspended from Facebook and Twitter. A journalist named Jake Sherman was suspended from Twitter for sharing the Hunter story and to get back into the good graces of The Crown, he actually apologized to Twitter for Twitter banning him. Stalin couldn’t get that kind of journalistic cooperation.

The obvious reaction to this blatant double standard would be to start another tech company. Of course, starting a new social media platform or the next Google would be a Herculean task, but I don’t see why that wouldn’t be the eventual progression. Television went from three channels to an infinite number now with streaming service. It will be a tough putt; any new platform will be smeared by the media as nothing more than far-right conspiracy cesspools. The dregs of society will, no doubt, come sniffing around at their chance to resurface but that is the price we pay for freedom. Unless we want Nancy Antoinette or Cocaine Mitch running the internet, that is the price we will have to pay.

What we, as individual citizens can do right now is twofold. First, we’ll need to help support and “normalize” new social media companies the way Rob Lowe and Martin Sheen made TV cool again on the West Wing. Some big-name people (besides James Woods) will have to take a bold step and stick their names on it to give it a jump start the way Larry King and Ashton Kushner helped launch Twitter by having a fake beef a decade ago. So, when another platform comes along, we can help by subscribing to it, patronizing their sponsors, and not being crazy.

The second thing that we citizens can do will have to be more of a group effort. Social media has become a mechanism for social control by aggressive, status seeking agitator’s, hell bent on making the lives of hardworking Americans miserable. We need to stop recognizing any validity to low-quality people or their low-quality ideas. Virtue signaling, suburban whites are not living with the spiking violent crime rates in New York and other major cities that have resulted from disastrous social media campaigns like “Defund the Police.”

Too many college educated liberals have traded in critical thinking for Critical Race Theory. These are the 2 + 2 = 5 geniuses that James Lindsey fooled into publishing and acclaiming fake stories about how dog parks are a hotbed for doggie rape and white supremacy. These science absolutists have gone full anti-vaxxer at the mention of a pre-election vaccine. We see it happening every day. “Educated” people, with their eyes glazed over, parroting political talking points like protesting racial injustice will magically protect you from COVID. These people, blinded by the arrogance of their superior intelligence, seem to be the easiest to brainwash.

The fact that Google, Facebook, and Amazon have a monopoly on our information alone should make us all suspicious, but many liberals have abandoned their skepticism of the government for unequivocal obedience. It is perfectly understandable to oppose Trump, but beware that when fighting monsters, you yourself do not become a monster.

If your first reaction to people being castigating out of polite society is to blame the victim—“What did he do to get himself canceled?” or “The Hunter Biden story hasn’t been proven true.”—it’s time to take a hard look in the mirror and re-evaluate your core principles. While it is of course true and appropriate to then steal the libertarian line, “It’s a private company, they can ban whomever they choose,” keep in mind that just because you can do something doesn’t mean you should do it, let alone champion it.

Failure to stand up for the rights of your rivals will leave no one left standing when they come for you.

“Then they came for the Jews.”

It has become cliché to say, “This should outrage all Americans.” But this should be a line that we all agree should not be crossed, and it’s truly shameful that liberals are the ones that need to hear this right now. Fair weather liberals have clearly abandoned their values for absolute devotion to evangelical Leftism. The fact that the largest, most expansive communication platforms the world has ever known is run by political activists, on either side, with an itchy cancel finger should worry every American with a shred of respect Enlightenment values. Once you give one party a weapon that powerful, historically, it is never long before that weapon is turned on you.

Getting past these champions of liberty that are openly cheering for censorship, it is also true that the government is not cracking down on free speech in any significant way. We are living in a much more Brave New World than 1984 culture. The societal pressures to conform are driven both by survival as well as status. “Wrong think” can get you more than de-platformed, it can get you fired. Canceled not only from polite society, but from your ability to earn a living.

Who could forget the videos over the summer of Maoist struggle sessions in the streets, mobs of aggressive protesters assaulting people at restaurants for not raising a fist and repeating “Black Lives Matter”? The absolute gaslighting surrounding the protests, all took away from the very real police reforms and racial issues that need to be addressed in this country. The cherry on top was the footage of the CNN “reporter,” parroting the pre-approved talking point of “mostly peaceful” protests while violent riots and buildings literally on fire were behind him.

Before you get out your pitchforks, let me be clear, groupthink is still very much a bi-partisan issue. But when you’re talking about radical overreach into tax paying citizens’ ability to go about their everyday lives without some cultural Marxist agenda being shoved down their throats, Fox News and conservative Republicans simply do not carry the same cultural influence right now. No one is getting fired from their job or being banished to the cornfields for not being conservative enough. There are plenty of caricatures of the gun-toting Proud Boys out there but there are also compassionate people who are just not going to be lectured to by arrogant narcissists with white savior complexes.

This is how empires fall. It’s hard to watch two political philosophies, in a perpetual state of necessary conflict with each other, unable to or unwilling to deescalate their own destruction and inevitable overthrow by the barbarians at the gate. Who knows, maybe this will all end happily ever after with the states taking back their rights after the federal government implodes under its own weight. Either way, this could all be avoided but, sadly, we are living in The Myth of Sisyphus; an absurd culture, taught absurd things by absurd people threatened by absurd consequences for defying all of it.