A CONTRARIAN TAKE: Is the Great Deplatforming of 2021 an Assault on Free Speech? No, says Techdirt’s Mike Masnick, but he wants to see a more decentralized Internet and thinks the solution is relying on protocols, not platforms.
Archive for 2021
January 16, 2021
LOCKDOWNS: The Pandemic Could Be Harming Kids’ Eyesight, But It Isn’t The Virus to Blame. “School closures are among the more controversial options for controlling the COVID-19 pandemic, with authorities debating whether the preventative measure is worth the potential educational, social, and emotional costs. Researchers in China have uncovered yet another health concern faced by children kept in isolation for extended periods; deteriorating eyesight.”
IN CASE YOU MISSED THEM: The 10 Worst Helicopter Parenting Hysterias of 2020.
THE PROFITS OF DOOM: A 25-Year-Old Bet Comes Due: Has Tech Destroyed Society? In 1995, Kevin Kelly, a cofounder of Wired, challenged Kirkpatrick Sale to a $1,000 bet. The Luddite-loving doomsayer was predicting that society would collapse by 2020. Kelly, inspired by the economist Julian Simon’s bet against Paul Ehrlich, got him to put his money where his doom was. Now, despite a biased referee, the better prophet has collected his winnings.
FASTER, PLEASE: Designer cytokine makes paralyzed mice walk again.
EVERYTHING’S POLITICAL AND IT’S ALL LIES: Nancy Pelosi’s waiting games prove ‘boot Trump’ movement is just another political ploy.
REMY: It Wasn’t Me! New video from Reason TV:
BIDEN’S PLAN FOR HIGHER UNEMPLOYMENT: Feel Good Now — Pay Later. Biden’s stimulus is a feel-good populist measure that will ultimately harm the most vulnerable people in the American economy.
MICROBIOME NEWS: Bacteria in the gut may influence COVID-19 severity, study says.
Their correction led to this parody, which was floating around Twitter last night:
…Or is it?
NO THANKS, I’M STILL SOCIAL DISTANCING: Meet John Sullivan, the Left-Wing ‘Agitator’ Arrested and Charged in the Capitol Riot.
Related: Judge Releases Left Wing Agitator John Sullivan Without Bail Against the Pleas of the Prosecutors.
WHAT IF SPARTACUS HAD A PIPER CUB? What If Chevy Made a Corvette SUV to Compete with the Porsche Cayenne?
ROGER SIMON: Should the Real ‘Resistance’ Start Now?
Literally within minutes of the 2016 election of Donald J. Trump, his opponents took to the streets declaring themselves “The Resistance.”
Some of us, myself included, considered that an act of what the “woke” like to call “cultural appropriation,” indeed an extreme—I would even say obscene—one.
CA is a term, many will recall, applied to those insensitive souls who allegedly steal from another group for their own gain or amusement, as in fraternity boys donning sombreros and drinking margaritas for Cinco de Mayo.
What was appropriated back in 2016 was something quite serious—“La Résistance”—the clandestine and highly-dangerous underground movement to subvert Nazi Germany’s control of France during the Second World War.
Although an astonishing number of younger Americans have little or no knowledge of the Holocaust, I would imagine most readers of this outlet realize that Germany’s takeover with the Vichy government’s compliance resulted in such events as the notorious July 1942 night time roundup in suburban Paris of 7000 Jews, including 4000 children, before they were shipped off for extermination.
Comparing that to the election of Donald Trump really is obscene, and also wildly anti-Semitic, unless, of course, you think saying nasty things about your opponents on Twitter is the equivalent of Auschwitz.
Many of our supposedly “progressive” friends evidently did, overwhelmed by a delusional case of moral narcissism all out of proportion to reality, allowing them to “act out” in the most self-aggrandizing manner, identifying with the true heroes of “La Résistance” when there was no discernible threat to them whatsoever.
Indeed, what actually happened to the daily lives of our liberal friends during the Trump administration was next to nothing.
Until COVID came along, they got to enjoy the lowest unemployment virtually ever, including minorities, with actual wages going up for the lower classes for the first time in years, a booming stock market, lower gas prices through energy independence, peace in the Middle East and peace in general.
They weren’t censored in any way and maintained control of most of the media, entertainment, and the schools throughout.
Yet still they raged.
But to continue with the French analogy, what’s going on today is “toute autre chose,” entirely different.
The now victorious left is attempting to erase the right, to drive it out of existence forever.
We see signs of this everywhere, from the clearly fascistic actions of Big Tech in destroying upstart Parler on grounds of hosting some violent posts (something they themselves have been doing for years) to ridiculous virtue signaling like Macaulay Culkin signing on for having Donald Trump’s cameo removed from “Home Alone 2.”
Communist Chinese-style “social credit” controls are being instituted across our economy with the likes of Master Card, PayPal and Stripe canceling conservative groups that protested the election and automated business email systems doing the same.
In many ways this is more effective and dangerous than the Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution because we are so reliant on technology now and because it is so sub rosa. No need for prancing around in dunce caps. An individuals’ access to his or her daily needs can be turned off with the click of an invisible mouse.
American versions of “Good Germans” are coming out of the woodwork as many are beginning to live in fear of what this could do to their lives. Others have been asked to recant or soon will be.
The traditional Republican Party politicians have been of little help, disconnected, as many, maybe most, are from their rank-and-file.
So is this time for a new, and more justified, “Resistance”?
As Caroline Glick writes, Biden is continuing the left’s shopworn tradition of comparing conservative Republicans to National Socialists: Goebbels and the New American Terror.
What purpose did it serve for President-elect Joe Biden to liken Senators Ted Cruz (R-TX) and Josh Hawley (R-MO) to Adolf Hitler’s top propagandist Joseph Goebbels?
In response to a question about the two Republican lawmakers following remarks on January 8, Biden said, “I was being reminded by a friend of mine…when we’re told [about] Goebbels and the great lie, you keep repeating the lie, repeating the lie.”
Although Biden’s comparison was imperfectly stated, it was clear enough to follow. He was saying that the lawmakers’ efforts to challenge the Electoral College votes from disputed states was a Nazi-like effort.
By speaking this way, Biden did many things at once. First, he whitewashed Goebbels’ barbaric crimes. Goebbels was the chief architect of totalitarianism in Nazi Germany and one of the lead architects of the Holocaust.
In his literary warning about the fragility of freedom and the allure of totalitarianism, 1984, George Orwell demonstrated that total control over a society is achieved through total control over the information its members can see.
Goebbels implemented this in Nazi Germany. As Hitler’s propagandist, Goebbels exerted total control over information. He ensured that Germans would view Hitler as their infallible savior. He conditioned them to view Jews as subhuman vermin, to be exterminated like cockroaches. And he made them believe that all Germans who didn’t accept what they were told were enemies of the people.
Goebbels achieved all of these things by blocking public access to accurate information while inundating the Germans with images and words that repeated and amplified his monstrous lies. Goebbels’ success in controlling information was the necessary precondition for all he and his comrades unleashed on Jews, and on humanity as a whole.
The second thing Biden did by comparing Hawley and Cruz to Goebbels was to whitewash the unspeakable crimes of Nazi Germany. After all, if merely questioning certain election returns is the moral equivalent of Goebbels’ “Big Lie,” then the Big Lie was actually no big deal.
The third thing Biden did by comparing Hawley and Cruz to Goebbels was set them up for what Orwell referred to as “un-personing”—or in today’s culture, “canceling.”
Obviously, if Cruz and Hawley are Goebbels, then all right-thinking people must work to silence them and remove them from positions of influence in the Senate and larger society.
As if on cue, shortly after Biden said what he did, Senate Democrats began debating whether to censure the lawmakers. Senate Republicans, for their part, began discussing the possibility of denying the two members cherished committee assignments. According to Senate officials, Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-KY) is leaning toward denying the two their subcommittee chairmanships—thereby removing them from the line of seniority.
As Glick writes, “A sense of foreboding and fear now grips millions of Americans—and, indeed, conservatives worldwide. Unless something is done quickly by those who wield power to restore freedom, it is impossible to see a happy end to this story.” #Unity!
WELL, THAT CERTAINLY PROVES HIM WRONG: College set to fire professor who tweeted ‘Black privilege is real.’
JIM TREACHER: Leave Ariel Pink Alone.
Pink doesn’t think Biden stole the election, and he’s “perfectly fine” with Biden as president. He’s not spreading conspiracy theories. He’s not condoning the Capitol riot that happened after he left. He’s not calling for anyone to be harassed or hurt in any way.
Ariel Pink was just… there.
So now you have to destroy his life?
Back in the ’60s, John Lennon made a wisecrack about the Beatles being “bigger than Jesus.” Fundamentalist Christians throughout America were outraged and publicly burned Beatles records in protest. If you’re doing this to Ariel Pink now, how are you any better than those people?
I’m as angry about the Capitol riot as anybody, and every single person who participated in it must be held accountable, up to and including the president of the United States. But this is just wrong. Speaking as a cuck RINO traitor who, as of last week, now hates Donald Trump more than I’ve hated any other president in my lifetime: Please leave Ariel Pink alone.
The southern Beatle album burners were a deeply religious lot. So are those who are determined to destroy Pink now. It’s just a very different religion they practice in 2021.
ONE YEAR AGO:
The pandemic — and the response thereto — fixed that in time for the election. Now let’s see if they can undo the damage, or even want to.
MICHAEL BARONE: From impeaching incitement to canceling conservatism.
But a moment’s reflection should have left any believer in free speech feeling queasy about a private firm censoring the president of the United States and preventing him from effectively communicating with citizens over a chosen medium of universal reach. And especially queasy, since a large body of opinion sees this suppression of free speech by Big Tech monopolies not as a one-time exception but as the new rule.
Oliver Darcy of CNN wants its cable rivals to be held “responsible for the lies they peddle.” Law professors are surprisingly open to speech suppression, as Thomas Edsall reported in his New York Times blog. Yale’s Robert Post lamented that “the formation of public opinion is out of control”; California, Irvine’s Rick Hasen lamented “a market failure when it comes to reliable information voters need”; Columbia’s Tim Wu suggested “the weaponization of speech” makes the First Amendment jurisprudence “increasingly obsolete.”
Democratic worthies have been singing the same tune. Michelle Obama took the lead in urging the permanent ban on Trump, which Twitter promptly promulgated. Presidential candidate Andrew Yang called for cable news channels to be required to air competing views. Biden press aide Bill Russo wants Facebook to censor “misleading” information.
The law professors leave it ambiguous who would “control” information and decide what is “reliable information.” But Democrats obviously expect the decisions to be made by folks on their side of the political divide.
The speech restrictions and speech suppression by Twitter, Facebook, Apple, and Google, including the expulsion from the cloud of Twitter competitor Parler, are all intended to benefit the Left and penalize the Right. These firms come as close as nongovernment actors could to canceling if not criminalizing at least certain strands of conservatism.
The left always wants to criminalize its opposition.
ANALYSIS: TRUE. Crying ‘whataboutism’ doesn’t make the left’s support for rioting go away. “Whataboutism” is just a deflection-word for when leftists are caught out in blatant hypocrisy.
LUCASFILM LEFTISTS JOIN FORCES WITH COMMUNIST CHINA:
Edward Cheng, Chief Executive Officer of China Literature, says they are very excited to be partnering with Disney and Lucasfilm. I imagine he is. Edward is also the Vice President of Tencent and Chief Executive Officer of Tencent Pictures, which has plans to release a film celebrating the brutal CCP according to China Daily:
Updates on a total of 56 projects were announced, including plans to release an epic film 1921 to commemorate the centenary anniversary of the founding of the Chinese Communist Party of China, as well as the second season of Qing Yu Nian, a sought-after drama adapted from a namesake popular online novel.
Now that the CCP’s pet gerbil has been placed into the U.S. Presidency, and with the possibility of Bob Iger being appointed as ambassador to China, the propagandist possibilities are endless.
It’s a logical progression for the Star Wars franchise, which began with Bay Area leftist George Lucas using science fiction as a metaphor for the Vietnam War in the mid-1970s. The Rebels (and later the Ewoks) were inspired by the Vietcong, the Empire by America, and Palpatine by Richard Nixon. So it’s not exactly a great leap forward (sorry) to go from admiring Vietnamese communists for their resourcefulness in beating America, to being in bed with the CCP four decades later. It’s also a reminder of why the American media was so soft on China while the coronavirus was sweeping through America:
(Via Ace of Spades.)
FIGHT THE POWER: Andy Ngo’s antifa book No. 1 weeks before release.